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ATI brand (GPUs, chipsets, graphics cards) to be retired

SPCTRE

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AMD has announced that it is retiring the ATI brand, and expects to have fully transitioned all of its graphics products to the AMD label by the end of this year. [...]


The timing of the ATI brand announcement makes sense, given that the company is moving full speed ahead into the Fusion era with the upcoming launch of its Ontario mobile platform, which features an integrated CPU and GPU on the same die. So from a purely technical perspective, it makes little sense to talk about your processor as an "Application Processing Unit" because it combines a CPU and GPU on the same die, and then give your discrete GPU chips a different brand name than the CPU/GPU combo chips. If the CPU and GPU are going to merge in silicon by the end of the year, then the brands should merge, as well.



That said, the move has to give Intel at least a tiny bit of heartburn. Current systems integrators, Apple being the most obvious example, advertise the Intel and ATI brands alongside one another for systems that use Intel CPUs and ATI GPUs, so that will now change to Intel and AMD branding. With as much as Intel has invested over the past decade in the "Intel Inside" program, the company can't be happy at the idea of an AMD logo accompanying the ubiquitous "Intel Inside" badge on laptops, flyers, webpages, etc.
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/08/amd-roundup-rip-ati-and-more-on-bobcat-in-servers.ars


R.I.P. ATI, I'll miss you and the old ATI vs Nvidia debates :(
 
^ Yeah, it's just not the same :(

Also, I miss Matrox, 3dfx (Voodoo), S3 (Savage) and PowerVR (KYRO) :(
 
Well yes and no. Current gen graphics cards products, and previous gen products will remain "AMD's ATI Radeon..." or "ATI Radeon..." but come next gen, and forward, it is all "AMD Radeon..."

So "ATI Radeon HD 5870" is and always will be correct, as will "ATI Radeon 9800" etc.. etc.., you get the idea, but come 6xxx it'll all be "AMD Radeon"

It shouldn't really be a shock to anyone that they are moving forward with the merger finally in a more final capacity, frankly I thought it would happen sooner.

I look forward to the simplification.
 
^ To clarify, I'm not seriously criticizing the decision by any stretch, I'm merely being nostalgic and unreasonable ;)

In fact, it's an interesting example of brand management.
 
Probably a good idea given that ATI currently has Nvidia up against the ropes and that AMD will be leveraging ATI's GPU expertise to thrash Intel in the game of making integrated C/GPUs that don't suck.
 
^ Yeah, it was a really intelligent piece of technology, even outperforming the numerically superior competition of its day. Big fan of the KYRO.
 
I would of kept ATI as a brand name as it's well-known in the graphics industry; AMD, not so much. They forgot to balance the idea that while AMD overall is more well-known due to it being bigger, that ATI is more well known for its video cards. You'd say you want an ATI card, not an AMD card. Their new logos are uninspiring too. Too plain and not a very good transition. At the very least, I would of kept the ATI logo and where it says Graphics, I would of put "Powered by ATi".

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/08/30/amd-to-ditch-the-ati-brand/1
 
I think "Radeon" is far more well known than "ATI". I doubt most consumers will notice the difference. I haven't heard "ATI vs. NVIDIA" in several years. It's been "RADEON vs. NVIDIA" for quite some time now.
 
Say wha??? It's Nvidia vs ATI or Radeon vs GeForce. People with computer brains ain't gonna mix 'em!
 
I haven't heard anyone seriously use the term "GeForce" in awhile either. Yes, of course all the GTX xxxx GPUs are called GeForce GTX xxx, but I haven't heard anyone actually say GeForce in a couple years.

Mind you, I'd just talking about colloquial usage amongst several of my peers (IT folks, hardcore gamers, semiconductor engineers and techs). I'm not talking about the general IT nomenclature trends nationwide or anything like that!
 
They'll still exist, just as AMD, which means two of my favorite companies, AMD & ATI, will merge as one. Hopefully, that means higher quality product. I mean, I like nVidia, and I like Intel, but ever since I started my PC business way back when, I've always been an AMD fan.
 
Say wha??? It's Nvidia vs ATI or Radeon vs GeForce. People with computer brains ain't gonna mix 'em!

Yeah, exactly. Radeon is an ATI brand name, and that's exactly why I said what I did in my earlier post. That I find the context of the research was off. It's like comparing apples and oranges. It would be like saying if Burger King were to merge with another fast food company, that they would say Whopper is a more popular name than Burger King, and using Whopper as the dominant brand instead of Burger King. Ok, maybe the analogy is a bit off, but I was trying to get the sentiment across. My point is that they based off the whole research on a product name and not a division/brand name. To say that Radeon is a more popular name than ATI doesn't compute, because Radeon was one of ATI's brand names. Their research was company vs brand. Of course AMD would win out as a company with a wider scope.

I could say OSX vs Microsoft, or Windows 7 vs Mac or Apple vs Windows 7, just to give one an idea, and I bet it sounds wrong, and it's because they're not being compared on the same level.
 
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