Just as Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) gets ready to reap the true fruits of its largest acquisition ever, the company is doing away with a few side effects of that deal.

The ATI brand name will soon be nothing but a memory. A $5.4 billion buyout has resulted in the revolutionary Fusion platform, which is expected to propel AMD into steady profits and technological leadership from 2011 onward. But the ATI brand itself has played its part and now only serves to dilute AMD's central brand, according to the company's own market research.

This move is but a small part in a larger overhaul of AMD's branding strategy. The current plethora of confusing product names will be boiled down significantly over the coming months: You won't need to keep track of what makes a Phenom II processor better or worse than an Athlon II or Turion, for example. Instead the company will offer "Vision" categories that summarize the processing power of AMD machines. This goes one step further than Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and its Core i3, i5, i7 strategy: one brand to rule them all, at least for a while.

I used to like AMD, then went with Intel and haven't looked back. AMD is too slow with innovation.

I used to like AMD, then went with Intel and haven't looked back. AMD is too slow with innovation.

AMD still innovates. In fact, they pulled quite a bit ahead of Intel with the Athlon processors. But instead of innovate back, Intel gave massive (and illegal) discounts to Dell and other major manufacturers if they pledged not to use AMD. Intel burned their own money to starve out their competition until they could catch up to them; they dragged down a competitor rather than try to compete. Intel is the opposite of innovation.

Intel's strategy paid off. They knew that billion-dollar settlements would be pocket change compared to how much money they would make if they starved out their competition and created the perception that "AMD doesn't innovate". It's not that they don't; it's just that they have less money than they have less money to do it than they should have right now.

I always buy AMD because of my personal principles; I just don't feel right about supporting a company that screwed both competitors and consumers (us!). Intel is closer to being a mafia than a microprocessor manufacturer, since they look at the law as a speed bump.

I used to like AMD, then went with Intel and haven't looked back. AMD is too slow with innovation.

Haven't built an AMD box in a while, I personally, found they needed tweaks that Intel did not.
They also had an interesting (confusing) sense of math when it came to computing processor speed. Hehe, then there's was "Tri-Core" Why have quad, when you can have..err Three.