In a bid to unify corporate branding, Advanced Micro Devices decided to drop ATI branding from the logotypes of graphics products like FirePro and Radeon. The new logotypes are available in two versions: one features AMD's corporate name and the other does not so that to allow usage of the logo on personal computers powered by Intel Corp.'s microprocessors.

The new markings for graphics cards are stylized to resemble AMD Vision logo. The new FirePro and Radeon badges will exist in two versions: one with AMD corporate name and another without any mentions of AMD. According to the Sunnyvale, California-based company, OEMs can choose any of them, but it is rather logical that AMD wants to avoid potential conflicts when ATI Radeon graphics solutions will be installed into machines based on Intel central processing units.

Found in 1985, Array Technologies Inc. (ATI Technologies later on) has always been associated with graphics processors and multimedia. Moreover, throughout the larger part of its history ATI has been associated with innovations and leading edge performance. ATI introduced numerous "world's first" and thanks to 25 years  history it is recognized as a respectable supplier of graphics adapters. In fact, only in the most recent decade ATI held graphics performance crown in seven years out of ten. Besides, at present the world's most powerful graphics card is ATI Radeon 5970, which greatly attracts gamers and performance-minded users. In Q2 2010 graphics business products group (GPG) of AMD shipped over 50% of the world's discrete GPUs, a clear indicator than ATI is better known on graphics boards market than AMD on microprocessor market. Still, starting from the Radeon HD 6000-series due later this year, the ATI will be missed from product boxes.

However, AMD claims that its own brand is stronger than ATI's in spite of the fact that ATI products have larger market share. According to AMD's internal research:

• AMD preference triples when respondent is aware of the ATI-AMD merger;
• AMD brand is stronger than ATI when compared to graphics competitors;
• Radeon and Fire Pro brand awareness and consideration is very high.

It should be noted that with the dawn of the accelerated processing unit (APU) era it makes a lot of sense for AMD to sell them under one single trademark.

It remains to be seen whether the drop of ATI brand will affect performance of AMD's graphics products group. While the move seems to be extremely questionable now, only time will reveal its practical effect.

Tags: AMD, ATI, Radeon, FirePro