After some initial rumblings that indicated otherwise, AMD has reaffirmed their desire to attach the ATI brand to several of their forthcoming product lines. "The ATi name will live on at AMD as our leading consumer brand, and so will the Radeon brand and other ATi product brands," says spokesperson Eric DeRitis. "AMD's executive management knows very well the power and value of branding, and ATi's branding is some of the most valued in the global technology industry. As such, we plan to keep it. Period."

The nature of the products to be branded as such have yet to be fully disclosed, but already AMD is hinting at providing more integrated graphics solutions. Indeed, the branding may become especially vital when faced with the widespread (and arguably correct) perception that "integrated graphics" is merely a shorter term for referring to that worthless piece of tech that came with your computer and can barely push two frames per second in the latest Tiger Woods game. According to their marketing manager for Europe, AMD sees integrating graphics acceleration directly into the CPU as the next logical step.

"So, in much the same way as a floating point unit is now integrated into the processor, I would expect to see joint single pieces of silicon for certain specialist markets too." Richard Baker restrains the idea a bit, though, and says that AMD won't "integrate some steaming great big quad-core CrossFire engine into a CPU; that would be crazy. But if you're looking at entry level parts for emerging markets, where a very simple GPU could be integrated, then that could be possible."

The true fallout of the AMD/ATI deal will likely become most evident once the new product lines show up which, if Baker is to be believed, could happen as early as next year.

Read - AMD stays hand over ATI brand axe
Read - AMD hints at integrated graphics and physics acceleration in CPUs

Previously:

• AMD to buy ATI for $5.4 billion
• Nvidia on ATI: "basically throwing in the towel"
• ATI responds to Nvidia, clears up post-takeover rumors

A couple of hours ago, Epic Vice President Mark Rein opened the Develop Conference in Brighton with a keynote covering topics ranging from the economics of next-generation games, episodic content and middleware (which, incidentally, Epic makes a lot of its money from). The majority of the second half of his keynote took a critical look at Intel's place within gaming; specifically, Mark thinks "Intel is killing PC gaming".

Over several slides on the topic, Mark laid out the reasons he thinks that PC gaming is being harmed by Intel. He pointed the finger at Intel's integrated graphics chips. Integrated chipsets are often incapable of playing the latest (and certainly next-generation) games at any kind of graphics settings. Despite this, they are wildly popular amongst retailers. According to Mark's figures, 80% of laptops and 55% of desktops (note: he failed to cite a source for these figures) feature integrated graphics. That's bad news for companies like Epic, which are investing heavily into extremely demanding next-generation games.

If next-generation games don't run on the vast majority of computers, big-name and -money developers will lose (or have already lost) their bottom end. At the same time, the higher end is getting higher. The last year has produced widespread-SLI adoption within the hardcore PC gaming community and new technologies like Quad-SLI, Quad-CPUs, physics processors and $10,000+ PCs.

Over the next couple of days we'll be exploring this keynote and other seminars from Develop in more depth, but for now we'll ask you the same questions that Mark asked the audience:

• Do games like The Sims, World of WarCraft and other low-budget Asian MMOs prove Mark's hypothesis, that PC gaming is going away because of Intel, wrong?
• Will console MMOs put the nail in the coffin of PC gaming?
• How come big publishers aren't placing big bets on PC gaming? (Mark says that he knows of at least two "major" developers that are considering moving exclusively to console based development, although he failed to elaborate on which ones).
• Will the PC market be relegated to only mass-market and casual games?

Apple released the MacBook, its new consumer laptop, today. The full tech specs -- which are over at Apple's site -- mention that the MacBook features an Intel GMA950: in other words, an integrated graphics chip identical to the Mac mini. Previously we've summarized the disadvantages of integrated graphics and we've moaned about the poor graphics performance of Apple's line-up in an attempt to force someone at Apple to listen, but it was all in vain.

Apple's supposed "gaming solution" (Windows) is hardly a solution now that Apple's consumer line-up (MacBook, Mac mini) doesn't have a dedicated graphics card, the prosumer line-up (MacBook Pro, iMac) features a low- to mid-range mobile chip and the remaining top-of-the-range machine (PowerMac) is stuck with PowerPC processors, crappy default GPUs (GeForce 6600s, yuck!) and a largely unobtainable price.

If Apple one days wakes up and realizes that there are a load of potential gaming switchers sitting on the fence it would either: tell, no, force Intel to make some integrated chips that aren't "virtually unplayable for anybody that cares about gaming" or provide the option of dedicated graphics cards for gamers, even if it costs us more.