RUMOUR: ASUS Creating AREZ Brand for Radeon Video Cards

New Brand for Radeon Cards

In the wake of NVIDIA‘s GeForce Partner Program, manufacturers are scrambling to create new brands specifically for their non-NVIDIA GPU products. In case you are not aware of what the GeForce Partner Program is, it basically requires their parners to use their existing gaming brands on GeForce cards only. That is if they want to continue receiving support and NVIDIA GPUs. That means that ASUS for example, cannot sell Radeon graphics cards under their Republic of Gamers brand if they want to get NVIDIA GPUs in the future. Which is why MSI and Gigabyte for example, have begun removing the “Gaming” label on their AMD products. The only solution is of course, to create a new one. And according to ASUS sources close to VideoCardz.com, the company is launching Radeon products under a new banner called ‘AREZ’.

How Will This Affect The Naming Standard for ASUS Products?

The GPP stipulation seems to be limited to the sub-brand name such as “Republic of Gamers”, but not the features. So Although we might not see any ASUS AREZ products as part of the ROG family, ASUS is still free to use the Strix name. Although, it might actually drop even the ASUS branding on these parts altogether. The nomenclature and product name of these upcoming parts will change to the following (according to VideoCardz.com): ASUS ROG Strix = AREZ Strix, ASUS Dual = AREZ Dual, ASUS Expedition = AREZ Expedition,ASUS Phoenix = AREZ Phoenix.

The products that are already out in the market are exempt from this, but this is taking effect immediately. Obviously, NVIDIA benefits greatly from the exclusivity of the old branding. These partners have invested a lot already in building those over the years. Most experienced users can still differentiate between AMD and NVIDIA cards. However, many inexperienced system builders are only familiar with old brands and will gravitate to them.