AMD Goes Gangbusters: AMD Vision, AMD Computers, AMD, AMD, AMD

BY: J.R. Nelson, DesktopReview.com Editor
PUBLISHED: 5/12/2010

It's been a good year for AMD. Last fall they shipped their 500 millionth x86 CPU, they've handily beaten their competition on price/performance ratios and even scored a win from Intel and an antitrust suit to the tune of $1.25 billion. Now AMD is striking back by putting their chips in more computers than ever before and bringing their Vision marketing to the desktop space.

Late last year, AMD hosted a number of press events where they unveiled their new strategy for competing on both the CPU and GPU fronts. Instead of focusing purely on increased performance gains in the graphics segment, they innovated and introduced ATI Eyefinity, a new way of enabling multimonitor setups from computers with just one graphics card.

Rival Intel, with its significantly larger market share and marketing budget, is able to afford campaigns and market strategies that AMD can't. So AMD came up with AMD Vision, which is similar to the Genius and star ratings that Intel has given its processors over the years. As a quick recap, Vision replaces all of the AMD and ATI stickers that formerly covered a notebook or desktop. Instead of blinding the consumer with a lot of jargon that many who look for a new computer will be unable to understand, it mixes together all of the performance aspects of a system - memory, CPU power, GPU capability, storage, etc - and provides the machine with a single Vision rating.

Vision is broken up into three specific groups for laptops as well as four for desktops: AMD Vision, AMD Vision Premium, AMD Vision Ultimate and AMD Vision Black (desktop only). Now, both consumers and salespeople can be trained to understand what Vision is - "Oh, you want to edit HD video? You'll probably want to go with at least an AMD Vision Premium system, then." - and then feel free to choose whatever system they want that meets the level they need. No more worrying about gigabits and megawhats.

In addition to finally bringing their Vision marketing strategies to the desktop space, AMD has solidified their strategy for the remainder of the year. With the release of their six-core Phenom II X6 1090T processors, AMD has the final piece of their desktop platform in place: six-core CPUs partnered with a Radeon HD5970 graphics card and 890FX chipset for enthusiasts, dual- and quad-core Athlon II CPUs partnered with lower-end 5000-series Radeon cards for the mainstream, while low-end machines still have single- and dual-core Athlon CPUs joined by Radeon HD4290 integrated graphics present in the 890GX chipset.

Dell is the first of the major OEMs to apply Vision branding and marketing to a new machine. AMD is counting on many more to follow suit, however, with a full eleven notebook and desktop Vision systems available starting today. Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Toshiba are all joining Dell to bring this AMD resurgence into play.

Clearly, the number two x86 CPU maker isn't content to sit back on its haunches - in addition to appearing in more desktops (and more kinds, like Dell's enthusiast AMD PC) from major OEMs than ever before, AMD is being put into no fewer than 134 notebook models just this year. That's an impressive feat. While it obviously won't bring AMD anywhere close to where Intel is presently sitting, it's more than enough to close the gap at least a little bit, and give users something to hold onto until the next huge technology refresh comes with the new Bulldozer microarchitecture sometime next year.

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