Rumor: Asus releases AMD Radeon GPUs under separate Arez brand

According to a rumor, Asus plans to release its AMD Radeon GPUs under a new brand name, Arez. As a result, they would no longer bear the Republic of Gamers brand name. The company would only use it for its Nvidia cards.

Videocardz writes that it is currently a rumor and claims that it obtained the information directly from Asus. The site also considers it possible that the Arez cards will no longer bear the Asus brand name at all, in addition to the possible removal of the ROG designation.

So the name change means that there will be no Arez ROG Strix card, but an Arez Strix. In the past, there were cards from Asus that bore the name Ares. These were dual GPU cards. The new name would only differ by replacing the letter ‘s’.

The news follows actions by manufacturers such as Gigabyte and MSI, who seem to distance their gaming brands from AMD. For example, an external video card from Gigabyte only has the designation Aorus in the case of the Nvidia variant and this name is missing from the AMD version, which is called RX 580 Gaming Box. At MSI, Radeon cards from the Gaming X series can no longer be found via the overview on the website, it only contains models in, for example, the Armor series.

That’s in line with HardOCP reporting claiming that an Nvidia program called the GeForce Partners Program or GPP would require participants to associate their gaming brands exclusively with Nvidia. If they don’t, the manufacturers lose certain benefits, the site claimed. This includes so-called ‘marketing development funds’ that Nvidia pays out to GPP participants. So far no evidence of this has been released, but actions by manufacturers do indeed indicate that they link their game brands to Nvidia GPUs. If Asus is going to release AMD cards under a different name, that would be another example of that.

Hardware.info asked Asus for comment on the Videocardz message, but has not yet received a response. Nvidia told the site it would not respond “to any question about GPP.”

New designations according to Videocardz rumours