AMD Unveils 'Vision' For Buying PCs

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	11th Sep 2009

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For many years AMD was the performance and value champion of the CPU world, but for almost as many since Intel has been back giving it a sizeable kicking. So AMD is now looking to turn things around with a new brand which it hopes will help make the process of buying a PC easier.

'VISION Technology from AMD' is the rather wordy new approach which aims to market the real world capabilities of any given AMD based machine, rather than just highlight its CPU clock speed.

"In its simplest form we are connecting the needs of the consumer to the PC - not the processor," explained AMD Senior VP and CMO Nigel Dessau. "When you go into a retail store this holiday you will see VISION Basic, VISION Premium and VISION Ultimate on many PCs powered by AMD technology - not the name of our processor. Straightforward guides for retailers and consumers will help them know which VISION is right for them."

So how do these four (Dessau misses out 'VISION Black' in this quote) categories break down? In AMD's own words:

Vision Basic is for people who use productivity tools like Microsoft Office and who surf the web, maybe listen to music and look at their photos
Vision Premium is for those who also want to watch High-definition and Blu-rays, edit photos and play some games
Vision Ultimate is for the video editor and 3D game player
Vision Black is for our technology partners who build the high-end, top of the line systems

These categories will initially be limited to laptops, but will expand to encompass AMD based desktops next year. Pushed to the back will be the likes of AMD Live! and Turion and Athlon processor branding.

So will such broad strokes work? For the average consumer, possibly. The three categories are broken down into check lists (shown above) which can help the general public find what they need, but for more advanced users looking to hunt out specifics Vision could actually complicate the process. What CPU clock speed, what RAM, what connectivity was previously frontline information. Now it requires a little more digging. That said, the Acer Ferrari One is the first machine we've seen to don the new Vision branding and it is by far the most well specified netbook we've seen to date, so let's not be too quick to judge.

That said, I'm not convinced Vision will have Intel shaking in its boots. Then again, these days very little does...

Links:
AMD Vision
AMD Vision Official Blogpost

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Chris said on 11th September 2009

@Darfuria: That could still happen (maybe on AMDs own website), but before they can recommend a category they have to define them first. That's all this looks like right now.
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Xiphias said on 11th September 2009

So why can premium transcode but not encode? And why does creating podcasts require the top category?

Kanu said on 12th September 2009

Good idea. Long overdue that the computer industry moves to try and communicate better with consumers instead of bombarding with meaningless terms like clock speed.