AMD Dropping The Athlon Name?

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DailyTech says that AMD plans on dropping the Athlon moniker in favor of a new brand name. According to the story, the new name will be Phenom. Thanks to GJSNeptune for the link.

Over the next two weeks AMD will slowly begin to introduce its new brand name for high end desktop CPUs. The brand, Phenom, will succeed Athlon on all K10 offerings. Dual-core Agena processors will be labeled as Phenom X2; quad-core Agena as Phenom X4. The halo products, Agena FX and its family, will receive the brand name Phenom FX.
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YAHACN (yet another horrible AMD CPU name). Is Hector letting his slow brother in law pick these names?
 
Met-AL said:
Pretty lame.

Phenominal?
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Phenomenal. :)

People don't seem to be taking the new name well. For AMD, this chip better live up to the new name. That's the only reason to give a chip a name that means something. :p
 
Eh.... I think it's... better. In 1999 I thought "Athlon" was really weak. What the hell is an "athlon"?
 
They should have kept thier name, kinda lame.
 
Ok, so I'm going to disagree with most of the other posters so far and say that I am strongly in favor of this change. Why?

1) "Athlon" has been around for ...what, 8 years now? We've been through several generations of processors, and it's time to move on.
2) Processor names have gotten too complex and confusing. The idea of a product name like "Athlon 64 X2 3800 EE" is just....too much. Granted, this will only reduce the name length by one "word", but it's an improvement.

I disagree, however, with the timing. IMO, it would have been much more effective to introduce the new brand with a new line of products, like Barcelona. They way they did it, however, it kinda seems to me that AMD's PR department realized that they have nothing new to promote, so in order to justify their salaries, they decided to come up with a new branding scheme. The name is good, but since they've gone and slapped it on an older and already-well-known product, the new brand won't have the "sparkle" it would have if it were on a brand-spanking-new product line.

Think about when Intel came out with the "Pentium" brand. It was still a computer process, made on silicon, with the same kinda stuff as the 386 and 486 (albeit with improvements). However, introducing a new "brand" along with a new product really made the new product really stand out.
 
While I think it's about time for a name change, just as it was for intel when they went to the Core brand name, Phenom seems a bit presumptuous.
 
Mohonri said:
I disagree, however, with the timing. IMO, it would have been much more effective to introduce the new brand with a new line of products, like Barcelona. They way they did it, however, it kinda seems to me that AMD's PR department realized that they have nothing new to promote, so in order to justify their salaries, they decided to come up with a new branding scheme. The name is good, but since they've gone and slapped it on an older and already-well-known product, the new brand won't have the "sparkle" it would have if it were on a brand-spanking-new product line.

Think about when Intel came out with the "Pentium" brand. It was still a computer process, made on silicon, with the same kinda stuff as the 386 and 486 (albeit with improvements). However, introducing a new "brand" along with a new product really made the new product really stand out.
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I can definitely see your point on this aspect of it.

Didn't they say the big push for the Athlon XP was because people thought it was the best for XP at the time of its release? Maybe they should do something similar with this lineup.
 
The names of most CPUs have been some made up word, thus letting the product that defines the name. This works fine because if the product is good the name will grab attention. If, on the other hand, the product is not so good, then the name is forgotten and new one is chosen. Now, however, with an already defined word the reverse is true, with the name defining the product. The problem is that if the product doesn’t live up to the name then the whole branding scheme can backfire. So, this tells me one of two things: either the management of AMD is extremely confident in their future products, or they are extremely desperate for change (or more likely a little of both).
 
Lame, uninspired, and massively cliched. Surprised it's not the Phenom Xtreme. :rolleyes:

AMD is better than this.
 
Maybe they are trying to appeal to the people who don't read things closely, and hoping they mistake "Phenom" for "Pentium" :D
 
UrielDagda said:
Maybe they are trying to appeal to the people who don't read things closely, and hoping they mistake "Phenom" for "Pentium" :D
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Or worse, we might mistake it for "Phantom". Either way, they don't want to be associated with either.

AMD, pick another.
 
I don't care what they call it. They could call it Asscrap and I wouldn't care.

...as long as it performed well. :D
 
khanable said:
I don't care what they call it. They could call it Asscrap and I wouldn't care.

...as long as it performed well. :D
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At least that would be funny.. They could parody Intel by making "Asscrap inside!" stickers to put on your case with your authentic AMD Asscrap processor! :D
 
Bad? I wouldn't really call it bad, but it does sound silly. "Phenom" sounds more like the name of a child's toy than a moniker for a "powerful" CPU. Can't the guys at AMD come up with something better than this?

Of course, it is just a name, after all. If the performance really ia there, then I doubt it would matter if you called it an Athlon, a Phenom, a Pentium, or a Pentiathlon.
 
Modred189 said:
While I think it's about time for a name change, just as it was for intel when they went to the Core brand name, Phenom seems a bit presumptuous.
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I think AMD should name their new line Arm. Then we could have Arm vs Core shootouts! (lame Total Annihilation reference)

-MacG467
 
Man, it was difficult for me to sell chips made by AMD years back since no one really heard of them.
Then it was difficult to sell Athlons as something cool to have and even harder with Duron and Sempron.
Why didn't they just call it phlegmon?
Cause that's what the new name makes me want to do, chuck up a huge loogy and cough it out. :p
 
I think they should call it "pentuim"

The people that buy dells wont even see the difference.
 
meh...

I thought calling a processor line "Core" was rather unimaginative, to tell the truth. But does it really matter? It's only a name, and products of all descriptions get accorded ridiculous names nowadays. Do people really allow their choices and decisions to be dictated by how 'cool' the name accorded by some idiotic executive sounds?
 
Just like Microsoft and Google are fighting to buy all the evil on Earth, AMD and Intel are struggling to come up with the worst names imaginable.

It said that the low and midrange processors will still be Semprons and Athlons. I'm assuming that "Phenom" is just the new FX? If that's the case then I'll never see one anyway.
 
Mohonri said:
I disagree, however, with the timing. IMO, it would have been much more effective to introduce the new brand with a new line of products, like Barcelona.
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Um, that's exactly what they're doing. This name will be applied to the Barcelona and Agena processors.
 
maybe they should call it "Athlon Vista"...since they did that with the Athlon XP. =)


Phenom just seems a little off. First time i read that, i thought it was pronounced FEE-num.


I wonder what would happen if they used Alereon or something..
 
i personally this its a crap name. its sounds like a treatment for erectile dysfuntion or something. :D
 
In related news, Intel has reportedly made great strides in the fabrication process of their next line of processor, the 'Phiderman'.
 
Now that I've made dismissive comment about the name change, perhaps I can make dismissive comment about all of you who are babbling on about the name change. You sound like a pack of schoolgirls gushing about the current crop of fashion accessories!

To me, the important change here is that, along with the name change, AMD is dropping the PR rating scheme for its CPUs and introducing a ridiculously uninformative 'model code' scheme similar to the one Intel uses. No more glancing at the PR rating and being able to roughly ascertain "Yep, that'n should be more capable than this'n by about THAT much!"
 
I'm half expecting to start seeing processors with names like the Phenom Neato, and the Phenom Hellafast soon. *shudders*

But seriously, who really liked a name when they first heard it? The Wii was a stupid name, but that didn't stop it from selling out in about 10 seconds.:cool:
 
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