The Live Indian Entertainment Blog

It's been rumored, and it's true. One of the halcyon brands of the PC video card industry is about to be retired. AMD, which acquired ATI in 2006, and which has maintained the brand for its graphics operations, has decided to kill it.

The reasons appear to be varied, but does include internal research by AMD. While the details of the research were not revealed, the following bullet points were:

1) AMD brand preference triples when the person surveyed is aware of the ATI-AMD merger.
2) The AMD brand is viewed as stronger than ATI when compared to graphics competitors.
3) The Radeon and Fire Pro brands themselves are very high as is.

The company noted that the results were "permission" to consolidate under the AMD brand.

Reportedly, existing products will not be renamed. The first products to carry the "AMD Radeon" label will be introduced later this year.

Research or no, its still sad to see ATI go, though admittedly, we used mostly NVIDIA GPUs in our systems. That said, NVIDIA's missteps with some of its GPUs have given ATI, er, forgive us, AMD, some headway in the graphics business.

To be honest, AMD has a better chance in graphics than currently in processors, where Intel has again taken a significant "lead" in the minds of performance oriented consumers.