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AMD to retire ATI branding

Summary: News in from AMD today confirms both rumors that I've been hearing, along with something that I've been expecting for a long time - that the company plans to get rid of the ATI branding on its graphics line.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By for Hardware 2.0 |

News in from AMD today confirms both rumors that I've been hearing, along with something that I've been expecting for a long time - that the company plans to get rid of the ATI branding on its graphics line.

The reasoning for this is two-fold. First, the AMD believes that dragging along two brands - the AMD brand and the ATI brand - is unnecessary since consumers it seems find the AMD brand stronger than the ATI brand. Personally, I find this a little odd since AMD when put alongside Intel is a little like a Lilliputian alongside Gulliver, but there you go, marketing knows best.

AMD offers us proof that it's making the correct decision here in the form of data on the following slides:

 

This change means new branding. Existing products on shelves won't see a name change, but new products will be branded AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro.

The other reason behind this shedding of the ATI brand is new products. Specifically Fusion, which brings together a melding of CPU and GPU.  The first of these products, codenamed Ontario, will feature two low-power "Bobcat" CPUs combined with a Radeon GPU. This is expected to ship later this year. The more powerful Llano which features a quad-core Phenom II with a GPU is on track for the first half of 2011.

 

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In other news, making use of Eyefinity just got cheaper as AMD announces a new active DisplayPort-to-DVI dongle. Making use of DisplayPort used to mean having to buy at least one new monitor, but no more - the new $29.99 dongle means that any DVI monitor can now become make use of a DisplayPort port of a graphics card. The resolution is limited to 1920x1200, but unless you sit in front of a mammoth monitor, this is not going to be a issue.

 

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  • bad idea

    ATI has more equity in computers than AMD.
    I could have understood a rebranding of AMD to ATI but not the other way arround. Let's hope I'm wrong because I hate to see Inhell taking advantage of this.
    Linux Geek
    Reply Vote

    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      Mainstream consumer marketing is going the other way: we see Mr. Clean products "now with Fabreze air freshener". Strong brands teaming up to reinforce each other is the big deal right now. This is some roll-over marketing exec trying to please whatever bean counter on the executive staff wondered "why we have two brands," as if getting rid of one would save serious money.
      Robert Hahn
      Reply Vote

      • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

        @Robert Hahn

        That is exactly why Robert, Multiply profits and still sell your individual product by itself. It is a geniuous marketing approach, and will save most companies that are dying, like ATI. ATI merged with AMD becuase they were loosing, and with chipset support previously being ATI friendly at the time, AMD and ATI merged probably for that single reason. When they merged there was way more ATI Crossfire Freindly chipsets then nVidia SLI chipsets. Shoot Even AMD took a Chance with ATI and for the most part only supported CrossFire in there chipsets. it is funny now though that AMD wnats to hide the ATI tag. I dont' get why if things were good that they would want to hide ATI, it presents to a wider customer base. Them wanting to brand only AMD is a Good thing though, share profits hide identities, and excell. ATI's Decent Product will atleast make AMD look better on the big picture and surely when they integrate GPU and CPU, InTell will begin to fall behind again, and history repeats itself!!
        Ez_Customs
        Reply Vote

      • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

        @Robert Hahn AMD has lost its market, no one knows amd now. they were really great processors.
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        lorisinclair
        Reply Vote

      • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

        @Robert Hahn
        This is long overdue. The ATI branding had really lost any kudos when it comes to the people wanting serious graphics cards. The line was severely watered down by the integration with cheap motherboards and cheap laptop setups in particular with insufficient cooling etc. Looking forward to the new branding with hopefully some clear separation between entry level and high end
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        Cannabis Seed
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    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      @Linux Geek

      Your mis informed if you truely beleive that AMD isn't the correct branding. If AMD allowed ATI branding to be used, then they would definately loose sales. ATI sales have gone up simply because the AMD tag.

      Now someone needs to read up on the history in sales and usage for ATI brandings. ATI = Great Hardware/Horrible driver support and this is true. This has been true sense Radeon 9800XT. Sure ATI has there ups and downs like anything else, but the true is told by whats in use. ATI steals teh market on a new release. Why, you might ask? BEcuase they release more product, at cheaper prices! Of course the sales are going to spike. NOw look back again a few months later, statistics will change and sway more to nVidia. This event doesn't even always happen on a release date for a nVidia product either most the time, which suggests that people are removing there ATI cards and Buying something else to use. For this reason ATI has far less Equity then AMD

      AMD CPu's Hmm, they loose in numbers because of the OEM market, look to the custom build specifically and you willl see that the AMD CPU dominates, even if it is a tad slower on teh bigger pictures. AMD CPU will usually always dominate in a gaming benchmark, and if it doesn't then it is dam close to Intel. Becuase of the Price being a 3rd less on release, AMD has more sales in a very specific market of gaming and multimedia. When compared to office tasks, yeah AMD sucks. With the presentation of this artical and its between the lines purpose of gaming, AMD is the better branding to use becuase well the said reason. Most of you need to read up for real. Intel is about 6 years younger then AMD, and AMD lives on without hype and adertising, always has!!
      Ez_Customs
      Reply Vote

    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      @Linux Geek
      Its the Radeon and FirePro names that most people I know mostly identify with the video cards along with the company brand name of the card maker. I mostly hear people refer to their video cards as ASUS Radeon (Number here) or Sapphire Radeon (Number here) etc. The way the ATI logo is with its A looking like an upside down V on a bit of an angle with a dot in the middle and the dot for the i inside of the body of the i itself makes me think of it more as 3 shapes than 3 letters. Most of the people that tell me they have an ATI Radeon video card normally have a cheap generic brand card that has no real company branding of its own. When talking to nVidia chip set video card owners however they tend to not mention the card makers brands as much when saying what video card they have.
      NZJester
      Reply Vote

  • I think as long as they keep Radeon and the other GPU brands

    That will be good. Some people know that AMD and ATI are the same company but others do not. I think if they can market AMD Radeon Graphics which everyone knows is superior to Intel Graphics then it could be good for them.
    bobiroc
    Reply Vote

  • Politically motivated?

    I think this is just a play to get AMD's name into Intel-based PC's.

    Before anyone says this is the first time: SuperMicro is one of AMD's biggest server platform partners, and they use Intel Gbe on their Opteron motherboards.

    Turnabout is fair play, IMO.

    Are they keeping the green branding for CPU's along with with the red Radeon logos? I can expect a lot of Christmas-y looking PC's this holiday season.

    Also, is this a lead-in to get Apple to carry AMD processors?
    Joe_Raby
    Reply Vote

    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      @Joe_Raby Doubtful... Apple has never been one to look to give tons of choices, Jobs sees choices as too confusing. They're all about simplified product lines with very few choices... They're all about the point and click consumer it wouldn't match with their branding to begin carrying something like AMD.
      snoop0x7b
      Reply Vote

      • Re: Apple AMD

        @snoop0x7b <br><br>Apple drops partners faster than Paris Hilton drops her pantys.<br><br>They talked about their big NVIDIA partnership a couple years ago with NVIDIA supplying all of the integrated-GPU chipsets for their systems, and where is NVIDIA now?<br><br>I could see them dropping Intel for AMD when it's time for a major Mac product lineup.<br><br>The only thing preventing them from putting out a lot of R&D in platform shift is iOS - or rather, the success of iOS and their Future Vision(TM). I could see the Mac platform being relegated to being just a developer kit for iOS and nothing more. You know as well as I do that Apple would rather sell iOS devices than computers, especially with their A4 and future ARM fab now in place
        Joe_Raby
        Reply Vote

    • Also

      I really hope Apple does get out of computers. I would almost bet that once they do that, they won't have devices chained to iTunes on a PC anymore.

      Right now, an iPad *COULD* function without a PC - so long as you had a backup system in place. All Apple needs is cloud backup for files and data (iDisk could work), and streaming or perpetual download of iTunes/App Store purchases. An iPad and iPhone can already purchase stuff on-device through their respective iTunes/App Store apps anyway, so a PC is the real ball-and-chain thing here.

      Of course, Apple would say to purchase other devices to keep copies of your iTunes stuff, but until the day comes when you can sync an iPad to an AppleTV, I just don't see them removing the chain to the PC. Similarly, they need to remove the requirement that you need to set up an initial sync for an iOS device before you can use it.

      Finally, they also need to get rid of the requirement of having to tie a credit card to an iTunes account, or preload your account with credit from a prepurchased iTunes card. I HATE that! You should be able to set up an Apple ID without either, or they should offer a free $5 credit just to get you started.
      Joe_Raby
      Reply Vote

  • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

    I didn't like to see ATI go to AMD, but I understand that it had to happen. I think that it is a mistake to get rid of the ATI branding. The name should be considered an asset by AMD's marketing people. You're either ATI or nVidia. I still want to see that ATI logo on the box when I buy a graphics card. It's never between nVidia and ATI. It's which ATI card.
    Muttz
    Reply Vote

    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      @OhKrud

      If there is hidden talk about AMD supporting nVidia Chipsets again more then ATI, then why leave ATI on teh box. That is stupid. It's stupid because SLI is cheaper to develop for then CrossFire. There is more information missing then the artical is expressing, but with the surge of nVidia sales this quarter, and support in games, AMD would be stupid to allow ATI to stay on teh bock. Radeon is more then enough, and any one who supports ATI knows Radeon is a Trademark, and what they are using is ATI. However Consumers for nVidia, may walk away from AMD all together if they look at the box and see ATI instead of AMD. Read the history of the two companies from unbiases reviewers, and read a few to get a better picture on what's real and what's a lie!
      Ez_Customs
      Reply Vote

  • I wonder if AMD will change their company colors to Red and White

    I remember two tractor companies in the eighties that merged. Case and International Harvester. Their tractors would retain the shape of the Case predecessor while being painted the colors of International Harvester. This was surprising due to the fact that Case purchased International Harvester so technically they didn't have to retain any of the qualities of the purchased company. But they wanted IH owners to have a relationship to the company and it would be a lot easier to paint a bunch of tractors a different color than retool all of the lines to design a different tractor.

    And I never have been a big fan of green, so for AMD to pick up red and run with that across their entire product line... I might be interested.
    nucrash
    Reply Vote

  • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

    The danger is that people may see AMD and think that the cards only work with AMD CPUs. non-technical non-industry following people have in past made that mistake - especially if marketing is trying to push everyone to get all AMD equipment then people will conclude that it won't work without AMD CPUs.
    Think back to the OS2 PS/2 combination - that is what killed it off due to the way IBM pushed the OS - that it only worked with PS/2 systems since they wanted to see both and thus very few end consumers ever bought the OS since they implied it never would work on anything but OS/2.
    TAPhilo
    Reply Vote

    • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

      @TAPhilo What killed OS/2 was Microsoft and IBM's silly organization. Microsoft was at the time punishing anyone who dared sell a PC with anything but Windows. IBM's PC Software group was not under the same group as the PC Hardware group and they were not going to give up their good licensing deal with Microsoft.

      Also OS/2 has been up until the last 5 years still used and supported.
      mrlinux
      Reply Vote

      • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

        @mrlinux

        "Microsoft was at the time punishing anyone who dared sell a PC with anything but Windows. "

        Oh you linux boys and your conspiracy theories. They make me laugh.
        bobiroc
        Reply Vote

      • Lol @ you

        @mrlinux

        Microsoft was offering OEM's a choice to stick with a single vendor and was giving them discounts if they chose to.

        They still do it with the company-wide option for businesses getting into volume license agreements.

        Sticking with a single vendor has many benefits, the most important of which is a single point of contact for support.

        Just imagine Linux users if they had to contact all the different package developers because Jim-Bob from Timbuktu make some bug report to somebody in central India and they changed the software that broke functionality and posted it to some major repository.

        Users and implementers want support that's easy - that's why companies implementing Linux buy from the big boys: Oracle, Red Hat, and Novell (and businesses with any sense don't use freeware to run their day-to-day mission-critical operations).
        Joe_Raby
        Reply Vote

      • RE: AMD to retire ATI branding

        @mrlinux I don't think it is as bad as you say, but if it wasn't for Microsoft's marketing strategy their OS wouldn't have been anywhere. Sad to think that we normal people on the street are being force fed.
        @ Joe_Raby - Just remember that Linux is all about the kernel and the kernel is still being, you can say, controlled buy a single point. Novell, Red Hat and Oracle still has to adhere to the rules set by that controlling point. The mentioned companies does not own Open Source or Linux . although they think they do especially Novell but that is a discussion on its own.
        rynovz1
        Reply Vote
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