AMD’s Annual GPU Rebadge: Radeon HD 8000 Series for OEMs

In an effort to mimic the model year nature of cars and other durable goods, in recent years PC OEMs have increasingly moved to updating their wares both on a technical basis and on a calendar basis. Of course with the technical cycles being 15-18 months as opposed to a 12 month calendar cycle, this means that OEMs are often put into a position where they’re doing their yearly refresh in the middle of a technical cycle, and 2013 is no different. This of course gives rise to the annual rebadge cycle that we have become familiar with over the years.

We’ll see a number of “new” desktops and laptops at CES this year. But along with rebadging the systems themselves, the pressure to rebadge has been pushed down to the component suppliers, which means that powering these “new” systems we’ll see a number of “new” components. In the GPU world both AMD and NVIDIA make an annual event of this, which for market reasons are roughly timed to coincide with CES.

Kicking the GPU rebadge cycle off this year is AMD, who along with their press conference today also pushed out their rebadges. Let’s jump right into the thick of things.

Desktop

Because the rebadge cycle is OEM driven, rebadging is typically focused exclusively on OEM parts, and this year is no exception. The Radeon HD 7000 series isn’t going anywhere in the retail market, but in the OEM market where OEMs are demanding parts with higher numbers, the entire Radeon family from top to bottom is getting rebadged. This means everything from the powerhouse Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to the diminutive (and ancient) Radeon HD 5450 are getting 8000 series product designations. AMD to their credit has kept their retail desktop lineup consistent in naming and features, but with the OEM lineup this has gone completely out the window.

The OEM 8900 series are rebadges of the 7970GE and 7950 w/Boost respectively. Meanwhile the sole 8800 part, the 8870, is a rebadge of the 7870. Further down the list the 8700 series is composed of a rebadged 7770 and 7750-900 (which never saw a proper launch outside of China).

Farther down the lineup still, we actually see a break from rebadging with the introduction of new desktop parts. AMD’s recently announced Oland GPU, which are the very last members of the first generation of the GCN family (and not members of AMD’s forthcoming refresh), will be joining AMD’s OEM desktop lineup as the 8670 and 8570. With only 384 SPs these budget GPUs are not particularly potent, and we wouldn’t at all be shocked if these GPUs never come to the retail desktop market. The real question right now is where they stack up against iGPU solutions such as Trinity’s HD7600 GPUs or Intel’s HD4000, or NVIDIA’s equally low-end desktop GK107 cards like GT 640 and GTX 650.

Finally at the bottom of AMD’s OEM 8000 series stack are some of the oldest AMD GPUs still in production, and decidedly not GCN parts. The 8400 series is a rebadge of various configurations of the Radeon HD 6450  (Caicos GPU, VLIW5). Meanwhile the 8300 series is a rebadge of the ancient VLIW5 Cedar GPU, first introduced in 2010 as the Radeon HD 5450. Frankly it’s not at all clear at this point in time just what the purpose of these final rebadges are, as these cards are slower than a good iGPU. APAC markets are even more heavily weighted towards budget components than the North American market already is, so it’s quite likely that these cards are meant to fill APAC-specific product needs.