Just yesterday, during the three-hour-long Financial Analyst Day 2015 presentation, AMD revealed its new Zen CPU microarchitecture along with what we presumed was the new Radeon 300-series GPUs. At the time, however, the company revealed no exact specifications for these GPUs beyond the fact that the "next generation" would feature HBM memory, and that in 2016 we'd be seeing GPUs with the second generation HBM memory and manufactured with FinFET technology. However, it appears that AMD listed specifications for the OEM variants of the Radeon 300-series overnight.
Now, we must mention something. Yesterday, during the presentation, AMD did not specifically announce the Radeon 300-series, but we assumed that's what they were talking about. In light of the new information, however, it is possible that not all of the 300-Series GPUs have HBM memory, or that this quarter's GPUs with HBM memory won't be part of the 300-Series at all. We recognize these possibilities because the specifications for the GPUs listed on AMD's website clearly state that they come with GDDR5 memory, and the model numbers range up to the Radeon R9 380.
We've put all of the most important information from the OEM Rx-300 series in the table below.
| Shaders | Clock Speed | Memory | Dx12 Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R9 380 | 1792 | Up to 918 MHz | Up to 4 GB | Yes |
| R9 370 | 1024 | Up to 975 MHz | 2 GB or 4 GB | Yes |
| R9 360 | 768 | Up to 1050 MHz | 2 GB | Yes |
| R7 350 | 384 | Up to 1050 MHz | 1 GB or 2 GB | Yes |
| R7 340 | 384 | Up to 780 MHz | Up to 4 GB | Yes |
| R5 340 | 320 | Up to 825 MHz | Up to 2 GB | Yes |
| R5 330 | 320 | Up to 855 MHz | Up to 2 GB | Yes |
From the looks of it, all of these cards are rebrands. They feature the same GPU cores as we've seen before, and they all have either GDDR5 memory or DDR3 memory for some lower-tier models. Placing the specs side-by-side, the R9 380 appears to take the R9 285's place, and oddly enough, the R9 370 appears to be a rebranded R7 265 with a slightly higher clock speed.
It must be stated that all of the GPUs in this series, so far, are OEM GPUs, meaning that they are not available as AIB retail boards. These GPUs are sold straight to system builders such as Dell or HP, and integrated into their desktops.
From here on out, we're not quite sure what will happen. With the top model being an R9 380, it is still possible that the new HBM-equipped GPUs will be tiered above those in the 300-series naming stack, or AMD may be birthing the 400-series nomenclature for the all-new graphics cards. Either way, systems with these OEM 300-Series GPUs should start shipping anytime. In fact, HP already announced its Envy system packing these GPUs earlier this week.
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Imagine buying a CPU, GPU and SSD from one manufacturer and they are all optimized to work together.
Anyway, I am not surprised that we see the R7 265 and R9 285 show up as rebrands. While they did not surprise us with performance boosts, they did bring a number of interesting features. As long as the price is right, I'll accept them as rebrands.