Found this in the ATi Rumor forum.....I figured it was worth reading here. I mean no one believed that the AMD to buy ATi rumor was real either... and they were wrong.

Thanks to N7 for posting this.

    Chip guru AMD has announced that it's going to drop the ATi brand name following its takeover of the Canadian graphics underdog. Gareth Cater from AMD told Custom PC that 'the new company will be called AMD,' meaning that we could shortly be seeing AMD-branded Radeon graphics chips.
    We asked Richard Baker from AMD if this meant that the memorable Radeon name would also be biting the dust, but he replied that 'we haven't made any final decisions yet, but I'd personally be very surprised if we dropped any of those product names. The ATi company name is definitely going, though.'

    Baker stressed that, contrary to what's been reported in the press elsewhere, the acquisition will be a takeover rather than a merger, which means that AMD is going to be wearing the trousers in its relationship. Baker said that 'the company is being bought, so it's fairly standard that the name should go, as it's becoming a part of AMD.'

    Chris Hook from ATi shrugged off the move, saying that 'I don't have a personal emotional attachment to it [the brand], one way or another. I think the important thing is that we're going to make good products. ATi may be gone, but certainly lots of discussion is going to come over the next few days about the rest of our brands and their strengths.' Could the next Radeon chip be AMD branded? Watch this space.


http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/news...ati-brand.html

Believe it or not. Call it a rumor...say it will never happen. Who knows, people said the same thing about the AMD/ATi buy out.

It's just a name. Get over it fanboys...

apparently it was just a rumor.  They're keeping the ATI and radeon names and branding!
heres the link:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060808-7446.html