These are not likely to be straight rebadges if they claim "refined efficiency and power management". Something has to change physically to make that happen.
No, they can just choose a different working point (similar frequency, slightly lower voltage) to save power and claim a refinement. Would be nice if they did more, but since Tonga I'm not expecting anything from them anymore.
Err not quite. I think a more informed analogy might be if Nvidia were still relying on GK107 in their 900m series lineup as the 950 or 960m. You know, like what AMD is doing with the mobile 300 series, right?
I guess. Still the whole rebranding thing gets old on both sides in the end. When will the companies actually try to make a new part for a new series instead of rebranding to try and make more money on the same architecture, I just feel it is dishonest to consumers and both AMD and nvidia do it. I wasn't trying to just bash on Nvidia, reread my post, I just figured the article did the AMD half for me. :)
I'm fine with rebadging as long as it makes sense from a pricing and performance perspective in the current product stack. I think this is where Nvidia tends to differ from AMD with rebadging. And as much as you keep bringing up the 960m as an example of Nvidia doing the same thing as AMD, the M300 series is really quite different and unprecedented, even as rebadging goes. I can't recall either company ever rebadging a card for three consecutive generations while maintaining the same relative performance and position in the product stack.
Ya the layer of dust from when they were actually fabbed to when they shipped in a product may be acting as a thermal interposer for better heat dissipation.
Best comment by far in this section! Who knew dust has such advanced thermal properties. As for AMD, I guess if my pitcairn 7870 ever needs replacement parts, they will be readily available for the next 5 years... smh...
So they are selling same old 200 series parts that were same old HD8000 series parts that were same old HD 7000 series parts as new? This is the way forward!
Actually, the alienware 15 and 17 have the m295x an an option. dont know why anyone would take it, when the 970m is faster, cheaper, and uses less power though.
Yes, that's true low end is usually rebrand, but they're rebranding their entire mobile GPU product stack. At least most of the time you get some refreshes with some changed specs on same ASIC, with newer parts near the top.
NVIDIA are guilty of rebrands too. AMD seems to be the worst offender this generation (if rumours are true), but a couple of generations ago NVIDIA were horrendous at it. The 700 series had a mix of Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectures. One particular example that sticks in my mind is the 640 which had a handful of variants, with a mix of Fermi and Kepler chips. Some of the 640 models were rebrands from previous series, and some were rebranded in later series.
nVidia has never come close to the crap AMD is pulling, it's a mountain to a molehill. And AMD keeps doing it every single time over a very wide swath, after swearing to us all it would never.
Come on, nvidia is every bit as guilty as AMD may have been on the subject. Especially on OEM-oriented products. The G92 GPU (I'm talking the GPU itself, not the G92 family) was used on products of the 8000 (mid-high end), 9000 (mid to high-end), 100(OEM filler series) and 200 series (yeah, the G92 made up the core of the GT 230 to GTS 250 entry-level-to-mid-end models).
Many entry-level models in the nvidia 700 series are made with the GF108 GPU dating back from the 400 series!
Both contestants have their hands dirty here, it just depends on the time span considered.
I don't think the R9 M375 (or the R9 380 in the desktop space) is meant to be an entry level model... The Geforce 9 series cards came out like 6 months after the G92 Geforce 8 series cards while the G80-based 8 series cards came out 6-12 months before the 8 series G92 cards. They could just as easily have called the new G92 cards 9 series to begin with. It was just a confusing naming indecision. The Geforce 100 series never had any non-OEM parts, it came out at the same time as the 200 series. With the 100&200 series they rotated the G92 chip down the lineup from high end to low end. A rebranding, yes, but it's hardly the same thing as rebranding the entire lineup (save possibly the Fiji part) into the same or nearly the same market segments the previous generation cards were already occupying. We're not talking about 6 months here. We are talking about cards that have been around for 2-3 years. There's no precedent of that from NVIDIA, not even from 6 years ago, so NVIDIA isn't "every bit as guilty as AMD may have been on the subject." (Why "may have been", btw?)
Most of Nvidia's rebrands of this scale have been on lower end stuff.
Nvidia's real issues with cards is how there are 3 version of the 630, 640, 740.... Probably same for other cards. Hope that doesn't come to the 900 series (I haven't checked). It's just a PITA. At least AMD gives the cards different names, even if they are f*cking rebrands.
Your first sentence makes no sense at all. A rebrand in the low end is not a "rebrand of this scale" because "this scale" is that of just about the entire product lineup. And that was pretty much the crux of my post you replied to. Face it, it's a whole lot bolder to rebrand an entire generation than to carry over some previous generation cards because they are still relevant to a targeted market segment, but to update the name to make them sound current. OEMs probably demand a certain amount of rebranding because they don't want to be selling systems with old-sounding names. So what if the chip filled a higher-end purpose in the previous generation? The ill-informed consumer will be turned off by something that sounds old. But that whole argument goes by the wayside if the entire new lineup is just a rebadge of the old one. In this case the OEMs still don't want to be selling something that sounds old, but there hasn't been any shift in the market segments targeted by the same cards in the new naming scheme.
The rest of what you said is off-topic to the thread. We're talking about rebranding not confusing naming schemes, although I agree it's annoying because it means if you are looking at a system with that number you have to look more closely to see exactly which version/revision of that product the system actually contains.
G92 isn't really a relevant comparison because for whatever reason, there were a ton more product line changes in a compressed period of time. G92 launched in Nov 2007 as the 8800GTS 512 and 8800GT, which was quickly die-shrunk to G92b and rebranded to the 9800GT and 9800GTX in March or so 2008, but Nvidia launched its next flagship and named it GTX 280 in June 2008 because they ran out of numbers, and so the G92 was rolled into that stack as GTS 250. In any case, we are talking about 4 rebrands in less than a year for G92 while its performance and feature-set were still very relevant.
With this Radeon, we are talking 4-5 rebrands over the course of almost 4 years!
@Gigaplex, Sure Nvidia rebrands too, but not an entire product stack like this. I mean there is literally nothing new in there, in fact, everything is really old. GCN 1.0? I mean I know as an AMD fan you don't want to hear it, but this is really the culmination of spending resources unwisely and having a backlog of GPUs that the market doesn't really want. Like I said in another thread, this is what happens when you have deep staffing cuts and spend your limited funds on dead-end APIs. You don't have enough teams working on different products and you end up with a really stale product stack.
It's embarrassing now working for them, can you imagine, they send a machine code add to the laser snipper then call the PR department and tell them the new old stock is out and it's slower but laptop apu/crossfire gonna save the day, stuttering, crashing, draining the battery, but hey Alienware !
rofl - it's embarrassing they are so short staffed they can't make anything - play some liquid vr 3d and stay steamed over dead ended mantle slavework - embarrassed and ticked off !
I doubt these are rebadges. The fact that the memory system has so much lower bandwidth is a hint that these GPUs are using the new color compression and hence also need much less bandwidth. With that we know it's not a rebadge but in fact a new GPU. The only other possibility is, that they really are meant to be paired with an APU and the APU also has terrible bandwidth and would be the bottleneck anyway. So rather save power to, the bottleneck is there anyway. What exactly is mentioned on the AMD page?
(repeatedly slams head into desk) WHY? Give us some new freaking chips AMD. this is why nobody uses your stuff in laptops. give us some new gcn 1.2 chips, gpu's from 2012 don't sell. Or, has the fact that nobody uses the m290x in their laptops, and the non existent sales of the r9 290 series in general just slipped your mind?
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testbug00 - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Guessing that Tonga m295x becomes the m390x. Cut down becomes m390. m380(x) is old m290(x)nathanddrews - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
These are not likely to be straight rebadges if they claim "refined efficiency and power management". Something has to change physically to make that happen.testbug00 - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
likely tweaked steppings for the most part. And Tonga taking a larger part of the high end cards.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
I'm guessing their plan is to phase out GCN 1.0 entirely (Pitcairn), like the desktop 300 series. That in itself would help a bit.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Update: lol, nvm... wow that's really quite sad.chizow - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Yeah..those inventory problems are real.nathanddrews - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Sheesh, that's pretty pathetic.chizow - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Yeah, better than tossing them in a landfill and writing them off though, I guess.MrSpadge - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
No, they can just choose a different working point (similar frequency, slightly lower voltage) to save power and claim a refinement. Would be nice if they did more, but since Tonga I'm not expecting anything from them anymore.Crunchy005 - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
So basically what Nvidia did with the mobile 900 series right? O and the 950m with ddr3 and gddr5 under the same name to confuse people more.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Err not quite. I think a more informed analogy might be if Nvidia were still relying on GK107 in their 900m series lineup as the 950 or 960m. You know, like what AMD is doing with the mobile 300 series, right?Crunchy005 - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link
I guess. Still the whole rebranding thing gets old on both sides in the end. When will the companies actually try to make a new part for a new series instead of rebranding to try and make more money on the same architecture, I just feel it is dishonest to consumers and both AMD and nvidia do it. I wasn't trying to just bash on Nvidia, reread my post, I just figured the article did the AMD half for me. :)dragonsqrrl - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
I'm fine with rebadging as long as it makes sense from a pricing and performance perspective in the current product stack. I think this is where Nvidia tends to differ from AMD with rebadging. And as much as you keep bringing up the 960m as an example of Nvidia doing the same thing as AMD, the M300 series is really quite different and unprecedented, even as rebadging goes. I can't recall either company ever rebadging a card for three consecutive generations while maintaining the same relative performance and position in the product stack.chizow - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Ya the layer of dust from when they were actually fabbed to when they shipped in a product may be acting as a thermal interposer for better heat dissipation.lkb - Thursday, May 14, 2015 - link
Best comment by far in this section! Who knew dust has such advanced thermal properties. As for AMD, I guess if my pitcairn 7870 ever needs replacement parts, they will be readily available for the next 5 years... smh...HighTech4US - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Replace faster power hungry GDDR5 with much slower lower power DDR3 and there is your Power Savings.Even with the clock speed increases (which may not even occur in released products) and these GPUs are slower than the 200 family they replaced.
Taneli - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
So they are selling same old 200 series parts that were same old HD8000 series parts that were same old HD 7000 series parts as new? This is the way forward!Khenglish - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Yup, it looks like the 7970m from May 1st 2012 is going to maintain its spot as the top AMD mobile GPU (m295x never made it to laptops, just imacs).TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Actually, the alienware 15 and 17 have the m295x an an option. dont know why anyone would take it, when the 970m is faster, cheaper, and uses less power though.WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Radeonception!Appearantly this may be due to their financial
chizow - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
All rebrands I see, this doesn't bode well for their desktop line-up....at least the low-end.Pwnstar - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Low end is usually rebrands.chizow - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Yes, that's true low end is usually rebrand, but they're rebranding their entire mobile GPU product stack. At least most of the time you get some refreshes with some changed specs on same ASIC, with newer parts near the top.Gigaplex - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
NVIDIA are guilty of rebrands too. AMD seems to be the worst offender this generation (if rumours are true), but a couple of generations ago NVIDIA were horrendous at it. The 700 series had a mix of Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectures. One particular example that sticks in my mind is the 640 which had a handful of variants, with a mix of Fermi and Kepler chips. Some of the 640 models were rebrands from previous series, and some were rebranded in later series.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
nVidia has never come close to the crap AMD is pulling, it's a mountain to a molehill. And AMD keeps doing it every single time over a very wide swath, after swearing to us all it would never.So just stop it.
nightbringer57 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Come on, nvidia is every bit as guilty as AMD may have been on the subject.Especially on OEM-oriented products. The G92 GPU (I'm talking the GPU itself, not the G92 family) was used on products of the 8000 (mid-high end), 9000 (mid to high-end), 100(OEM filler series) and 200 series (yeah, the G92 made up the core of the GT 230 to GTS 250 entry-level-to-mid-end models).
Many entry-level models in the nvidia 700 series are made with the GF108 GPU dating back from the 400 series!
Both contestants have their hands dirty here, it just depends on the time span considered.
Yojimbo - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
I don't think the R9 M375 (or the R9 380 in the desktop space) is meant to be an entry level model... The Geforce 9 series cards came out like 6 months after the G92 Geforce 8 series cards while the G80-based 8 series cards came out 6-12 months before the 8 series G92 cards. They could just as easily have called the new G92 cards 9 series to begin with. It was just a confusing naming indecision. The Geforce 100 series never had any non-OEM parts, it came out at the same time as the 200 series. With the 100&200 series they rotated the G92 chip down the lineup from high end to low end. A rebranding, yes, but it's hardly the same thing as rebranding the entire lineup (save possibly the Fiji part) into the same or nearly the same market segments the previous generation cards were already occupying. We're not talking about 6 months here. We are talking about cards that have been around for 2-3 years. There's no precedent of that from NVIDIA, not even from 6 years ago, so NVIDIA isn't "every bit as guilty as AMD may have been on the subject." (Why "may have been", btw?)testbug00 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Most of Nvidia's rebrands of this scale have been on lower end stuff.Nvidia's real issues with cards is how there are 3 version of the 630, 640, 740.... Probably same for other cards. Hope that doesn't come to the 900 series (I haven't checked). It's just a PITA. At least AMD gives the cards different names, even if they are f*cking rebrands.
Yojimbo - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Your first sentence makes no sense at all. A rebrand in the low end is not a "rebrand of this scale" because "this scale" is that of just about the entire product lineup. And that was pretty much the crux of my post you replied to. Face it, it's a whole lot bolder to rebrand an entire generation than to carry over some previous generation cards because they are still relevant to a targeted market segment, but to update the name to make them sound current. OEMs probably demand a certain amount of rebranding because they don't want to be selling systems with old-sounding names. So what if the chip filled a higher-end purpose in the previous generation? The ill-informed consumer will be turned off by something that sounds old. But that whole argument goes by the wayside if the entire new lineup is just a rebadge of the old one. In this case the OEMs still don't want to be selling something that sounds old, but there hasn't been any shift in the market segments targeted by the same cards in the new naming scheme.The rest of what you said is off-topic to the thread. We're talking about rebranding not confusing naming schemes, although I agree it's annoying because it means if you are looking at a system with that number you have to look more closely to see exactly which version/revision of that product the system actually contains.
chizow - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
G92 isn't really a relevant comparison because for whatever reason, there were a ton more product line changes in a compressed period of time. G92 launched in Nov 2007 as the 8800GTS 512 and 8800GT, which was quickly die-shrunk to G92b and rebranded to the 9800GT and 9800GTX in March or so 2008, but Nvidia launched its next flagship and named it GTX 280 in June 2008 because they ran out of numbers, and so the G92 was rolled into that stack as GTS 250. In any case, we are talking about 4 rebrands in less than a year for G92 while its performance and feature-set were still very relevant.With this Radeon, we are talking 4-5 rebrands over the course of almost 4 years!
chizow - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
@Gigaplex, Sure Nvidia rebrands too, but not an entire product stack like this. I mean there is literally nothing new in there, in fact, everything is really old. GCN 1.0? I mean I know as an AMD fan you don't want to hear it, but this is really the culmination of spending resources unwisely and having a backlog of GPUs that the market doesn't really want. Like I said in another thread, this is what happens when you have deep staffing cuts and spend your limited funds on dead-end APIs. You don't have enough teams working on different products and you end up with a really stale product stack.WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, May 6, 2015 - link
Because screw name, that's why.They really adopted Shakespeare seriously on what is in a name.
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
It's embarrassing now working for them, can you imagine, they send a machine code add to the laser snipper then call the PR department and tell them the new old stock is out and it's slower but laptop apu/crossfire gonna save the day, stuttering, crashing, draining the battery, but hey Alienware !rofl - it's embarrassing they are so short staffed they can't make anything - play some liquid vr 3d and stay steamed over dead ended mantle slavework - embarrassed and ticked off !
beginner99 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
I doubt these are rebadges. The fact that the memory system has so much lower bandwidth is a hint that these GPUs are using the new color compression and hence also need much less bandwidth. With that we know it's not a rebadge but in fact a new GPU.The only other possibility is, that they really are meant to be paired with an APU and the APU also has terrible bandwidth and would be the bottleneck anyway. So rather save power to, the bottleneck is there anyway. What exactly is mentioned on the AMD page?
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
I doubt you read the article.Yes, they're rebrands.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
(repeatedly slams head into desk) WHY? Give us some new freaking chips AMD. this is why nobody uses your stuff in laptops. give us some new gcn 1.2 chips, gpu's from 2012 don't sell. Or, has the fact that nobody uses the m290x in their laptops, and the non existent sales of the r9 290 series in general just slipped your mind?yapmeo - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
Radeon M330 (1gb) is a joke, it is slower than intel 5500...