Thursday, March 2nd 2017
AMD's RX 500 Series of Graphics Cards Rumored as Rebrands of RX 400 Series
The folks at Heise online have put forward a report on how AMD's RX 500 series of graphics cards will be little less than direct rebrands of the Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs that AMD introduced with its RX 400 series of graphics cards. Apparently, a straight rebrand is in order, with the RX 580 entering the fray in the place of the RX 480, the RX 570 substituting the RX 470, and so on. Heise reports that the Polaris 10-based RX 500 should see the light of day as soon as April 4th, with Polaris 11-based solutions coming in a little later, on April 11th.
Videocardz, however, reports that these will be slightly more than a straight rebrand - if you can call a slight bump in clockspeeds as trumping a rebrand. The RX 580 is supposed to ship with base clocks ar 1340 MHz (74 MHz more than the reference RX 480), with the RX 570 carrying a much less significant 38 MHz increase over its RX 470 counterpart. Videocardz also reports on the possibility of AMD introducing a new Polaris 12 GPU with the RX 500 series, which will apparently be an even lower-end part than even Polaris 11.
AMD has had a recent history of following with rebrands every other year, which is disappointing, though these do make business sense. They're just not what we, as enthusiasts, like to see. This approach, however, goes on to confirm a little of what we already knew about Vega, and takes after AMD's approach with the Fiji GPUs - rebrand the lower and mainstream end of the GPU spectrum, whilst introducing a new, high-end design. As we know, Vega is an enthusiast-aimed GPU, and so a RX 500 series being introduced in April does pave the way for AMD to have a complete graphics line-up for 2017, starting from the bottom up - remember that AMD's own announcements put the launch of Vega strictly before the end of June. A RX 500 series also makes sense in regards to branding, since AMD has branded their RX Vega-based cards as simply "Radeon RX Vega", opting for a name distinction between its mainstream and enthusiast-class cards, much like the company has done before with their Fury branding.
Sources:
Heise.de, Videocardz
Videocardz, however, reports that these will be slightly more than a straight rebrand - if you can call a slight bump in clockspeeds as trumping a rebrand. The RX 580 is supposed to ship with base clocks ar 1340 MHz (74 MHz more than the reference RX 480), with the RX 570 carrying a much less significant 38 MHz increase over its RX 470 counterpart. Videocardz also reports on the possibility of AMD introducing a new Polaris 12 GPU with the RX 500 series, which will apparently be an even lower-end part than even Polaris 11.
54 Comments on AMD's RX 500 Series of Graphics Cards Rumored as Rebrands of RX 400 Series
I mean gawd at least put in the development we had since then PLEASE.
Like better thermals, better cooling, more overclocking headroom I mean come on!
Honestly this should borderline be illegal imo because it is pretty much lying to the customer.
These "rebrands" are expected to run at higher base clock.
So it is GOOD if they get a new name.
Now, whether it is 485 or 580, I have no idea. Actually, former is more confusing, than the latter, in my humble opinion.
There's been mentions / rumors of Polaris 12 and XT2, I think these will be higher clocked variants, using less power due to process maturity since OG Polaris' launch and maybe even GDDR5X.
I'm thinking we'll end up with a stack something like this:
Enthusiast:
RX Vega - Big Vega #1
RX Vega Nano - Big Vega #2
High-End:
RX590 - Little Vega #1
RX580 - Little Vega #2
Performance / Low-End:
RX570 - Polaris 10 XT2
RX560 - Polaris 12 (or 11 XT2 though we haven't seen any hint of it to my knowledge)
I think Vega 10/11 will both have two SKU's each, unless I missed something from yesterday's C2 stream, filling out the Enthusiast and High-End Segments.
Polaris 10 XT2 will fill-out the performance segment offering a 15-20%+ improvement over the 480 while lowering it's power envelope but as the RX570(560) and in their respective price brackets. (I realize that may seem like a bit much but the 480's have been all over the place TDP wise and some of managed to undervolt their cards to the 95-100w range while still using stock clocks)
If Polaris 12 isn't a mobile only SKU it may end up being the 560 and/or maybe even the 570 depending on how Vega, being named Vega, impacts the rest of the families nomenclature.
Obviously this is all speculation but I think we'll end up seeing something similar to this and I'm almost positive AMD isn't simply going to straight rebrand any of our existing Polaris 10/11 variants. We're going to see higher clocks, lower power consumption etc.
If this ends up being the case I'd have no issues with this and there'd be no real reason to bemoan or cry about it as it's not our standard run of the mill "Rembrandt".
This crappy practice should be put under penal law, at least in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC. Is just an official scamming done by corporations.
Giving new model name to a model with slightly bumped specs is not.
I'm pretty sure you can already buy 480 models that out of the box are running higher frequencies than this rumoured 580.
We should all pay a tax to the government to form an agency to enforce laws protecting us from rebrands! Because when we make purchases, we do so blindly--looking only at the big numbers at the end of the brand name!
Right now, they hit mid-range at best, and not really any products above that. Pretty sad and I hope it changes soon.A ton of consumers do.