AMD ditches processor and GPU brands for new ‘Vision Technology’ logo

David Flynn
11 September 2009, 11:17 AM


Chipmaker says that replacing the Athlon, Turion and ATI stickers on PCs with new Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate will give consumers ‘clarity’...


The Long March towards Brand Simplification continues this week with AMD announcing a new simplified brand which will replace its processor and graphics stickers on notebooks PCs as well as in advertising and other point-of-sale material.

That riot of stickers which turns your laptop’s palm rest into an advertising showcase will be replaced by a single sticker spruiking what AMD calls its Vision Technology platform “to help consumers select the PC that best meets their needs.”

It’s less about promoting what’s in the box and more on what that box can do for you, reasons AMD.

“Today’s consumer cares about what they can do with their PC, not what’s inside,” said Nigel Dessau, AMD’s Chief Marketing Officer.

“Rather than the traditional model, which focuses on the technical specifications of individual hardware components, Vision communicates the value of the whole system and demonstrates the combined processing power of both the CPU and GPU to deliver a superior visual experience to mainstream PC users.”

But it’s not so simple than a single sticker can tell the story, so here’s the catch. There will be three versions of the logo: Vision, Vision Premium and Vision Ultimate.







Thankfully AMD resisted the temptation to go all Microsoft on us and release Vision Home Basic,
Vision Family and Vision Enterprise With Sprinkles

The plain vanilla Vision is for modest everyday computing without the need for fancy graphics. Vision Premium adds support for Direct X 10.x and HD, while Vision Ultimate is suited to HD video editing and video encoding.

And because these differentiations aren’t anywhere near obvious, AMD will add a second sticker next to the Vision decal to explain what you’d typically want to do with the digital content – See, Share or Create. Which makes more sense of it all, but gets back to stickerfest territory.



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Raindog (User):

Sticker Engineering the stuff of dreams and dreamers.

To the true believer a sticker will turn Nana's car into a road rocke, so no doubt AMD are banking on gaining that same sticker cred for their new livery, and consequently attracting the spend of that same market segment.

11 September 2009, 12:11 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Marketing people putting more effort into keeping their jobs than doing them?

Seems pointless to create 3 stickers that look almost entirely the same, then have to create a second one to explain it. I'd rather the spec list stickers. If you pay good money, surely you want to advertise it!
Plus, what happens if you've got AMD CPU with nVidia chipset? Do you get the AMD Turion sticker with an nVidia one next to it?

11 September 2009, 12:29 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

David Johnston (New user):

I'm confused already!

11 September 2009, 1:06 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

todd_h86 (User):

Nice one AMD..... I wonder what the launch date is for the new stickers.... October 22nd by any chance? I would like my new laptop to come with an AMD Ultimate Sticker that matches my Windows 7 Ultimate license perfectly!!

To me its like they are trying to stop asocation with their chip names as of late they have been getting quite a flogging from Intel.

Engadget has a table that comes with the stickers that shows what each means and what features they have. I can see what they are trying to do... simplify the customers options, if you want to watch video get the basic you want to share the videos get the premium you want to create the videos get the ultimate.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/10/amd-announces-vision-guide-to-buying-pcs/

11 September 2009, 3:07 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tony23 (New user):

Seriously, who gives a toss? Does anyone buy a PC based on how much useless bling is stuffed onto the cheap plastic. I mean seriously. What with crud like "vista ready", surely people have got over it. I've noticed laptops tend to have hardware details on the plastic these days, and other than a lack of a reliable benchmark, most of it is pretty much understood even by people who don't care that much.

CPU's are confusing, not because people need stickers, but because the "information" that people get reflects marketing gumpf rather than real information that is reflective of capability and is directly comparable.

11 September 2009, 8:37 PM (2 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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