AMD planning rebrands of 7950 and 7850

[JDG1980]

There are some leaks floating around indicating that AMD is going to re-release the 7950 and 7850 as the R9 280 and R7 265, respectively.

http://www.techpowerup.com/197786/amd-also-works-on-radeon-r9-280-to-heat-up-sub-300-segment.html

http://chinese.vr-zone.com/101020/a...tx-750-ti-and-make-radeon-280-stanby-02112014

Contrary to what TPU says, it's almost certain that the R9 280 will be snapped up by cryptocurrency miners, as the 7950 has been. AMD is seemingly planning to release the R7 265 at a MSRP of $150 and the R9 280 at MSRP of $250, but while the Pitcairn card might well keep that price at street level, you probably won't be able to touch a R9 280 for less than $350, until and unless the bubble pops.

It seems odd that AMD would put the Pitcairn silicon in the R7 category. Both of the existing Pitcairn rebrands (270 and 270X) are R9s, and until now the de facto difference between the R7 and R9 is the number of ROPs (16 vs 32), and this branding breaks that correlation.

 

[thilanliyan]

Welcome to the modern video card market...

 

[Plimogz]

Quite lame, if true.

Even notwithstanding the prospect of inflated street prices due to mining, those MSRPs are pretty disappointing, considering that $250 7950s and $150 7850s were common enough further back than a year ago.

Hopefully this will be it for crippled Tahiti and Pitcairn chips and going forward we can expect AMD's next GPUs to be all Volcanic Islands.

 

[Silverforce11]

Looks like we're stuck with 28nm for awhile!!

 

[Pneumothorax]

Welcome to the modern video card market...

Depressing isn't it? Been 3d gaming since the 3dfx days and it's sad that CPU/gpu updates have become synonymous with carmaker 'updates' where we have to wait 3-5 years before a true generational update.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The 250X rebrand was released yesterday as well.

Long time till 20nm. And if you think this is bad, just wait for next time, it will be worse with a 4 year cycle.

 

[gdansk]

Depressing isn't it? Been 3d gaming since the 3dfx days and it's sad that CPU/gpu updates have become synonymous with carmaker 'updates' where we have to wait 3-5 years before a true generational update.

Nodes transitions have slowed, what do you expect?

 

[SimianR]

It makes sense - there was a pretty big gap between the 270x and the 280X. The problem for anyone looking to grab one of these for gaming is that they will be scooped up by miners pretty fast.

 

[el etro]

Knowing how far Tahiti PRO goes with overclocking, will be good release the reference R9 280 Non-X with up to 1Ghz clock.

 

[Attic]

Where to go to buy them? They fill a needed gap in AMDs lineup and at 250 bux it will be no brainer vs the 760gtx. But prices...

Prices are absurd. Newegg is definitely out.

Tiger direct is ok, but still high and limited selection. Amazon for GPUs is meh.

Rebrands at much higher prices than the initial branding.... win?

 

[Rezist]

20 nm could last as long as four years? Computers are getting to the point of not really being upgradeable since the upgrades come so slowly might as well build new every 5 years.