Radeon brand celebrates 25 years of competitive attitude, fair prices, good availability and technology pioneering.
...
I remember the times the Radeon brand actually represented those.
Me, too. It's like it was literally yesterday.
Oh wait, it totally was!
I refer to a much earlier time, when he was the director of advanced technology development at ATI in the early 2000's. He was also CTO of graphics at AMD until 2009 or so, truth is, it's all been Raja from the start. And I've always held the belief that if Polaris (most commercially successful GPU of all time) and Vega were even salvaged, it's because of his contributions.
Perhaps the average AMD diehard's favorite cop-out, second only to "Bulldozer actually wasn't bad"
That's a hot, hot take (and Raja's attitude across his many positions and product history prove otherwise).
The lineage and soul of the AMD GPG, and certainly ATi as most knew them, stems back to ArtX (former SGI employees), imo, which contributions truly led to the change from Rage to Radeon as we know it.
It was many people like Dave Orton, Eric Demers, and others (some still there, but most gone afaik) that brought about, and forward, the philosophy that largely continues with AMD GPG to this day, imo.
I wish I had a list of the Artx employees that were absorbed into ATi (and then some later into AMD), as I don't recall every single one at this moment.
If I showed you all their innovations and methodologies that went into some of the products people have loved over the years you would be stunned how many of them stem from mainly those people.
If I showed you that list, you'd realize they
created the Radeon philosophy. It is a
very small group of
incredibly talented people (not to say others haven't and don't continue to contribute greatly to this day).
It was something like a dozen people or so.
Specifically, going out of their way to mention the
32MB of RAM on the 25 years-ago card
*and* (in the same statement) bringing up the 24GB XTX, while celebrating their newest 16GB card...
If AMD is not actively
baiting (and building) upon the 32GB and XTX(H) Navi48 rumors, then they're hilariously obtuse.
Yeah, that's very much appears to be happening. How that chip/card are going to handle ~525W I do not know, but I guess we're probably to find out. I can only imagine if that thing can boost to ~3.9ghz.
I just want to know if they're going to undercut the 5070ti with stock RT performance of a 5080 (and enough ram not to suck at 1440pRT/4k raster). That would be very cool, and very much Radeon.
+3000. I've wanted to talk about this for a while, so I'm glad you brought it up.
I think Ruby embodied Radeon so perfectly. I miss it soooo much. I know female mascots in that fashion became passe for a while, but they
really should bring her back. I think today's audience would love it.
For nostalgia, if nothing else. Or, you know, the younger generation embracing the older generations nostalgia and finding a way to connect.
I also think it would do their branding, and maybe even morale, a lot of good. There's just something so special about Ruby; I don't know if it's the scrappy nature, attitude, lineage you can follow or what. IYKYK.
It also contrasted with Dawn (the nVIDIA fairy) so incredibly perfectly. Are you corporate shine or are you an underdog rebel?
I don't promote brand wars, but to me that character really embodied being part of something; a group sharing similar attitude/methodology, and something you could celebrate when owning their products.
I still think they *want* people to think of Radeon that way, so I can't think of a better way to do it than to bring back Ruby and help solidify that branding in a more grandiose fashion.
I feel like today's generation would *get* it in a way we used to and that maybe got lost for a while (and why they stopped doing it).
Ruby was a mascot; a very cool thing that embodied Radeon's attitude. It was an expression of joy and an outlet for the hard edge of creating and understanding the technology.
It wasn't ever about selling sex or anything like that, which is why I think it stopped (it got associated with 'booth babe' culture), at least not to me. I think the current public would understand and embrace that.
Some may take it further, but that's the irony of life; let them. People will do that with anything if they're extremely passionate about it, for the rest of us we can just enjoy a cool tech demo.
I don't think AMD understands this, but sometimes you do things like sell a Ruby body pillow in the store bc that's just how current culture is. I just want a key chain, maybe a figurine, but some want a body pillow.
Or, again, just a tech demo.
