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AMD RX500X and Vega GPU news, prices and specs: RX500X little more than a rebrand of RX500 series cards

Low-key launch for a product that's little different from last year's

AMD RX500X and Vega GPU news, prices and specs: RX500X little more than a rebrand of RX500 series cards
AMD RX580X graphics card quietly launched in April 2018
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13 April 2018: Meet the new AMD graphics cards - same as the old ones. AMD quietly launched its "new" line-up of Radeon GPUs, but admitted that pretty much only the name is new in what is, effectively, a rebrand of its RX500-series Polaris-based GPUs. 

The company introduced the set of RX 500X Polaris cards via its official Radeon GPU webpage, piquing the interest of those who have been waiting for an update to the line-up for some time.

However, after some digging, it seems they found the cards are exactly the same as the iteration before them - the RX 500 series - and it is only their name that has changed.

Even the number of stream processors and compute units, frequency and the underlying architecture is all completely the same.

The problem here though isn't that AMD changed the name, but it's that users who have been waiting for an update to the series are hugely disappointed, especially after months of rumours that the chip company would soon be introducing a new series of slightly faster GPUs for notebooks.

According to Wccftech, which was one of the first to report that the "new" card line-up was the same, the only reason AMD put energy into refreshing the old Polaris is due to the OEMs demanding a new branding scheme every year.

This might serve as good experience for future GPU or CPU buying in future, making us more aware of branding and to check specs before we go ahead and invest in a component that isn't actually an upgrade from its predecessor.

Earlier this year, the company was slapped with a class-action lawsuit over claims that it artificially inflated its stock price by keeping quiet about the fact that the high-profile Spectre flaws affect its chips.

A filing to a US court in the northern district of California made by Pomerantz LLP on behalf of shareholder Doyun Kim claims that AMD's initial reaction to the flaw, which saw it declare that Spectre posed "near zero risk" to its chips before admitting that its processors were, in fact, affected by both variants of the vulnerability, resulted in AMD's stock prices plummeting

"As a result of defendants' wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the company's common shares, plaintiff and other class members have suffered significant losses and damages," the filing stated. 

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