Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and its partners have pulled off a shady move for one of its graphics processing unit (GPU) tiers, as new and weaker Radeon RX 560 versions are now being sold alongside the original.
The new batch of Radeon RX 560 GPUs are now being distributed and being sold worldwide, but not all buyers may know that these actually have fewer compute units and stream processors than the original versions. This means that they have less graphical processing power and capability, resulting in lower frame rates for games or worse performance in other tasks such as video rendering and cryptocurrency mining.
Apparently, AMD and its aftermarket GPU partners have also done this without informing the community or changing the name of the said GPU. This was made worse by the fact that the new RX 560s are now mixed with the old ones, meaning it buying one may as well be a lottery.
The new batch of the RX 560 GPUs is reported to have only 14 compute units and 896 stream processors instead of 16 compute units and 1,024 stream processors standard in its tier. This has put the new RX 560s in line with their predecessor, the RX 460, since they now have the same number of computing units and stream processors. This is more noticeable when shopping online where the specs of the RX 560 can be matched to that of the RX 460 and sometimes even run at the same clock speeds.
Buyers looking for a budget graphics card should beware of the cut-down versions of the RX 560, though this would require meticulous observations and research on the consumer's part. An alternative would be to just opt to buy AMD's competitor NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1050, which is also a budget option. Both have similar prices, but the GTX 1050 is slightly more powerful than the RX 560.
AMD, on the other hand, has released a statement regarding the hobbling of the RX 560, stating that they introduced the weaker RX 560 in order to provide consumers with more options, but the company acknowledged that its partners did not provide a distinction between the original and new versions. They are now trying to remedy this and alleviate the confusion.
