I'm sort of surprised that nobody is seeing AMD's endgame with the new naming.
There is a very valid and logical reason behind the new naming change for Radeon cards... if you notice, AMD is not going to introduce 6700 series cards, at least none are mentioned in roadmap. But current 5700 cards will still continue. So AMD's Radeon lineup is going to look something like this....
Top end (Dual GPU): Antilles (6990 or 6970X2 probably?)
Top end (Single GPU): Cayman (6970 & 6950 - effectively successor to current 5870 and 5850 respectively)
Mid-high end: Barts (6870 & 6850 - effectively successor to current 5770 and 5750 respectively)
Mid-low end: Juniper (current 5770 and 5750, maybe sometime in future this area will be filled with same generation chips with HD7000 series)
Now the low end spectrum and entry level spectrum is eventually going to die down. Why? what will replace it? Simple... AMD's fusion chips. Top-tier Fusions chips are going to offer you 5600-like performance with on-processor GPU. Onboard GPU's have huge market compared to low-end discreet GPUs and AMD needs the fusion GPUs to align properly with current GPU offerings so the naming change/shift was required to achieve that. I think the new naming convention will come full circle with HD7000 series where all market segments from Top End to Mid-low End will be occupied with same generation chip along with fusion chips also using HD7000 architecture.
While I agree, that for most of the end user this is going to create confusion... and for some folks even bit of disappointment (when they find that 6870 isn't faster than 5870). I think, AMD should have launched the Barts and Cayman SKUs with even smaller time gap but then again from sales perspective AMD would have wanted to 6800/Barts cards to achieve enough sales momentum. Also, probably to generate enough speculations about Cayman's performance. It's a good marketing nevertheless, even if it's slightly deceiving.
