AMD Moves to Sea Islands, Volcanic Islands for GPU Names
As 2012 and AMD's current 7000-series GPU generation comes to a close, there is word on the upcoming code names the company's next graphics processors.
As VR-Zone reports, AMD's will shift from the previous Northern Islands and current Southern Islands to Sea Islands (SI) in 2013, Volcanic Islands in 2014 and Pirate Islands in 2015. The first example of Sea Islands is the recently uncovered Oland, a small Island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden.
The choice of code names is not quite as interesting, but typically much more complex than thought. Not only are those names exposed to potential negative public opinion and potentially negative connotations, but they can also collide with trademarks and copyright issues. Over at Intel, Russ Hampsten, who is frequently involved in code-naming products at the blue team, recently described the task of finding code-names as "the most thankless job you ever do." Primarily because of legal implications, code-names often use geographic items.
The SI Oland GPU will debut as the Radeon HD 8800 series and will debut as a 28 nm chip with 3.4 billion transistors. Compared to the current 7800 generation, the 8800 series will be featuring a significant jump in floating point performance and texture fill rates.

I've heard news of single-slot 7850s, so there could be some single slot 8850s if they do turn out to have similar power consumption, but there would almost definitely be some single slot 87xx cards.
I know increasing the ROPs isn't some magical gateway to increased performance, but it's going to be interesting to see how this works out.
Yeah, checking them out earlier. made by afox (spinoff of foxconn) and not available in the US. runs hotter than ref 7850 but well within tolerable limits. makes for a pretty powerful gaming machine in an itx form factor
Your suggestion?
AMD need to stop making bad choices ASAP
I hope not. Maybe AMD intends to give the implication that they're going to erupt onto the scene or something, IDC. I suppose that we'll find out in a few years
Unless AMD (or any company) decides to market their cards using the code names, they can use anything they want as internally. These names are not intended for the public marketplace. If the press decides to print "leaked" slides using these code names, that's not AMD's fault. The point is, copy-writing a word doesn't make it illegal to say that word out loud or write it down. It just makes it illegal to market something using that name. Besides most of these so-called trade marks and copy-write names were already lifted from common language anyway.