I appreciate a lot of people will see this as a negative "rebrand", but contentiously I'm not upset by this news if it turns out to be true.

Let me explain why, as I'm aware this will probably be an unpopular position to hold based on previous comments above and I'd like to clarify my points.

• Consumers are fickle-minded and forgetful. If you don't release a new product on a fairly-regular basis, many will consider your perfectly-acceptable wares to be old-hat (i.e., out-dated).
• A year in tech is a long-time. During this time, even if you haven't got a fully-fledged replacement product, you are very likely to have methods to improve existing products in a way that improve efficiency, thermal characteristics and reduce costs.
• If there is no perception of improvement, potential customers may delay purchasing a new product or opt to save up for a higher-cost product by a competitor.

Right now, AMD (specifically the Radeon Technology Group, RTG) is rightly seen as providing good value for money in the mainstream graphics markets, but has entirely ceded the high-end to Nvidia. Its upcoming Vega 10/11 GPUs will bring some much-needed competition back to the market, but we can't be sure whether these will be enough to bring RTG back to the fold.

Like many open-minded consumers (i.e., ones who will look at products fairly based on their relative strengths, contrasting against zealous, simple-minded fanboys/fangirls), I am hoping that Vega 11 will at least compete with the incumbent 1070 and that Vega 10 will fight somewhere in the 1080 to 1080 Ti range.

Of course, if Nvidia does the same and creates refreshes in the form of 1170 and 1180, along with the mainsteam 1060 and 1050 cards, AMD will have a harder battle on its hands for hearts, minds and, most-importantly, wallets.

I'll concede that I am more a fan of AMD against Intel and Nvidia, but that's less based on any unreasonable bias and more from years of appreciating that AMD generally provides better value-for-money and has a healthier attitude towards open standards (as opposed to Intel and Nvidia generally preferring proprietory solutions).