AMD will dump the ATI brand

The confusing product naming scheme is deliberate. If the average consumer knew exactly what he was buying, he'd buy the cheapest product that met his needs. If the consumer is confused, he'll buy based on price, thinking more expensive = more powerful.

Look at how many times these same manufacturers have repackaged existing chips under different names and charged extra for last season's product.

That's why these executives keep getting bonuses.

AMD Vision 1xxx for the low end.
AMD Vision 3xxx for the mid range.
AMD Vision 5xxx for the high end.

As new more powerful and efficient chips become available then the 2xxx, 4xxx, and 6xxx could become available.

7xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx could be kept for future tech, or mobile or server products etc.

Of course the number of cores should be included in the name, perhaps the 2nd letter should be number of cores?

Intel's new I3, I5, and I7, plus their other Q8800 or whatever they are called have absolutely no meaning to me apart from a rough idea that an I7 is the most powerful (usually).

Intel's naming is nearly useless in that I just don't know what processor someone needs for regular surfing and light gaming? Heavy gaming? Video production? Combination of the above?

AMD could go back to the old 1800+, 2000+, 2200+ naming scheme. That was easy to understand as was there X2, X3 or X4 for number of cores.

And please put a LG or HG marker on the cpu as well, Light Gaming and Heavy Gaming. etc.

Building a new gaming pc requires several evening's reading a number of reviews and test results. It shouldn't be this tough.

Things must be pretty slack at AMD if the execs need to have a brand reorg to make them look busy.

I do like "Vision" as a brand, though. Vague enough to tell you nothing whatsoever, and sufficiently reminiscent of "Vista" to be tainted by association. Kudos for that.

Still, Im glad they "want to simplify the buying experience", because remembering to buy an AMD chip and an ATI graphics card was far too difficult.

Currys are already advertising AMD Vision branded laptops.

As for confusion, I assumed this was a reference to the graphics powering the system. Seems I was wrong!

Good luck to AMD, no-one knows who they are compared to Intel. Whether this is the right way to got about changing this is another thing entirely.

What an idiotic statement, AMD didn't axe a project, they changed a name, the ATI team is still going on designing top of the range graphics chips.

Personally I think this is fine, a step in the right direction, the only thing I feel AMD should clean up is their CPU OEM market which is feared for it's horrible handling of CPU's(bended pins and so on)

Methinks that the AMD execs have been having lunch too often with their neighbors across the street: National Semiconductor. A company who once had their chips in every computer. Their accounting execs have bright ideas like "lets axe that salt lake city design team who's working on a $1bil project..."
No, I didn't have any personal ties to that foulup at all -.-
AMD should stay away from their neighbors.

This makes no sense!

I would expect them to call the GPU 'Vision'

Athlon is a fricken awesome name, Phenom is also pretty good.

Dropping these names for "Vision" sounds idiotic.

Although, as long as it's AMD, I'll buy it - Intel is too much of a ripoff!

Seriously, dump the AMD name and don't look back, paint everything red and rebrand as "the new ATI". Will never happen but ATI imo is a much better brand. Would you rather have an AMD cpu? Or perhaps one of ATI's new cpus? A different name in the cpu market alone should be worth a little scratch.

And to simplify even more, as they used to do with cpus, they'll keep the stupid ratings

Vision 2000
Vision 2E
Vision P200
Vision u1000+
Vision X10 2.3E
....

They need to drop the AMD name, since it's a loser, and go with ATI, which is a winner.

This will work as AMD has the GPU market wrapped up. Nvidia posted a loss. I'll use either, but It's been a while since I heard of someone buying a high end Nvidia GPU, everyone just gets a Radeon 5870, or 5970. This will help the AMD brand a lot when someone asks for the fastest GPU for a price or even the fastest GPU for any price, only to discover it's an AMD product.

Imagine intel fans when they discover, that to have the best gaming system you will have to add an AMD product to your intel cpu and motherboard.

Execution Squad Load 6XXX, Razor Arms, FIRE. Ha,ha.

Well when DAAMIT First Conspired against theWORLD-Dumbo, Seemed Unique & Heavy deal. Pundits considered internal War between Dresden & Canada. Experts Predicted English Would Crucify older AMD Element, Things Fell to fantastic Low, near Bankrupt.

yet, hard to beat Time&Charges. Now AMD is shawingings back up from $6 last week, after rapid Fall. ALL n' Wonder, Where Are YOU. Probably only real Loser.

New Product, Vis.ect ion could be real ?undoing for Engineering team, too Easy. Those Cards Donnnut come aparts so good anyway, although Tastee hdmi port could use some extra flavor, EyeFinity seemed like whole Salad Was Just Getting to: ALL You Can Eat gourmet style. What About little RED Toematoe. F-T Where Are You.Buzzz,Crack,Snap-Yes i Will Invent New Monster.

Fertizler on AMD, Add Hurricane & Bloom. BTW as daneile wobbled over to greenland, landfall Dis coming friday morning, EARL was pulled to sea, now moving back towards East Coast. Watch Ani on ATi, I Will Tort That Bugger, to Death. HEAD SHOT.

vondrashek md

Some of the comments above are just what I expected from the Mountain Dew PC enthusiast brigade.

Outside the small (read minute) band of enthusuasts and industry folks 99.9% of the rest of the world hasnt much heard of AMD let alone ATI.

Go ask 100 Joe Publics what AMD and ATI make and I bet you'll be lucky to find 10 that know of AMD and maybe 5 or less that know ATI.

90 will at least know Intel if they are under the age of 70.

AMD/ATI are next to worthless as brands (great company though) so it's no hard to reduce the useless brands by 50%.

However, the only fly in the ointment is that it's all very well AMD reorganising its brands but not much use if you still dont bother actually marketing or promoting them to the general public. AMD moans constantly that it gets the sharp end of the stick but Intel does at least push its products hard. Thats partly why they sell so many. Well done Intel for making the effort.

AMD's future lies with the average PC user. It's time to get a jingle boys.

This is suppose to help them compete with Intel, HOW?? DO we have some Balmer type idiot running AMD now?? WTF?? This isn't going to "simplify" the buying experience for anyone. This is going to push people in the direction of Apple and other Intel vendors. All Intel has to do now is lower prices and who will be interested in AMD Vision then? Glad I got one of the last AMD Athlon 64 X2's before the big corporate screw up.

However AMD will continue its Opteron brand for its line of server chips.

Oh Thank God! Because we dumbasses buying servers and highend processors would have been confused if the name changed!!

Good thing there are plenty of average joe's around with the know-how.. so i have someone to lean on!

These 'executives' really don't know their 'stuff' at all. It is funny how there are, almost always, stupid and incompetent people at the top, and somehow they think their position makes them excellent in an area they don't know much about.

Expect identity loss and coupled with that revenue and stock fall. I love AMD/ATI products, but this is just stupid grasping for straws of change.