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AMD lists Radeon R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 OEM card specs

by Mark Tyson on 8 May 2015, 10:41

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

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AMD has published the official specifications of its Radeon R9 300 series graphics cards, destined for OEM use. On its OEM graphics card pages it lists detailed specs for the AMD Radeon R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 OEM graphics cards. All these cards appear to be rebranded products which are based upon Tonga, Pitcairn and Bonaire GPUs respectively with slight clock speed tweaks.

The AMD Radeon 300 Series Graphics for OEM desktops got a brief mention in an official press release yesterday about updated APUs and GPUs. However that news release didn't give any specifications for the GPU range it touched upon. HP will be one of the first OEMs to use the new R9 300 series graphics cards in its PCs. We found that out earlier in the week, however at that time no tech specs at all could be garnered from the HP product pages.

Looking at what the AMD Radeon R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 OEM are in hardware terms it appears that:

  • The AMD Radeon R9 380 is based on the current retail Radeon R9 285 card
  • The AMD Radeon R9 370 is based on the current retail Radeon R7 265 card with a little more GPU clock speed applied
  • The AMD Radeon R9 360 is based on the current Radeon R9 260 OEM card

The above AMD Radeon R9 300 series cards are said overall to represent "AMD's commitment to provide the smoothest, high-quality graphics solutions for everyday desktop users".

In this OEM lineup, as revealed so far, there is no mention of an AMD Radeon R9 390 graphics card. You can see all the new cards listed above feature GDDR5 memory. While there is no rebrand of Hawaii-based Radeon R9 290/290x, that isn't expected to become the (OEM) AMD Radeon R9 390. It could be rebranded to become something like the R9 385… We are expecting a completely new architecture for the AMD Radeon R9 390 featuring HBM on board.

HEXUS Forums :: 18 Comments

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Posted by Plasmastorm - Fri 08 May 2015 10:50
AMD Exec : We've got too many old cards we can't shift.
Yes man: Sir ! We can sell them with a ‘new’ sticker to OEMs, nobody gives a toss about GPU's in oem systems.
AMD Exec: Give that man a bonus.

Repeat above every 2 years and you have AMD's strategy it seems :(
Posted by directhex - Fri 08 May 2015 11:00
On the bright side, it means they'll have to prolong driver support for old cards for longer!
Posted by kalniel - Fri 08 May 2015 11:04
directhex
On the bright side, it means they'll have to prolong driver support for old cards for longer!

Yup - GCN is proving a rather long lasting architecture :)
Posted by scaryjim - Fri 08 May 2015 11:18
Plasmastorm
… Repeat above every 2 years and you have AMD's strategy it seems :(

And nvidias, to be fair, and I doubt it's entirely driven by the GPU companies: OEMs like having new-sounding parts in their black boxes, so they demand updated products on a regular basis. If that demand doesn't align with the release of new GPU SKUs, AMD and nvidia have little choice other than to rebrand existing cards.

Market forces working ahead of technical development, I'm afraid: While the R9 380 is based on relatively new silicon, the R9 370 is a rebaranded 7850, and the R9 360 is a cut down 7790. Which I believe means there's actually three different iterations of GCN in that line up…. :rolleyes:
Posted by shaithis - Fri 08 May 2015 11:32
To be fair, it makes sense.

You bring in a new top-end model (or 2 or 3) and then all the older models go down the pecking order. Why re-design a chip when the one you have fills a performance point and is now cheaper to manufacture than it used to?
You then have a few choices:

1. Keep adding bigger sub-version numbers to faster cards, this would require more granularity in model numbering
2. Confuse people by having multiple product lines running parallel with no differentiator as to performance (this is how it used to be and people didn't like it)
3. Re-brand older cards into the new model lines with appropriate model names that reflect performance (What we have now)

I remember when they starting re-branding, people were up in arms, but the alternatives aren't really any better.

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