Asus Rebrands AMD Graphics Cards, 'Arez' For 'ROG'

News
By Derek Forrest
published

Asus announced that its entire lineup of AMD graphics cards has a brand-new identity, referring to the red-team GPU series as "Arez."

The Arez branding takes the place of the familiar Republic of Gamers (ROG) moniker that adorns several subsets of graphics cards, including the Dual, Strix, Phoenix, and Expedition series. The 28 new Arez cards don’t differ from the previously available Asus offerings, as each model seems to replace an existing ROG-branded card with an AMD GPU. The company essentially slapped a new name and logo on the box.

The new branding could be a sign that Asus has joined Nvidia’s GPP program, which reportedly forces participating OEMs to align their gaming brands exclusively with GeForce. With the ROG brand seemingly reserved for Nvidia GPUs, it’s hard to argue that the new Arez cards aren’t a direct result (and loophole) of such a potential partnership. We’ve seen other companies such as Gigabyte take similar steps with newer AMD-branded graphics card products (it dropped the Aorus branding from a RX 580-powered version of its Gaming Box external graphics enclosure), but Asus took things a step further and developed a whole new identity for its AMD graphics cards.

AMD itself just announced that several AIB partners would be debuting new brands of Radeon products (seemingly responding directly to Nvidia’s GPP program), and along with Asus’s new god of war-inspired Arez brand, it does feel like a familiar battle of sorts is raging between the Green and Red teams fighting for graphics card dominance.

Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest
Derek Forrest is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He writes hardware news and reviews gaming desktops and laptops.
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33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bigpinkdragon286
    Banana Republic Of Gamers
    Reply
  • dudmont
    Saw this coming. Could see it from a mile away. Nvidia isn't fooling anyone.
    Reply
  • quilciri
    I'm having bionic eyes installed so I can roll them harder.
    Reply
  • therealduckofdeath
    I see a fat lawsuit coming Nvidia's way. If not in the US, definitely in Europe.
    Reply
  • kinggremlin
    Really don't see how this makes any difference or why Nvidia wasted their time with this initiative. Who goes into a Best Buy/Microcenter/whoever and asks to buy a ROG, or any other AIB specific brand, video card and walks out when they don't have one? Any one fooled by this marketing maneuver wasn't familiar with the branding exclusive to Nvidia now anyway.
    Reply
  • Avus
    Asus created this brand because they “scare” of Nvidia…
    Reply
  • gc9
    The no-lipstick look of this card is nicer, especially for starting AI'ers and AR'ers not interested in red-light districts or horror flicks.
    Reply
  • kurtferro
    Call it phantoms is more appropriate
    Reply
  • 10tacle
    Nvidia has all these AIB parters by the short hairs. EVGA doesn't have anything to worry about because they do not produce AMD cards. Thank heavens Nvidia got out of the motherboard chipset business.

    Now if we can just get AMD to be competitive on a high end GPU as good as they are in the other tiers against Nvidia. No company should tell another company how THEY should market their products. Goose step some more Nvidia and I might have bought my last GPU from you.

    20894435 said:
    Asus created this brand because they “scare” of Nvidia…

    Well it's not so much as fearing them in cowardice as it is a business decision for the bottom line. I have no idea what chip ASUS sells more of in their GPUs, but I'm sure it's close to 50/50 on AMD/Nvidia. They can't risk losing half their GPU market by penalties from Nvidia (or all out refusal to sell their chips to ASUS). There's a time to pick your battles.

    As much as we all hate it, this is not one of them. I'm just going to sit back and watch the FTC look into this as a potential anti-trust business practice. I already wrote my Senator and US House Rep just to get something on record. You guys need to do the same. Enough of us spoke out against the wrong information of the GTX 970 and it caused a class action lawsuit went to a federal district court to take action giving we owners money back (it took a year, but I got my two checks for my 970s). The difference here is that this is a potential anti-trust violation and that's what raises FTC eyebrows.
    Reply
  • DragonAsta
    I hope the AIB really stick it to Nvidia basically "cool you made us give you our gpu branding that we took years and many millions of dollars to build, no problem, we also support AMD because they aren't greedy mofos like you are, so we are also making sure they get the best cooling we can possibly give them you want to steal our brand name for you own use, no problem, do not be upset when the AMD brands are bar none a superior solution"

    in other words, they really need to stop being Ngreedia and do what they claim to do and put the gamer first, get rid of all the proprietary BS and support more open source stuff which costs a fraction if anything and they can get and give benefit just the same.

    greedy mofos why people throw $$$$$$$$$$$$$ at them (Nvidia/Ngreedia) and their stock valuation is much higher on a P/E basis than other companies that are WAY better is beyond my understanding basically rewarding them for their shoddy quality control proprietary BS as well as patting them on the back for never admitting to whatever mistakes you catch them doing.

    screw Nv...glad to see at least some of the AIB are fighting back in the ways they can (Dell and HP absolutely refused to support GPP) and I do hope that they get at least some pay the courts big$$$$$$$$$ even get refused to ship into their countries for X amount of time as a "thanks for playing stupid"

    ^.^
    Reply