ATI Mobility Radeon HD 500v-series sticks to DX10.1

A blast from the past with a new name

OVER THE PAST few day’s we’ve noticed several upcoming notebooks featuring ATI Mobility Radeon HD 500v GPUs in them, but it wasn’t quite clear as to what these were, apart from the fact that they weren’t DX11 GPU’s. AMD has clarified things to a degree by adding the 530v, 540v and 560v series to its website, just below the Mobility Radeon HD 5165 and 5145, both of which are also DX10.1 GPU’s.

Looking at the specifications, all three of these “new” GPU families are built on 55nm, the same as the Mobility Radeon 4000-series. The 530v appears to be similar to the 4300-series with the 540v being close to the 4500-series and finally the 560v fitting into the 4600-series shoes. There appear to be different models of these GPU’s as well, as we’ve seen notebooks with Mobility Radeon HD 545v GPUs in them from Dell.

The odd thing about this is that AMD launched the Mobility Radeon HD 5145 and 5165 for what appears to be exactly the same type of notebooks and with exactly the same reason. The 5165 appears to be the same as the 560v while the 5145 ends up in the same category as the 530v and 540v. We don’t quite follow AMD’s logic here, as the company now appears to have three different names for what at least on paper appears to be the same GPU.

It could of course be as simple as AMD took a good look at what Nvidia has been doing and realised that hey, maybe it’s not all bad to come up with a new name for an old product, as consumers will most likely not be able to tell the difference. On the other hand, it might be AMD’s partners that have done the same and asked AMD for some new names for the older products. The 5165 and 5145 were confusing, but at least these “new” models have an entirely different naming scheme compared to the DX11 Mobility Radeon HD 5000-series GPU’s.

It looks like the 500v-series is quite popular with notebook manufacturers as well, since aside from Dell, so far both HP and MSI are readying notebooks with the new model names. AMD might also be adding the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 565v and 580v at a later stage, and the details we have on this are vague, but both of those models will also be rebranded 4000-series GPU’s. We’re not big fans of all this rebranding, no matter which manufacturer it comes from, but at least if you know what you’re looking for, AMD’s system is clearer than Nvidia’s.S|A

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