AMD Revises Naming Scheme for GPUs?

Every 5 generations or so all the major product manufacturers go through a name change. For example, NVIDIA went through 6000, 7000, 8000 and 9000 series before starting at 1xx, 2xx, 3xx all the way up to 7xx today. AMD have had a similar state of affairs, starting with Rage, Radeon 7xxx, Radeon 8xxx, 9xxx, X300-X1900, HD 2xxx, HD 3xxx up to the HD 7xxx series. With the upcoming launch of their new HD 8xxx series parts, word on the internet is that we might get a name change.

TechPowerUp, home of the GPU recognition tool GPU-Z, has found a new naming scheme through their submission database based on early revisions of the cards and drivers.

Previously we had:

Radeon HD xyz0(M)

x for Generation
y for Market
z for Variant
0 is an extra zero
(M) optional for mobile parts

So for example, the HD 6850 is a generation 6, high segment (8) part, and the HD 7830 is a generation older but lower power (83 vs 85).

The new naming scheme seems to be as follows:

Radeon Ry (M)xz0(i)

R is just an R
y for Market
(M) optional for mobile parts
x for Generation
z for Variant
0 is an extra zero
(i) optional special features

This sounds stupidly confusing, so here’s a psuedo conversion table:

Old	New
HD 8990	R9 890
HD 8950	R9 850
HD 8870 XT	R8 870 XT
HD 8870	R8 870
HD 8530	R5 830
HD 8790M	R7 M870
HD 8630M	R6 M830

Note, the old cards will not be renamed, this only applies to future cards.

Of course, we won’t here anything for a long while about this – even AMD’s Never Settle website lists the new cards as the HD 8900, 8800 and 8700 series.

Chances are this might be the naming scheme after the 9000 series, when we’ll go back to something like ‘R8 1070′ with ’10’ being the generation. It might even go down to one…?

Don’t forget, AMD’s APUs follow a similar strategy to this. A8-5600 one generation, A8-6600 the next. A6/A8/A10 for positioning, then a number representing generation and then numbers for positioning.

Edit: According to Wikipedia (as much as that is worth), the new card to be released in September will be the R8 290, indicative of AMD’s new naming scheme. All bets are a go as to what this news actually means – it’s a bit hard for AMD to rename a card almost out. TPU are being tightlipped on what exactly is in their GPU-Z database(!).

2 comments on “AMD Revises Naming Scheme for GPUs?”

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