4 years ealier, folks, mystics and wise men alike predicted this turn of event : http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=32209 Yeah, it's one of of thoses "I told you so!" moments. Enjoy! Now, on a more serious note, this move from AMD execs further proves that they consider the graphics to be entirely part of the core company business, and thus any potential sale of the graphics business as a whole independant structure is being made a lot less convenient. Not that it's surprising going by their plans such as Fusion, as well as the good numbers made by the (now ex-)Ati business.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3878/farewell-to-ati-amd-to-retire-the-ati-brand-later-this-year They claim that their research shows AMD being stronger brand than ATI when compared against graphics competitors. I call BS on that research.
I wrote up a ditty, if'n anyone is interested. I've been dealing with this for a while, so I was ready for today...but it's still a lot for me to deal with.
Yeah, I suddenly find myself less inclined to buy Radeon GFX cards. Irrational? Perhaps. But the fact remains I have far more confidence in the ATI brand than I do in the AMD brand. There most likely aren't any behind the scene changes, but at least in my mind it leaves me with the taste that we're leaving behind ATI's rather startling execution the past few years, in favor of the often bumbling execution of AMD over the past few years. I just don't see any upside to this. It "feels" like AMD is trying to boost the AMD brand image by getting rid of the better brand. IE - if there's no good ATI brand for people to think about, then everyone will automatically now think AMD is a good brand because they now make the Radeon GFX cards. Pitooie, bad taste in my mouth. Regards, SB
To me, fundamentally there is no change - I'm still dealing with many of the same people I did 4 years ago. The heart and the soul of the GPU is the same; though we do get a nicer looking logo for the web and AiB products (note - Vision is the platform brand, so thats the only logo for all AMD systems).
There's no one to fight though on this one Dav, if there was believe me I'd be in the frontlines with a bayonet attached to my rifle doing bad things.
What about the "ATi" will be kept as a brand and yada yada from 4 years ago ? Should I dig back the posts ? I can get why AMD wants to be associated with ATi products, I'm not convinced it's that good for ATi to become rebranded as AMD though. It's been too long since AMD was king of the hill on the CPU market, IMO.
I know, but 1/ Couldn't resist (your fault you don't come chat with us anymore ) 2/ I ended up liking the ATi brand (wasn't the case before they introduced the RadeOn)
Hey theres no statute of limitations here If you say "ATi" will be kept as a brand that means forever....
Well your wallet will, when AMD announces the Radeon "ATI EDITION" for collectors at some point, limited to 1000 pcs for only $1000 each.
And then the subsequent "Final ATI Edition", "Absolutely Final ATI Edition" and "OK, just one more ATI Edition" Besides, they could always bring back the brand if it turns out that going solely with AMD Radeon does not command the brand loyalty they had hoped.
What better time to rebrand than when your competition is at its lowest? It's a good opportunity for the new brand to get off to the best possible start. Maybe they were planning this for a while and were just waiting for Nvidia to keep screwing the pooch long enough and they've certainly obliged Really though, is it really going to matter to end consumers in a two player market? It has a lot of upside to AMD in the long term to be able to provide consistent branding for all their technologies. AMD Fusion sounds a lot more "fused" than "AMD and ATI Fusion".
I really dislike this move as well, it's almost like when 3dfx died. Ok, not as bad but there's a bit of the same feeling, and the last ATi product I used was 2x X1900's.
Move along now... Get over it. It's been with us on life support for over 4 years now. The ATI brand is dead. Big F'n Deal. Move on. I bet you're also the type that lamented the death of AGP and refused to pull the plug too.