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AMD planning to rebrand ATI chipsets?

Leader: AMD finally decides to go ahead and start renaming many of its ATI chipsets, according to some reports, but will it really do any good for the brand?

Perhaps not surprisingly, AMD is planning on rebranding some of the chipsets it acquired when they bought ATI, claim some reports. AMD is keeping the graphic division of ATI as it is, but the chipsets currently being rebranded include the CrossFire-enabled RD580, RD550, and RD480. The only two chipsets excluded from this name change are the ATI RD600 and RS600, which were designed and released for Intel before the acquisition. Otherwise, the others as well as all future chipsets will bear the AMD name.

HKEPC's sources claim that AMD plans to ditch the Crossfire Xpress names and start using parts of the chipsets' code names instead, as well as a letter indicator—an "X" would stand for multi-GPU, "T" for premium-class graphics, "G" for mainstream-class graphics, and "V" for value-class graphics. For example, the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset goes by the code name of RD580, and thus, it will be renamed to the AMD 580X CrossFire.

Plans for notebooks are a little more complex. Notebook chipsets will be prefixed with an "M" before the number from the code name, so the RX690M will become the AMD M690. However, if the chipset also includes integrated graphics, the ATI tag is left on the name, so the RS690 would eventually bear the name of AMD 690G Chipset with ATI Radeon X1250 Graphics.

The reason for the rebranding, according to HKEPC's sources, is to help unify customers' perceptions of the chipsets under one name. Having two names may lead customers to believe that chipsets coupled with processors under a different name are less stable. This, AMD hopes, would elevate consumer perception of AMD enough to give its market share a boost" while competing more directly with Intel's chipsets with integrated graphics. However, ATI's hottest-selling chipset before the acquisition was one designed for Intel, so it may take more than a renaming of their chipsets for AMD to increase its market share. AMD was sufficiently vague when asked for comment, but AMD's Senior PR Manager Will Willis told Ars, "obviously now that ATI and AMD are one company, it makes sense to have a unified platform."