ATI to eliminate ATI brand?

[Michael]

It is now being reported @ http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/news...ati-brand.html that AMD is supposedly dropping the ATI brand name after the deal is complete....

I rightly believe that this won't ultimately be the case, due to the involved factors. The newbies now being confused over a "AMD Radeon", etc... not to mention all of the technical details involved with a name-change, and the costs. Similar to the reasons why the United States will not covert to the Metric system

What does everyone else believe?

[niniendowarrior]

I think AMD can drop ATi as a brand. I think most consumers don't know ATi from nVIDIA. The people that can differentiate the two companies know one graphics manufacturer from the other and would be keeping tab on the news, hence, they'd also know about AMD dropping ATi.

AMD could drop ATi and the entire Radeon line and come up with its own line of products entirely based off the ATi graphics designs. The whole thing does entail a huge cost barrier for AMD just to make the new brand and new graphics offerings visible publicly through marketing ads and public press events.

The cheaper way is to just keep the brands, though I think AMD will gradually have ATi bow out maybe by early 2007.

EDIT:
I saw this article in Anandtech. It's a pretty interesting read on AMD/ATi.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2807&p=2

[Rob Williams]

I don't have any real speculation on what happens, but it would be nice to keep things as they are...

[niniendowarrior]

That would be the easy direct way of dealing with this AMD/ATi deal. But, it doesn't benefit either company if things stay the way they are. AMD will change ATi, I think, in a way that will benefit AMD. Already written are future plans on making cpu+gpu technology work for AMD powered machines. Perhaps AMD is taking the workstation market more seriously this time.

[drag]

That would be the easy direct way of dealing with this AMD/ATi deal. But, it doesn't benefit either company if things stay the way they are. AMD will change ATi, I think, in a way that will benefit AMD. Already written are future plans on making cpu+gpu technology work for AMD powered machines. Perhaps AMD is taking the workstation market more seriously this time.

Na. I don't see them throwing away the ATI brand recognition.

I could see them gradually dropping the name for the motherboards and simply using AMD vs ATI to denote the differences in generations between major chip revisions. For instance say you had a hardware review and the title went like this:
"Are the new AMD chipsets better then the ATI-based ones?"

But I don't think so for the video cards. It'll probably be subverted somewhat. Like they'll call it things like the 'ATI division' of AMD, or like with AMD64, they would be like this is the "ATI-6gen" cards, or the AMD chipset with the ATI-1800 IGP or something like that. Or use it to denote the differences between consumer grade and workstation grade cards.. like "How does the new AMD ATI stack up against it's AMD FireGL counterpart?

[Michael]

I still am thinking that this will be the case...

I rightly believe that this won't ultimately be the case, due to the involved factors. The newbies now being confused over a "AMD Radeon", etc... not to mention all of the technical details involved with a name-change, and the costs. Similar to the reasons why the United States will not covert to the Metric system

Haven't heard any other details yet.

[Michael]

www.ati.com is now at ati.amd.com

With green colors now

[1c3d0g]

Thank God. Sorry, but just hearing the name ATI makes me want to puke, I have absolutely nothing positive to say about them, the only thing they brought me was unnecessary problems and disgust. And unless AMD makes some DRASTIC changes to their drivers, I won't be recommending them anytime soon to anyone.

[niniendowarrior]

This is one step closer to ATi's disillusion. Now we'll see if AMD can make ATi Linux experience better. A new hope perhaps?

[colo]

Just provide the goddamn Data Sheets, so good drivers like "radeon" has been for so long may be included in every mainstream distribution, and I strongly believe ATI's love-o-meter will skyrocket for users of GNU/Linux in a few months.