AMD Radeon M400 Series, rebrands confirmed by drivers

Two months ago Lenovo confirmed that two YOGA notebooks equipped with Radeon M400 graphics cards will be unveiled in April. So far there is no confirmation that those plans have changed, so Radeon M400 series should be just around the corner.

AMD Radeon M400 series, what we know

I decided to make this post to update you with the latest developments in regard to new Radeon Mobile series.

AMD Radeon R5 M430

Radeon M400 series are already out there, some reviewers already have notebooks equipped with those cards. You might have seen a post at LaptopMedia that suggested that they are testing new notebook with Polaris GPU, although with my help (which they forgot to mention in an update), the GPU turned out to be Radeon M430, the card that we already know is a rebrand of M330. They later put this card to the test against Radeon M330 and other solutions. The M430 appears to be ~14% faster, probably due to higher clocks, which they can’t confirm. The GPU is equipped with 2GB DDR3 memory, just as M330 and M335. Technically you could say this is the first ever test of Radeon 400 series card. Below is FireStrike (Graphics Score):

AMD Radeon R7 M440/M460

Radeon R7 and R5 are filled with Topaz and Sun-based solutions. Those GPUs have been with us since Radeon M200 series, some even since HD 8000M. Because I was using 4 different drivers, some IDs are actually used twice, like M460 and M440, so it’s hard to say which card ultimately get this particular ID.

Regardless of their name those cards are mostly based on Topaz GPU with 384 Stream Processors. So far there are ‘only’ three Radeon R7 M460 cards, almost straight rebrands of M260. The drivers also confirm 9 different variants of Radeon R7 M440.

AMD Radeon R9 M470X

It appears that pretty much everything under Radeon R9 M480 is a rebrand. The fastest GPU so far confirmed by such drivers was Radeon R9 M470X, which unfortunately is yet another reincarnation of Bonaire-based R9 M385X.

According to Device ID, Radeon R9 M470X has Bonaire chip with 896 Stream Processors (it’s the same ID as R9 M385X), so in case you want to upgrade your M300 series card to M400, it will only take a software update.

AMD Radeon R8/R6 M400 Integrated series

Mobile chips are not exclusively used in notebooks. GPUs carrying same silicons are also being integrated into APUs. Leaked drivers revealed two such devices called Radeon R8 M445DX and Radeon R6 M435DX. It is yet unclear where those GPUs will be used, but we already know that R8 M445DX part is based on Topaz with 384 Stream Processors, and R6 M435DX has Sun GPU with 320 SPs.

AMD Radeon R9 M480/M490

You might think that so many rebrands are a bad news, but the lack of high performance chips in drivers is actually a good sign. It means that Amethyst / Tonga based products will be replaced with something faster, quite possibly Polaris 11. It is expected that Polaris GPUs will be integrated into  Radeon R9 M480/M485 and M490/M495 series.

AMD Radeon M400 series

Despite the fact that most cards use the same device ID, but different subsystem ID, I decided to keep them in the chart, just so you know how many variants are planned. Those cards will probably just differ in memory configuration and GPU clock speeds.