Hardware AMD to Ditch the ATI Brand

But ATi sounds cooler!

"I've got an ATi Radeon 5870, and I'm not afraid to use it" has the ladies forming an orderly queue...

"I've got an AMD Radeon 5870" leads to some uncomfortable questions about why I'm out of the home, where I left my slippers, and if I have any cute grandsons who visit me on the weekend.

But I guess that's just my personal preference. I like ATi, logos and all. I KNOW deep down that baseline performance and value are where my thoughts should be at, but I can't help but ponder why AMD couldn't just ask manufacturers to stick a big "ATi, by AMD" logo on the box.

 

To be honest, i thought the Ati logo would disappear a lot quicker than it has. Having gone through a merger with my ex-employees everything was re-branded straight away with elements of both companies styling (a takeover you would expect the junior partner's brand logo to disappear more quickly).

The Radeon + red logo is a decent compromise, although i did prefer the Ati logo. In the long run people are going to buy products based on performance/cost (plus a bit of marketing hype) so i don't think it is that important an issue at this time. Especially with the Fusion APU which will include technology from both divisions.

 

Thank you I do own ATI Radeon 5870 and am quite happy with it (as long as I don't update the drivers without prior investigation of what they managed to break (yes, I am talking about post-10.5 idle clocks for example)). I would, however, never ever own AMD CPU because they loose to Intel in every way.

 

Never is a long, long time....

 

That about sums up my faith in AMD making a good CPU I guess.

I am not an NVidia fanboy owning ATi GPU and all but there are multiple major epic fails with ATi drivers. Maybe you are not updating them, maybe you are not playing games, maybe you have an old GPU or maybe you are damn lucky, I dunno. However ATi drivers are like walking on a minefield where half of the mines a pinatas with sweet candy. Can't comment about NVidia drivers because I did own a rather old NVidia GPU (problem-free) and mobile NVidia GPU (problem-free again) and I don't count these as driver quality benchmarks.

I do still enjoy my ATi and don't want it to be AMDfied. I mean imagine buying Pegatron AMD Radeon (Asus wants to rename itself to Pegatron, remember?).

 

We all knew this day was coming, and the AMD brand is more well known by the mainstream than ATI

The real concern is, will Ruby be sticking around?

 

I think for the laptop market this is a good move. I don't think I've ever seen an AMD laptop with Nvidia graphics on it. The whole vision campaign is centered around "You buy an AMD machine, you get good graphics", so really this change had to be done. It kind of defeats the purpose if you needed that ATI Radeon sticker below their AMD sticker to know that you wouldn't get slowdown watching streaming video*.

Desktops are a trickier area, but again unless you custom order something, I doubt you're gonna get an AMD CPU with Nvidia discrete graphics, so a similar argument could be made.

Plus, think of how bad Intel looks when someone looks at one of the AMD Radeon stickers on their i3 laptop. "Why does this Intel laptop need AMD in it? These guys must have good graphics." Then, perhaps the consumer gets another idea: "Wouldn't the machine run better if it was all AMD?" Regardless of benchmarks, it's a subtle but strong marketing tactic from a company that historically has lacked strong marketing pushes. AMD has the opportunity to sell itself as the Mac to Intel's Windows, and again, regardless of benchmarks, the ad campaign with the hip young Mac dude versus the old Windows guy was a runaway success.

* I mention this because someone tried to sell me an Atom/Ion netbook that was playing LOST on Hulu at an abysmal framerate, pretending he didn't notice.

 

You must be unlucky as i've not had any issues of note with my 5870 since i purchased it. Most of the driver issues seem to be related to crossfire profiles or lack of AA in some newly released games - the latter of which is sometimes out of their control.

I don't recall them releasing a driver in the last couple of years that could potentially brick the GPU, unlike their rivals.

As for the CPU side, they have released good CPU's in the past (that did outperform Intel's offerings at the time) - whether they do in the future remains to be seen, however to say you will 'never' buy AMD seems a tad extreme. I own both and have in the past and will in the future.

 

just my 2c: for the posts that say "who gives a nuts on the names. its all about the performance!"

well, it doesnt work that simple for the industry.

a lot of people and corporates WILL undeniably look at the brand name before querying the performance.

alot of corp too will make the purchasing decision research as far as
CIO: "whats the graphic?"
tech: "its an AMD, sir"
CIO: "you mean ATI?"
tech: "no, well, you see*.."
CIO: "ok, whatever. sure." or "no, get me an nvidia one"

on the extreme side, who cares about performance when the bulk of the sales is going to be the cheapest solution graphic. naming is all that matters.


yes, yes, unfortunately, i know.

 

she will be renamed Rosey ;-)

 

You're joking right? People don't care about names? Have you not paid attention to the amount of bitching that goes on regarding CPU and GPU names, series and branding?

On a different note I find this amusing as I am sure this must hurt the ATi side of sales. AMD has long been the underdog that has failed to compete consistantly with Intel on the High End front and I am sure it is only a matter of time before Intel has better Low End products too. While ATi has actually had a very good reputation over that last few years. But after AMD kill off the ATi brand I am sure many consumers 'not in the know' will just be confused and aviod AMD branded GPUs. Things could look better for nVidia by default.

 

I can't see how people who maybe own a Radeon 4800 or 5800 series GPU will be confused when an AMD Radeon 6800 series GPU(or whatever) comes on the market. After all, they are used to them being branded 'Sapphire' . 'Asus', 'Powercolor', XFX' etc etc anyway. The AMD logo is already on the current generation of cards for a start.

Interesting interviews with ATi people and their views on the rebrand: http://www.rage3d.com/articles/amd_rebranding_the_death_of_ati/index.php?p=3

 

No problems with a 5870 and Catalyst 10.7 here... Doubt that'll change once they rebrand it to AMD... Just sayin'.

 

Maybe for the past few years, but not before that.

2003-2005, AMD was blowing the doors off of Intel. A much higher IPC architecture, first to 64-bit, first to dual cores. Intel's only way to respond was to keep increasing the speed of the P4, making it hotter and more unstable.

Now intel has higher IPC architecture, hyperthreading, and AMD's only way to respond was to keep adding more cores.

 

Amd or ati branding who cares, if it's the fastest out people will purchase

It's not like in school were you pick on the kid with cheap trainers.

If intel was called wubu and it made the fastest processor I'd still buy it

 

I guess you weren't around when AMD put out there 64 bit CPU's and the awesome Opteron series and were walking circles around Intel.

 

i'm pretty sure almost everybody at this point is aware that amd and ati are joined, so whether people like it or not, people aren't going to get confused about the ati name being dropped.

what is nice though is ati clearly seemed to be very acceptable of the decisions made by amd. its not like sun and oracle where sun had no choice but to surrender or else they'd lose their company. ati could have probably continued without amd, and both companies probably wouldn't have done nearly as well as they have without each other. as much as i think its sad for ati's name to be left in the dust, technology only moves forward and at this point, keeping the ati name is more of a historic reason than anything.

 

I'm personally glad they switched to AMD only. ATi is annoying to type because it makes me let off shift before I'm even done typing out the name! Or, as said above, it just gets replaced by the manufacturer's name, as is the case in my sig.

My only question, is AMD the red team now? Comparing AMD to Nvidia would still be red team vs. green team I'm sure, but what's Intel vs. AMD? It would make far more sense for AMD to start using red all around, possibly even changing their little arrow thing logo to red and keeping the same shape.

Obtw, inb4 crazyceo!

 

Can't be long now