AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture premiered around this time last year on the Radeon HD 7000 series. The architecture brought with it a slew of improvements, which we covered at length here. Before long, GCN had spread through much of AMD's desktop graphics lineup, providing fierce opposition to the competition from Nvidia.

When AMD got around to updating its mobile offerings, though, it did something a little disappointing. The company decided to use its older TeraScale architecture to power mid-range and low-end members of the Radeon HD 7000M series, from the 7600M on down. Those offerings were built using TSMC's 40-nm fab process, as well, instead of the finer 28-nm process used to fab newer, GCN-powered chips.

AMD did eventually introduce GCN-driven Radeon HD 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M series products to service the higher end of the mobile market. However, cheaper and thinner gaming notebooks have essentially been stuck with re-branded last-gen Radeons for the better part of a year.