First there was 3dfx and now the ATi brand will be gone. It makes sense from a marketing point of view and AMD's reasons seem valid enough. However, as one of those gamers that grew up with ATi/nVidia/S3/Matrox/3dfx etc. it's a bit sad to see such an established brand removed from the market for good.
True story! Oh, boy, good times! Don't forget Number Nine, Trident, Rendition, 3DLabs, Real3D or PowerVR (I know they still exist doing mobile chips and such). Even SiS built GPUs back then!!
Man YOU are OLD...! But yeah, remember when ET4000 was considered a kick-ass card, by PC standards.
BUT there is a difference of ATI vs. many of the others... ATI is bought out and its technology, people and support continue. I'll miss the ATI logo... hey, nowadays it was getting a bit odd for branding to have two company colors with two 3-letter name products. So we have RED-AMD for Graphics and Green AMD for everything else. ;)
3Dfx self-destructed when they went into business for themselves. Nvidia concentrated on getting out GPUs every 6 months and 3Dfx bought STB (which was local and I had friends that worked for them) - funny thing, STB had just released and then phased out an excellent TNT card when the buy-out happened ;) The Voodoo 5/6 was a failure. To big, to hot, to expensive. Voodoo 3/4 had the issues of NO 24bit color which was showing in some games. If you look, you'd see Voodoo5 6000 cards with 4 (FOUR) GPUs on a single card! Look it up, its huge and had an external power supply. You could say, 3Dfx lives in Quantum3D which is still in business today - selling Military grade 3D Graphics systems.
Many of the old brands like Diamond, Hercules, etc depended on getting their GPUs (not much we'd consider GPUs by todays standards) from many sources. ATI was the only company that made their Chips and cards. It was when AMD bought out ATI and allowed other companies to sell ATI products that ALLOWED ATI to grow market share (hint hint Apple) S3 Lives... in making junk expensive graphic cards that barely work. (Chrome)
I had an ET4000 in my Compaq Prolinea 4/25s, upgraded with a 486DX4-75 overdrive, overclocked via 25/33mhz bus selector to 100MHz. Unfortunately the lack of a PCI bus slot stuck me with that video chip for some time. It was just fine for Warcraft II and Doom II Deathmatch but when Quake rolled around with 3DFX support, the lack of VLB or PCI expansion forced me to dump the computer for my first home-built system: An AMD K5-75MHz overclocked to 120MHz.
hehehe I remember my first pc's....with 8088 cpu (also 8086 and 8086-2) Of course that's all PRE 286, 386, 486 (anyone remember those cheap cyrix cpu's?)
The screens (mid eighties) were amber or green monochrome bulbs driven by "hercules" cards. Somewhat later we got cga, then ega and finally vga (256 colors !!)) which really made "pc gaming" look awesome compared to 2 colors (B & W).
And let's not go into the storage technology we had :/ omg Somehow the magic of those days is gone, but I'll gladly trade the magic for the kickass hardware we have now :P
Lets pray that dont happen... And as my self.... people use to love the ATI brand.. (in my old G3 Imac) good times... i have been tracking the ATI since early 2000´s and I could say for me... I have always seen ATI like better quality than AMD brand....... since they merge with ATI they have been 5 years Strugglin and now after 5 years they will make the fist CPU (wich its supposed to be their main concern) that "will" compete to Intel´s technology. And all this time everybody have always seen ATI up high and AMD dont enjoy the same in lots of people minds.
i think the et4000 was actually an ATI chipset. tseng just did the PCB and integration, ect. like buying an extremely redesigned radeon card today. there may have been some other secret sauce, but I'm pretty sure tseng was not the semi designer, just the one who put the stuff together.
I came to the game with an et6000. That card screamed back then. Hooked that with a Diamond Monster 3Dfx Voodoo 1 via the passthrough cable and it was unbeatable!
Seems like a mistake to me. You have AMD CPU's, ATI Graphics, and Fusion combo, so after this everything is some derivative of an AMD logo.
Makes it much more confusing for people who don't know much about computers and are looking for the same ATI sticker on a new laptop to match up to an older model they are replacing.
Not to mention having another name gives you an escape goat if you ever make a product that fails and causes you bad publicity. Thats when you switch names.
Good old times... me any my S3 Virge.... paired with Voodoo 1 .... those were the times... 12 MB of RAM on both cards together.... and now... I have 768 MB on one card! Darn ... I was happy when I got 64MB of RAM in those times :)... 4 GB now :)
Now when I buy something new... there is no excitement like there were before... is it me or ?
It's hard because back then, an upgrade was usually a pretty substantial gain, and games really started to improve drastically with technology advances (like Quake to Q2 to Q3). Now an upgrade generation may make some games look a little better or run at a higher res, but those games were perfectly playable on what you had. Heck, an upgrade then used to even help make Windows faster. Hardly a problem today.
I had other cards before, but it seems like it wasn't that long ago that I took a chance on ATIs All-In-Wonder 9600XT, possibly my favorite of the ATI brand.
It was my first DVR; plus it had a higher clock and more mem than the standard 9600XT, which made it a gaming contender. In a way I miss the old AGP.
I don't think this improves AMDs brand recognition, much like the merger of AT&T and Cingular caused more confusion than gain, but this could be an effort to suppress negative reviews and start fresh.
Also very sad to see ATI go away after all these years. I have used ATI as long as I can remember from some old PCI cards to the early Radeon to the All In Wonder series. Remember 3Dfx and all the other brands mentioned also, but ATI has always been a favorite of mine.
At lead AMD will continue to innovate ATI products and bring new ones with the same great technology to market. Unlike nVidia who basically bought 3dFX just to bury them and keep others in the market from getting good technology. 3dFX truly died, and was laid to rest. ATI will continue to live on and on. Hooray for that!!!
What i really will miss most from that logo si both the RADEON and ATi fonts. If they couldsomehow integrate at least the Ati font it would really be awsome. Sadly they won't be doing that because their biggest competitor phased their chipset(ish) logo and their processor logo and used a unifide logo.
I'll still be calling my graphics cards ATi, I've loved this brand for way too long to be calling it AMD. At least they are keeping the red colored logo for recognition. :)
I'm not so sure about that. For enthusiast, yes, of course. But the average consumer reads radeon more often than ATI, and if you ask him he can't remember. I think the move makes sense.
All this is fine to me apart from the "Vision" thing. So there's just going to be one sticker that doesn't tell you what sort of CPU it is, just has some meaningless word (CPUs do things other than "visual"). I suppose "Core" is slightly stupid too.
Also looking at past performance in their brands range I don't think they're going to resist the proliferation of different badges for long. "Vision" already has sub-brands.
"1) AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger." wouldn't you want to come out with a badge that has both ati/amd on it for a few years to let the people that don't know AMD owns ATI?
I know anandtech readers know but people at work range from the "who is amd guy?" to the " I have a linux box in every room" guy.
The day AMD kills off the ATI brand is going to be a date that lives in infamy for those conflicted fanboys that prefer Intel CPUs but would kill for ATI GPUs. Oh the confusion....and raaage that will ensue!
But in all seriousness, I'm not sure if this is a good move on AMD's part, as I would generally think of ATI as the more competitive part in their respective market (GPUs) than AMD, which is typically thought of more as a less competitive, value solution in their respective market (CPUs).
Then again, AMD probably figures they already paid enough with that $6B acquisition of ATI, adopting the ATI name on the letterhead would just add insult to injury even if its probably the more successful/competitive arm of the company.
Based on my recent experience and past experience with an ATi 9700 pro which had drivers that were on par with nVIDIA. The drivers being released by AMD are not as good as they were prior to the merger. I am rather disappointed in my 5670's in ability to do 1920*1200 over RGBHV to my GDM-FW900. Instead I get a 640*480 signal sent down the wire that shows a small segment of my 1920*1200 desktop. It can be likened to a 9mp jpg on a 640*480 display where you must scroll from side to side to see specific parts of the image.
Even when I tell CCC to force a certain resolution, it still sends a crummy 640*480 signal down the wire.
Yeah AMD/ATI drivers aint been as good for a longgg time now. It probably started when they decided to release them each month. It's good marketing to the many thick people that think more = better. But in a month they clearly dont have the time to make them good enough and fix many things. Sometimes they will even release a BETA driver that fixes something, but it does not get included in the final driver for up to 3 months.
Support for certain things with my 5870's drivers is only just coming together lately (especially with some Vvdeo software, options, and Flash video), but Nivida often have had this stuff working for months, sometimes half a year in advance.
They should not drop the ATi logo and naming. It's been a symbol of quality for years. At least they keep the red, which is a lot better then that old default AMD greenish.
I used to wonder why they didn't do this. I've always thought that AMD's brand recognition is fairly low (apparently not according to this survey) , whereas ATi's is stronger. I've always thought it would be smarter to tie the AMD brand to the ATi brand to create higher awareness and finally just use the AMD brand. I suppose they jumped straight to step 3.
IMHO they are doing this for LOONG term reasons and are prepared to feel the pain short-term. Sad news, but necessary. They had to merge sometime - just take the HP-Compaq confusion after all the years.
HD6000 is beyond NV reach, Ontario seems VERY promising, Lliano is going the way of a cash cow and Bulldozer, their future, is coming too. Basically this moment is most probably their single best time for brand merging in the next 5 yrs.
I find the "Radeon/FirePro Graphics" badges extremely boring and uninteresting.
The original "ATI Radeon" badge has got the ATI logo, which looks somewhat interesting with the way the A and i are written. The "Radeon graphics - AMD" has got the AMD logo which adds interest thanks to the little arrow. The plain Radeon Graphics logo however, has nothing interesting to draw attention to it, just an ugly compressed font. It looks like something that took 10 minutes to put together.
If Radeon is going to be kept as a brand name, they should at least go out of their way to make an interesting and attractive logo and typeface for it.
They'll drop the ATI brand until the next time they release a poor product and want to "rebrand" their product lineup on the next iteration. The dropping of the ATI brand, in fact, may be an indication that their next architecture is a bit risky, which would make the name change a win/win for them: if the architecture does well, then the AMD brand gets a big boost. If the architecture is poor, then they can just re-brand their follow-up as "ATI" and that bad past is wiped away.
it would be more risky to fool around with their branding, confusing the public. anybody really into the tech knows enough about the company to see through the marketing to some degree, but most folks just go out and buy something that looks familiar. switching around their name is not a smart move unless they can be sure how the public will react. it seems way too frivolous for AMD to bring back "ATI" in a generation or two because they feel a product underperformed. that would show an incredible lack of integrity in the company, and probably kill off brand solidarity for both monikers.
i really think this is the real deal as far as going with AMD goes. even their website has been slowly converging the ATI/AMD sites into one megasite since the initial purchase. i guess what i'm saying is that, i had a feeling this was coming; the writing was on the wall, ect.
As much as I love the ATI brand, I don't really see anything wrong with this.
They're not killing the distinctitve red logo, and hopefully not the distinctive red boards (!) because, well, AMD's traditional colour has been green, and we know how confusing that would be.
You'll still be buying a Radeon, and you can keep calling it ATI if you want, since it's essentially the same guys.
I must say that I never liked ATI ... its cards, its drivers... nah ... I tried their cards 2 times and everytime I got back to NVidia ... but now, there is no more ATI, maybe its time to try out AMD? (Which I always liked, since my K6/2).... :)
My last three graphics cards have been ATI (9700 pro, x1900xt, 5770). And this may seem like a lame reason, but I really chose those cards because of the ATI name. They've been great to me. For some reason I can't see myself getting excited about buying an "AMD" GPU next time. I've never used an AMD CPU, and Intel's stuff has worked flawlessly for me over the years. Because of this, AMD has a slightly negative cognizance with me.
Call me a casualty of branding, but I think my next graphics card might be my first Nvidia.
You will be amazed you put up with the AMD driver quirkiness that continues to this day.
Not to say that booting safe mode to uninstall the latest .NET in order to load some old catalyst platform, whilst remembering to run as adminstrator, just to avoid total BSOD on boot isn't totally awesome. But you know you uninstalled CCC anyway, opted for display driver component only then had Ray Adam's tool put on your shit so you could actually adjust your card.
The whole Vision thing seems dumb. Now they can be as obfuscating and misleading as Intel with Core which I guess is the idea. Cue "Vision Thing" by The Sisters of Mercy.
This actually might be a brilliant move, everyone knows AMD cannot compete with Intels marketing but if they keep staying ahead in graphics people will come to know the AMD brand more, "Hey hun, AMD, you know the ones that made that good graphics card in our computer now sell CPU's, they must be good,lets get one"
in the beginin a didnt like it but...!! whatever.!! the ONLY thing i would say its.!! PLEASE JUST KEEP GOING WITH THE SAME QUALITY, AND BEING WORRIED FOR THE MAINSTREAM AND/OR BUTGET..... "PLEASE"
I'm glad to see some maturity here at Anandtech, both in the original article and the comments. Another site that I frequent posted rumors of this news last Monday and both the author and the commentators acted uncharacteristically poorly.
From BernardP "In other news, following its acquisition of Porsche earlier this year, Volkswagen AG has decided to get rid of the superfluous Porsche brand, in order to emphasize the importance of the Volkswagen brand.
Consequently, starting with the 2011 model year, the Porsche Turbo Carrera will be known as the Volkswagen Turbo Carrera."
Being a computer gamer and hobbyist since the 8088 and a CGA (before EGA and VGA) card, I have had my fair share of graphics boards (Orchid Fahrenheit 1280+ VLB, Tseng ET4000 PCI, etc. to name a few).
My first ATI card was an ATI Xpert@Work card with 4MB of RAM. This got me by on my Pentium 2 -233 MHz on Win 95 OSR2 at 1024x768 res with 32 bit color and allowed me to almost watch DVD movies. I then paired it with a 3DFx Voodoo 2 card for Unreal Tournament (GLide, not Direct X). Good Times Baby!!
This then got replaced with a Voodoo 3 card with 16 MB RAM and a Celeron 400 replacement SEC cpu from Evergreen, same mobo and case on Win 98 Second Edition.
I then bumped this again with a NVidia GF3 Ti 200 Gainward card and an AMD Duron 900 on an EPox mobo, same case.
Today, I still have this same case with an ATI 9600 AIW OC'd from 400 to 500 MHz with a MSI KT333 mobo and an AMD Athlon 2600+. I have since retired this computer but have it as a standby Win XP machine.
Since then I have moved on to the Athlon 64 3000+ and Opteron 170 with the Nvidia 6800GT (became wife's machine). Currently I am with my Core 2 Quad Q6600 @3.2 with the Nvidia 9800GTX (BFG) in a newer Antec 900 chassis. Although my last few graphics boards have been Nvidia (largely attributed to my timing on new builds), there were fond memories with the ATI boards and LAN parties. The ATI 9600 AIW came with the freebie HL2 coupon, which got me into CS:Source, etc. from Valve, who were big on ATI cards. It has been a fun ride going between the ATI and Nvidia graphics choices, always a tug of war and always great for the consumer. The 3DMark benchmarkers will surely miss the ATI name.
RIP ATI brand, you will be missed. AMD, don't let us down. I love what the 4850, 5850, Eyefinity, and thousands of stream processors have done for PC gaming as a whole.
I like the ATi brand name more, I'd personally rather see them retire the AMD name. Lately it's been a black mark on the market. I still think this even though I still buy their CPU's. Hell I think I would have ordered my 1090T even quicker if it had been called an ATi 1090T...
because it is NOT true, that AMD seems like a stronger brand than ATI.
Take last three years into account: AMD CPUs lost to Intel's in every market niche: mobile, desktop and server. Especially in mobile market, which became more important in the second half of 2010 as there was a shift from desktop to mobile computing, both power savers like netbooks and performance monsters like C2Duo chips (I still own the 2,2Ghz Macbook Pro from 2007) have been dominating the markit until today.
ATI, on the other side, came with its 4000 series very far and with its 5000 series made NVIDIA lag behind for six month. Its introduction and use in iMacs until present day is another happy story.
If ATI were a separate public traded company, its stock would have advanced MORE than AMD since the downturn of the market. Intel's stock looks much healthier than AMD's.
I think the way of Ati and Intel being mixed is good, but Amd is also good, I don't think Amd has done much with graphics and that's why I feel there new graphics cards are worse with smaller gpu's, I compared it to an older version and the older version was faster when running the same games. There's no room for me to complain however because Amd did buy out Ati from what I heard.
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5150Joker - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
First there was 3dfx and now the ATi brand will be gone. It makes sense from a marketing point of view and AMD's reasons seem valid enough. However, as one of those gamers that grew up with ATi/nVidia/S3/Matrox/3dfx etc. it's a bit sad to see such an established brand removed from the market for good.PresupuestosPC - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
True story! Oh, boy, good times! Don't forget Number Nine, Trident, Rendition, 3DLabs, Real3D or PowerVR (I know they still exist doing mobile chips and such). Even SiS built GPUs back then!!Sad day to us PC enthusiasts.
RIP ATI (brand).
dingetje - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
anyone remember tseng labs (et4000)?whatever happened to hercules?
good times...
Belard - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
et4000...Man YOU are OLD...! But yeah, remember when ET4000 was considered a kick-ass card, by PC standards.
BUT there is a difference of ATI vs. many of the others...
ATI is bought out and its technology, people and support continue. I'll miss the ATI logo... hey, nowadays it was getting a bit odd for branding to have two company colors with two 3-letter name products. So we have RED-AMD for Graphics and Green AMD for everything else. ;)
3Dfx self-destructed when they went into business for themselves. Nvidia concentrated on getting out GPUs every 6 months and 3Dfx bought STB (which was local and I had friends that worked for them) - funny thing, STB had just released and then phased out an excellent TNT card when the buy-out happened ;) The Voodoo 5/6 was a failure. To big, to hot, to expensive. Voodoo 3/4 had the issues of NO 24bit color which was showing in some games. If you look, you'd see Voodoo5 6000 cards with 4 (FOUR) GPUs on a single card! Look it up, its huge and had an external power supply. You could say, 3Dfx lives in Quantum3D which is still in business today - selling Military grade 3D Graphics systems.
Many of the old brands like Diamond, Hercules, etc depended on getting their GPUs (not much we'd consider GPUs by todays standards) from many sources. ATI was the only company that made their Chips and cards. It was when AMD bought out ATI and allowed other companies to sell ATI products that ALLOWED ATI to grow market share (hint hint Apple)
S3 Lives... in making junk expensive graphic cards that barely work. (Chrome)
Trident, just a name...
pukemon - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Actually before AMD bought them in 2006 you could already buy "Powered by ATI" cards vs "Built by ATI" cards.Samus - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I had an ET4000 in my Compaq Prolinea 4/25s, upgraded with a 486DX4-75 overdrive, overclocked via 25/33mhz bus selector to 100MHz. Unfortunately the lack of a PCI bus slot stuck me with that video chip for some time. It was just fine for Warcraft II and Doom II Deathmatch but when Quake rolled around with 3DFX support, the lack of VLB or PCI expansion forced me to dump the computer for my first home-built system: An AMD K5-75MHz overclocked to 120MHz.dingetje - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
heheheI remember my first pc's....with 8088 cpu (also 8086 and 8086-2)
Of course that's all PRE 286, 386, 486 (anyone remember those cheap cyrix cpu's?)
The screens (mid eighties) were amber or green monochrome bulbs driven by "hercules" cards.
Somewhat later we got cga, then ega and finally vga (256 colors !!)) which really made "pc gaming" look awesome compared to 2 colors (B & W).
And let's not go into the storage technology we had :/ omg
Somehow the magic of those days is gone, but I'll gladly trade the magic for the kickass hardware we have now :P
Edison5do - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Lets pray that dont happen... And as my self.... people use to love the ATI brand.. (in my old G3 Imac) good times... i have been tracking the ATI since early 2000´s and I could say for me... I have always seen ATI like better quality than AMD brand....... since they merge with ATI they have been 5 years Strugglin and now after 5 years they will make the fist CPU (wich its supposed to be their main concern) that "will" compete to Intel´s technology.And all this time everybody have always seen ATI up high and AMD dont enjoy the same in lots of people minds.
johnsonx - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I had a tseng labs ET4000 ISA-16 card. Also an ATI Mach32 EISA card.johnsonx - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
in fact, I'm pretty sure I still have the Mach32 in a box somewhere (a cardboard box that is, not a PC... I doubt I have an EISA mainboard anywhere).dingetje - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
VESA Local Bus ftw !!lolz
softdrinkviking - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
i think the et4000 was actually an ATI chipset. tseng just did the PCB and integration, ect. like buying an extremely redesigned radeon card today. there may have been some other secret sauce, but I'm pretty sure tseng was not the semi designer, just the one who put the stuff together.Rankor - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
I came to the game with an et6000. That card screamed back then. Hooked that with a Diamond Monster 3Dfx Voodoo 1 via the passthrough cable and it was unbeatable!SandmanWN - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Seems like a mistake to me. You have AMD CPU's, ATI Graphics, and Fusion combo, so after this everything is some derivative of an AMD logo.Makes it much more confusing for people who don't know much about computers and are looking for the same ATI sticker on a new laptop to match up to an older model they are replacing.
Not to mention having another name gives you an escape goat if you ever make a product that fails and causes you bad publicity. Thats when you switch names.
bji - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Ha ha! That's a new one!blyndy - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Intel hates AMD news. There will be some incoming Intel news very soon to drown out the AMD news :-Dsilverblue - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Care to share?vol7ron - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I think this was speculative, but each company has so much going on, it's up to their marketing on whether to saturated the media.My guess is that there is some SSD news on the way, though.
Sabbathian - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Good old times... me any my S3 Virge.... paired with Voodoo 1 .... those were the times... 12 MB of RAM on both cards together.... and now... I have 768 MB on one card! Darn ... I was happy when I got 64MB of RAM in those times :)... 4 GB now :)Now when I buy something new... there is no excitement like there were before... is it me or ?
MonkeyPaw - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
It's hard because back then, an upgrade was usually a pretty substantial gain, and games really started to improve drastically with technology advances (like Quake to Q2 to Q3). Now an upgrade generation may make some games look a little better or run at a higher res, but those games were perfectly playable on what you had. Heck, an upgrade then used to even help make Windows faster. Hardly a problem today.vol7ron - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
While not as significant, I think this is still kind of true for the laptop market.vol7ron - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I had other cards before, but it seems like it wasn't that long ago that I took a chance on ATIs All-In-Wonder 9600XT, possibly my favorite of the ATI brand.It was my first DVR; plus it had a higher clock and more mem than the standard 9600XT, which made it a gaming contender. In a way I miss the old AGP.
I don't think this improves AMDs brand recognition, much like the merger of AT&T and Cingular caused more confusion than gain, but this could be an effort to suppress negative reviews and start fresh.
Dennis Travis - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Also very sad to see ATI go away after all these years. I have used ATI as long as I can remember from some old PCI cards to the early Radeon to the All In Wonder series. Remember 3Dfx and all the other brands mentioned also, but ATI has always been a favorite of mine.scottwilkins - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
At lead AMD will continue to innovate ATI products and bring new ones with the same great technology to market. Unlike nVidia who basically bought 3dFX just to bury them and keep others in the market from getting good technology. 3dFX truly died, and was laid to rest. ATI will continue to live on and on. Hooray for that!!!LauRoman - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
What i really will miss most from that logo si both the RADEON and ATi fonts. If they couldsomehow integrate at least the Ati font it would really be awsome. Sadly they won't be doing that because their biggest competitor phased their chipset(ish) logo and their processor logo and used a unifide logo.CloudFire - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I'll still be calling my graphics cards ATi, I've loved this brand for way too long to be calling it AMD. At least they are keeping the red colored logo for recognition. :)AssBall - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Me too. It will take a few years before I can start wrapping my head and tongue around calling them Radeon or AMD cards in normal conversation.ssj4Gogeta - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
AMD vs. Nvidia may seem stronger, but the ATI logo is certainly more familiar.Murloc - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I'm not so sure about that.For enthusiast, yes, of course.
But the average consumer reads radeon more often than ATI, and if you ask him he can't remember.
I think the move makes sense.
punjabiplaya - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
RIP ATI, we will miss you. At least the core - Ontario gives them some recognition, lol.iamkyle - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Hopefully it spawns a Markham core in future ;)footprintz - Wednesday, September 1, 2010 - link
What about a Bowmanville core?stephenbrooks - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
All this is fine to me apart from the "Vision" thing. So there's just going to be one sticker that doesn't tell you what sort of CPU it is, just has some meaningless word (CPUs do things other than "visual"). I suppose "Core" is slightly stupid too.Also looking at past performance in their brands range I don't think they're going to resist the proliferation of different badges for long. "Vision" already has sub-brands.
videogames101 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
This makes me very, very sad - No more Nvidia vs. ATI flame wars, it just won't be the same...Sabbathian - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
It will ;) you`ll see in the months that are comming...jadormdrache - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
"1) AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger."wouldn't you want to come out with a badge that has both ati/amd on it for a few years to let the people that don't know AMD owns ATI?
I know anandtech readers know but people at work range from the "who is amd guy?" to the " I have a linux box in every room" guy.
Spoelie - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
"wouldn't you want to come out with a badge that has both ati/amd on it for a few years"Yeah, like theINQ coined a few years ago: DAAMIT!
MC-Sammer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
It's always going to be ATi to me, as I'm sure it will be to everyone.ssj4Gogeta - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Same here.adhan24 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
As branding goes you strive to build a strong image of permanence and ubiquity. Dropping the name ATi is a somewhat risky idea in the short term.chizow - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
The day AMD kills off the ATI brand is going to be a date that lives in infamy for those conflicted fanboys that prefer Intel CPUs but would kill for ATI GPUs. Oh the confusion....and raaage that will ensue!But in all seriousness, I'm not sure if this is a good move on AMD's part, as I would generally think of ATI as the more competitive part in their respective market (GPUs) than AMD, which is typically thought of more as a less competitive, value solution in their respective market (CPUs).
Then again, AMD probably figures they already paid enough with that $6B acquisition of ATI, adopting the ATI name on the letterhead would just add insult to injury even if its probably the more successful/competitive arm of the company.
Googer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Based on my recent experience and past experience with an ATi 9700 pro which had drivers that were on par with nVIDIA. The drivers being released by AMD are not as good as they were prior to the merger. I am rather disappointed in my 5670's in ability to do 1920*1200 over RGBHV to my GDM-FW900. Instead I get a 640*480 signal sent down the wire that shows a small segment of my 1920*1200 desktop. It can be likened to a 9mp jpg on a 640*480 display where you must scroll from side to side to see specific parts of the image.Even when I tell CCC to force a certain resolution, it still sends a crummy 640*480 signal down the wire.
See my forum post for details.
B3an - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Yeah AMD/ATI drivers aint been as good for a longgg time now. It probably started when they decided to release them each month. It's good marketing to the many thick people that think more = better. But in a month they clearly dont have the time to make them good enough and fix many things. Sometimes they will even release a BETA driver that fixes something, but it does not get included in the final driver for up to 3 months.Support for certain things with my 5870's drivers is only just coming together lately (especially with some Vvdeo software, options, and Flash video), but Nivida often have had this stuff working for months, sometimes half a year in advance.
BanditWorks - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
But it was about time if you ask me.GoodRevrnd - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
time to ebay my 9700 pro as a collector's item.Overmind - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
They should not drop the ATi logo and naming. It's been a symbol of quality for years.At least they keep the red, which is a lot better then that old default AMD greenish.
Camikazi - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
They won't let go of the red, Nvidia is already green, making AMD graphics logo green too would be bad. AMD graphics logo will stay red.wyvernknight - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I used to wonder why they didn't do this. I've always thought that AMD's brand recognition is fairly low (apparently not according to this survey) , whereas ATi's is stronger. I've always thought it would be smarter to tie the AMD brand to the ATi brand to create higher awareness and finally just use the AMD brand. I suppose they jumped straight to step 3.Sschevylt1 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I teared up when I heard this... Rip ATi :'(prime2515103 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
"1) AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger."I find that surprising actually... Personally, I go out of my way NOT to call an ATi card AMD.
This is actually kind of sad... I feel threatened somehow lol Stupid marketing...
Marburg U - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Ati is a brand that can beat the devil out of nVidia.Amd is a brand that can merely get along compared to Intel.
ATI is a brand much more present than AMD in people's computer.
>"AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger."
So, the problem is exactly when AMD goes alone on the field.
I think this is the worst choice those at amd would have picked.
mino - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
IMHO they are doing this for LOONG term reasons and are prepared to feel the pain short-term.Sad news, but necessary.
They had to merge sometime - just take the HP-Compaq confusion after all the years.
HD6000 is beyond NV reach, Ontario seems VERY promising, Lliano is going the way of a cash cow and Bulldozer, their future, is coming too.
Basically this moment is most probably their single best time for brand merging in the next 5 yrs.
JimmiG - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I find the "Radeon/FirePro Graphics" badges extremely boring and uninteresting.The original "ATI Radeon" badge has got the ATI logo, which looks somewhat interesting with the way the A and i are written. The "Radeon graphics - AMD" has got the AMD logo which adds interest thanks to the little arrow. The plain Radeon Graphics logo however, has nothing interesting to draw attention to it, just an ugly compressed font. It looks like something that took 10 minutes to put together.
If Radeon is going to be kept as a brand name, they should at least go out of their way to make an interesting and attractive logo and typeface for it.
AznBoi36 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
It's probably just a mock up. We'll see the real badges when they release their new products under the AMD name.ET - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Whenever I post I always think whether to refer to the graphics cards as ATI or AMD. Now I finally won't have to. :)I agree with AMD that the move makes sense, especially with Fusion. And Radeon really is a strong brand by itself.
Hauk - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Wreckage! And here you thought he was just trying to stir up trouble. Nice one Wreckage..softdrinkviking - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
lol.50 points to anand for pandering to my inner geek's sense of humor
Chalnoth - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
They'll drop the ATI brand until the next time they release a poor product and want to "rebrand" their product lineup on the next iteration. The dropping of the ATI brand, in fact, may be an indication that their next architecture is a bit risky, which would make the name change a win/win for them: if the architecture does well, then the AMD brand gets a big boost. If the architecture is poor, then they can just re-brand their follow-up as "ATI" and that bad past is wiped away.softdrinkviking - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
it would be more risky to fool around with their branding, confusing the public. anybody really into the tech knows enough about the company to see through the marketing to some degree, but most folks just go out and buy something that looks familiar.switching around their name is not a smart move unless they can be sure how the public will react.
it seems way too frivolous for AMD to bring back "ATI" in a generation or two because they feel a product underperformed.
that would show an incredible lack of integrity in the company, and probably kill off brand solidarity for both monikers.
i really think this is the real deal as far as going with AMD goes. even their website has been slowly converging the ATI/AMD sites into one megasite since the initial purchase.
i guess what i'm saying is that, i had a feeling this was coming; the writing was on the wall, ect.
piroroadkill - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
As much as I love the ATI brand, I don't really see anything wrong with this.They're not killing the distinctitve red logo, and hopefully not the distinctive red boards (!) because, well, AMD's traditional colour has been green, and we know how confusing that would be.
You'll still be buying a Radeon, and you can keep calling it ATI if you want, since it's essentially the same guys.
Sabbathian - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I must say that I never liked ATI ... its cards, its drivers... nah ... I tried their cards 2 times and everytime I got back to NVidia ... but now, there is no more ATI, maybe its time to try out AMD? (Which I always liked, since my K6/2).... :)dingetje - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
yeah, but AMD keeps Intel honest.....well....less evil......so I'm happy with whatever AMD triesjfelano - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Cool.john3850 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
The two best cards I owned after 3dfx wer the 9700 and the XTPE.When I went from a golden sample GF3 to Ati 9700pro WOW.
.
rbfowler9lfc - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
ATI recalls goodAMD recalls bad
Terrible choice!
vooying - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Omgosh man, ATI has been around like forever.online-privacy.it.tc
mentatstrategy - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Nvidia wins!scottwilkins - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I've been ready for this since AMD aquired ATI. I amazed at how long it's taken.Not a bad thing. In fact quite good. I think the "Radeon" TM is more recognized anyway.
xboxist - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
My last three graphics cards have been ATI (9700 pro, x1900xt, 5770). And this may seem like a lame reason, but I really chose those cards because of the ATI name. They've been great to me. For some reason I can't see myself getting excited about buying an "AMD" GPU next time. I've never used an AMD CPU, and Intel's stuff has worked flawlessly for me over the years. Because of this, AMD has a slightly negative cognizance with me.Call me a casualty of branding, but I think my next graphics card might be my first Nvidia.
TGressus - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
You will be amazed you put up with the AMD driver quirkiness that continues to this day.Not to say that booting safe mode to uninstall the latest .NET in order to load some old catalyst platform, whilst remembering to run as adminstrator, just to avoid total BSOD on boot isn't totally awesome. But you know you uninstalled CCC anyway, opted for display driver component only then had Ray Adam's tool put on your shit so you could actually adjust your card.
Fun times.
Wellsoul2 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
The whole Vision thing seems dumb.Now they can be as obfuscating and misleading as Intel with Core which I guess is the idea.
Cue "Vision Thing" by The Sisters of Mercy.
Wrathbin - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
This actually might be a brilliant move, everyone knows AMD cannot compete with Intels marketing but if they keep staying ahead in graphics people will come to know the AMD brand more, "Hey hun, AMD, you know the ones that made that good graphics card in our computer now sell CPU's, they must be good,lets get one"fire400 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Thank goodness the logos are still red.Edison5do - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
in the beginin a didnt like it but...!! whatever.!! the ONLY thing i would say its.!! PLEASE JUST KEEP GOING WITH THE SAME QUALITY, AND BEING WORRIED FOR THE MAINSTREAM AND/OR BUTGET..... "PLEASE"Mr Perfect - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I'm glad to see some maturity here at Anandtech, both in the original article and the comments. Another site that I frequent posted rumors of this news last Monday and both the author and the commentators acted uncharacteristically poorly.Etern205 - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - link
From BernardP"In other news, following its acquisition of Porsche earlier this year, Volkswagen AG has decided to get rid of the superfluous Porsche brand, in order to emphasize the importance of the Volkswagen brand.
Consequently, starting with the 2011 model year, the Porsche Turbo Carrera will be known as the Volkswagen Turbo Carrera."
rjlew - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
Being a computer gamer and hobbyist since the 8088 and a CGA (before EGA and VGA) card, I have had my fair share of graphics boards (Orchid Fahrenheit 1280+ VLB, Tseng ET4000 PCI, etc. to name a few).My first ATI card was an ATI Xpert@Work card with 4MB of RAM. This got me by on my Pentium 2 -233 MHz on Win 95 OSR2 at 1024x768 res with 32 bit color and allowed me to almost watch DVD movies. I then paired it with a 3DFx Voodoo 2 card for Unreal Tournament (GLide, not Direct X). Good Times Baby!!
This then got replaced with a Voodoo 3 card with 16 MB RAM and a Celeron 400 replacement SEC cpu from Evergreen, same mobo and case on Win 98 Second Edition.
I then bumped this again with a NVidia GF3 Ti 200 Gainward card and an AMD Duron 900 on an EPox mobo, same case.
Today, I still have this same case with an ATI 9600 AIW OC'd from 400 to 500 MHz with a MSI KT333 mobo and an AMD Athlon 2600+. I have since retired this computer but have it as a standby Win XP machine.
Since then I have moved on to the Athlon 64 3000+ and Opteron 170 with the Nvidia 6800GT (became wife's machine). Currently I am with my Core 2 Quad Q6600 @3.2 with the Nvidia 9800GTX (BFG) in a newer Antec 900 chassis. Although my last few graphics boards have been Nvidia (largely attributed to my timing on new builds), there were fond memories with the ATI boards and LAN parties. The ATI 9600 AIW came with the freebie HL2 coupon, which got me into CS:Source, etc. from Valve, who were big on ATI cards. It has been a fun ride going between the ATI and Nvidia graphics choices, always a tug of war and always great for the consumer. The 3DMark benchmarkers will surely miss the ATI name.
RIP ATI brand, you will be missed. AMD, don't let us down. I love what the 4850, 5850, Eyefinity, and thousands of stream processors have done for PC gaming as a whole.
Psyrecx - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - link
I like the ATi brand name more, I'd personally rather see them retire the AMD name. Lately it's been a black mark on the market. I still think this even though I still buy their CPU's. Hell I think I would have ordered my 1090T even quicker if it had been called an ATi 1090T...ReaM - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
Bad,because it is NOT true, that AMD seems like a stronger brand than ATI.
Take last three years into account: AMD CPUs lost to Intel's in every market niche: mobile, desktop and server. Especially in mobile market, which became more important in the second half of 2010 as there was a shift from desktop to mobile computing, both power savers like netbooks and performance monsters like C2Duo chips (I still own the 2,2Ghz Macbook Pro from 2007) have been dominating the markit until today.
ATI, on the other side, came with its 4000 series very far and with its 5000 series made NVIDIA lag behind for six month. Its introduction and use in iMacs until present day is another happy story.
If ATI were a separate public traded company, its stock would have advanced MORE than AMD since the downturn of the market. Intel's stock looks much healthier than AMD's.
Travis piper - Thursday, December 2, 2010 - link
I think the way of Ati and Intel being mixed is good, but Amd is also good, I don't think Amd has done much with graphics and that's why I feel there new graphics cards are worse with smaller gpu's, I compared it to an older version and the older version was faster when running the same games. There's no room for me to complain however because Amd did buy out Ati from what I heard.