It’s been four years since AMD bought ATI, and almost anyone who had apprehensions about the deal then, have by now resigned themselves to the fact, and for the most part, are happy about the way AMD has maintained ATI’s gamer quotient till this date, and how they saved it from Nvidia’s ruthless market tactics. While many industry experts felt $5.4 billion was simply too much to invest in a graphics company when with a similar amount of money AMD could have built its own, the popularity of the ATI brand was perhaps the number one factor in favour of an acquisition over internal development. Things are different now – ATI is at the top of its game, it has even edged out Nvidia as the market leader in discrete GPU shipments, and AMD is doing really well with its chipsets and integrated graphics. Things will apparently change some more soon, as AMD has revealed it will soon be doing away with the ATI brand.

Surprised? Well, not everyone is, as AMD has certainly been busy this past year, wresting the crown from Nvidia, and, also trying to simplify its brand structure in the form of AMD Vision, which is a logo a PC gets if the CPU and GPU are manufactured by AMD. Vision, Vision Premium, Vision Ultimate, and Vision Black are the price progressions, from entry-level to top-end.

AMD says it has some solid market research (at least as solid market research could ever be) to show why it has made the decision to phase out the ATI brand by Q1 2011, and retain only the Radeon/FirePro brands (thus making it AMD Radeon, or AMD FirePro).

Here is a look at AMD’s internal research:

These points all certainly make sense from a marketing point of view, but what will really connect to gamers’ hearts, is the real question. One thing is for sure though, AMD certainly benefited from ATI’s expertise and brand name, and, for gamers, it was a win-win situation, with AMD-ATI and Nvidia competing head to head to produce some seriously killer architecture. ATI will live on in the mass consciousness, leaving a tangible vacuum as it is going out at its very zenith.

Let us know what you think about AMD’s move, in the below comments section.

Do also check out some more research below from AMD that apparently justifies the move, as well as the new logos of AMD’s graphics products:

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