AMD to kill off ATI name
Venerable graphics card brand to be retired as of Radeon 6000 series
Technology firm AMD has announced it is to retire the venerable ATI brand from its range of gaming graphics cards and chips.
AMD acquired ATI, which created a best-selling range of PC and Mac 3D cards as well as providing the graphics processing for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, in 2006.
The 25 year old company will no longer be identified on AMD's graphics cards as of the 6000 series Radeon boards, due later this year.
The cited reason is higher consumer awareness of 'AMD' than of 'ATI.'
"The Radeon brand and the ATI brand are equally strong with respect to conveying our graphics processor offering," John Volkmann, AMD's vice president of global corporate marketing, told THINQ.
"[The] combination of AMD and Radeon actually proved to be a stronger combination than ATI and Radeon in the minds of processor-aware consumers, by a statistically significant amount."
ATI now outperforms arch-rival NVIDIA in terms of discrete graphics card shipments, with the GeForce company reporting huge losses for its last quarter.