MacDailyNews Take: The ATI brand had at least (and sometimes more than just) the illusion of being equal to or better than NVIDIA at times. The AMD brand has no such illusion in comparison to Intel. Therefore, the wisdom of this move is questionable.
Kingsley-Hughes reports, “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,” Kingsley-Hughes reports. “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.”
Read more in the full article here.
Interesting.
The second reason cited by ZDnet makes a lot more sense than the first.
@MDN Take
AMD makes graphics cards now? Cool!
While I understand the logic of this, I have to agree with MDN’s take, the ATI brand has a stronger image as top-of-the-line than AMD.
I agree with MDN; ATI is destroying Nvidia, now at least. Intel has faster stuff, but AMD has always had price advantage over Intel.
I’ve been using ATi cards since before they were consumed by AMD.
I have never given a crap about the ‘AMD brand’ and never will.
This is a mistake on AMD’s part.
i agree
branding is what counts and ati has it and amd just doesn’t
unless of course apple are going amd …and soon !?
It makes sense to concentrate on one brand. The brand has become Radeon.
Lenovo did the same with the ThinkPad name. IT shops still buy the ThinkPad brand.
When Steve was pushed out of Apple… most people stayed with the Apple PC. Few had a NeXT PC.
I don’t say this too often, but MDN’s take is spot-on. Anyone who knows anything about GPUs knows that the ATI brand has gained significant respect in the last two years, largely thanks to the runaway success of the Radeon 4 series. AMD, on the other hand, has languished noticeably in the last few years, always trailing Intel in terms of CPU performance. They keep their chips less expensive than Intel does, but you get what you pay for.
If AMD gets rid of the ATI brand, they won’t be doing themselves any favors. They do have a CPU refresh coming up soon, but I’m not very optimistic that it’ll bring them back into performance parity with Intel (at least, not for long).
I don’t know how the merging of CPU and GPU will pan out as far as any possible future acceptance by Apple of AMD chips goes.
If they do this, they will shoot themselves in the foot, *unless* they continue to sell separate GPUs as well.
The day another Canadian company was consumed by an American company is a day to remorse.
what are people talking here? ATI is a part of AMD brand for a long time. they just use ‘ATI’ specifically so far. now they want to make brand name simply (just use company name ‘AMD’). AMD has produced ATI graphic card for a long time than NVIDIA.
Maybe they should have done something like:
ATI Phenom II
and ATI Radeon xxxx??
I’m seriously questioning the logic of this move..
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ATI just got the upper hand in GPU sales, and AMD is killing it?
(Maybe Apple should buy part of AMD, to make them develop exclusive stuff for the Mac, or least get their Mac drivers fixed)