AMD appears to be rebranding Mobility parts as 'new' HD 500v series

AMD / ATI seems to have invented a new generation of parts through the rebranding of older Mobility Radeon HD 4000 GPUs. Appearing on the company's website today, with very little fanfare, are 'new' "HD 500v" series parts.  

Looking at the specifications, either ATI seems to have built new GPUs that are exactly the same as older ones, or there is some rebranding afoot. The HD 560v seems to use a RV730 which is the same one as is currently found in the Radeon HD Mobility 4670, while the HD 540v and 530v seem to the respective 'new' versions of the Mobility Radeon HD 4500 and HD 4300.

In recent years NVIDIA has been the biggest culprit of rebranding, with the G92 GPU spanning across three 'new' generations of video cards, but it appears ATI hasn't abandoned this behavior either.

However, unlike some other rebranding campaigns we've seen in recent years, it is important to point out that there is actually new-generation, DirectX 11 ATI Mobility parts available: they are being sold as Radeon Mobility HD 5000 series parts, and use ATI's latest tech. These DirectX 10.1 500v series parts are the lower-priced, lower-performance options now available from ATI -- we expect them to not be sold at the same time as the HD 4000 Mobility parts.

But if you currently have a Radeon HD Mobility 4670, 4500 or 4300, it doesn't look like there is all that much reason to be envious of anyone sporting these inventive HD 500v series parts.