It seems that there are conflicting duplicate files in the radeon-ucode-20140823 update. Before the upgrade the VERDE firmware files where of the form: -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_ce.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31500 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_mc2.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31076 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_mc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_me.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_pfp.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8192 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_rlc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60388 Sep 5 19:56 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_smc.bin Now there is a muddle of upper and lower case files with different file lengths: $ equery f radeon-ucode | grep -i verde | xargs ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8832 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_ce.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_ce.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31500 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_mc2.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32044 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_mc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31076 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_mc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8832 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_me.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_me.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8832 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_pfp.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8576 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_pfp.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8448 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_rlc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8192 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_rlc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61800 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/verde_smc.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60388 Sep 15 17:42 /lib/firmware/radeon/VERDE_smc.bin It is not clear whether the upper or lower case is correct, although given the file lengths it seems that the lower case is the new files - however the radeon wiki http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon#Firmware says to use the form UPPERCASE_lowercase.bin which means the new files will not be loaded. I think the VERDE_me.bin style files should be removed and the verde_me.bin style renamed to VERDE_me.bin. Note - this is not just verde, but all the files in the radeon-ucode package.
These files are not duplicate. I agree however that they are named in a confusing way, and reported this to upstream radeon and linux-firmware maintainers. Their reply was that they don't see any problem with that. The lower-case files are for kernel 3.17 and later.
If you want the names of the files changed, you will have to contact upstream directly.
