While earlier we heard that AMD would be shuffling the naming scheme for (some) of its Kabini APUs, it appears now that AMD might be doing the same thing for its upcoming Volcanic Islands graphics cards.
A report from VideoCardz, based on a GPU-Z validation from TechPowerUp, indicates that the Volcanic Islands series will be classified as the R-200 series graphics cards.
The idea is that there would be two parts to the name, a prefix after the R, as well as a three-digit identifier. For example, the R9-series would be the high-end graphics cards, the R8-series would be the high/mid-range graphics cards, R7-series as mid-range graphics cards, and so on. This prefix would remain through the upcoming generations as an identifier for what class the graphics card would be.
The second part of the name would be a three-digit identifier. For example, VideoCardz.com has predicted that the AMD Radeon HD 7970's successor, which we would previously have thought would have been called the Radeon HD 9970, might be called the AMD Radeon R9-285. The successor to that card would then be called the AMD Radeon R9-385. The table below contains a few more of the predictions:
| Radeon HD 7000 | Radeon R-200 | Radeon R-300 |
|---|---|---|
| AMD Radeon HD 7990 -> | AMD Radeon R9 290 -> | AMD Radeon R9 390 |
| AMD Radeon HD 7970 -> | AMD Radeon R9 285 -> | AMD Radeon R9 385 |
| AMD Radeon HD 7950 -> | AMD Radeon R9 280 -> | AMD Radeon R9 380 |
| AMD Radeon HD 7870 -> | AMD Radeon R8 275 -> | AMD Radeon R8 375 |
| AMD Radeon HD 7850 -> | AMD Radeon R8 270 -> | AMD Radeon R8 370 |
