A leaked AMD driver has all but confirmed our fears - the upcoming AMD Radeon 300 series is basically a rebrand of the Radeon R200 series, with the exception of the new Fiji GPU being used for the unnamed high-end Radeon R9 flagship graphics card.
It increasingly appears as if the Fiji GPU will be spun off into its own entity, much like Nvidia’s Titan series, offering up the best of the best performance from an AMD Radeon graphics card. Now back to those rebrands, and in the table below you can see how this is going to pan out, with a number of last-generation GPUs given a fresh lick of paint and presumably minor clock speed bumps.
| Driver Code | R9 300 Series Graphics Cards | GPU | Original Variant |
| AMD6658.1 | AMD Radeon R7 360 Graphics | Bonaire XTX | Radeon R7 260X |
| AMD67B0.1 | AMD Radeon R9 300 Series | Hawaii XT | Radeon R9 290X |
| AMD67B1.1 | AMD Radeon R9 300 Series | Hawaii PRO | Radeon R9 290 |
| AMD6810.1 | AMD Radeon R7 370 Graphics | Curacao XT | Radeon R9 270X |
| AMD6810.2 | AMD Radeon R7 300 Series | Curacao XT | Radeon R9 270X |
| AMD6811.1 | AMD Radeon R7 300 Series | Curacao PRO | Radeon R9 270 |
| AMD6939.1 | AMD Radeon R9 300 Series | Tonga PRO | Radeon R9 285 |
As you can see from the table, the previous generation of cards will all be getting like-for-like refreshes, and the missing Fiji GPU will slot in at the top. What this means is that the Radeon R9 390X will be a traditional graphics card refresh with GDDR5 memory, with all-new branding coming for the Fiji GPU. These top-end Fiji cards will be the only graphics cards from AMD to feature a new GPU, and will also be the only cards to benefit from the much-anticipated 2.5 HBM (High Bandwidth Memory).
Previous rumours had suggested we could be seeing a mammoth 8GB HBM video memory on the R9 300 series Fiji card, but this is not the case. The Gen 1 implementation of HBM only allows for a single link to the GPU, with HBM stacks currently limited to 4GB.
It now turns out the confusion occurred because the Radeon R9 390X will have 8GB GDDR5 memory, which has been confirmed by ASUS, and the flagship Titan X equivalent will feature 4GB HBM. The hardware manufacturer has already begun putting up the page listings for its ASUS Radeon 300 series of graphics cards. The full list of cards already confirmed to be coming from ASUS are:
- ASUS R9390X-DC2-8GD5
- ASUS STRIX-R9380-OC-2GD5
- ASUS STRIX-R9370-OC-4GD5
- ASUS STRIX-R7360X-DC2OC2-2GD5
- ASUS R7360-2GD5
It's looking pretty much dead certain AMD is planning a total rebrand for its Radeon 300-series graphics cards. A lot of weight is now resting on the Fiji GPU, which will be finding in a home in as-yet-unnamed graphics card. Pricing rumours have put it at around $850, which is a big ask in comparison to the GTX 980, which can be had for as little as $550.
Disappointed by the news? Planning on picking any of these graphics cards up?
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