Part ATI and part AMD branded (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) On this day in 2006, AMD confirmed its acquisition of graphics chip firm ATI . AMD stumped up a cash and stock deal worth a total of $5.4B for the Canadian PC graphics innovators. With 20/20 vision now 20 years on, we can see the deal helped AMD prosper on three fronts: continuation and innovation of Radeon GPUs, the rise of the APU, and AMD’s dominance in the console business. That’s not all, of course, and it is also interesting to recall that AMD approached Nvidia before it bought ATI. AMD CEO Hector Ruiz and ATI CEO Dave Orton appeared together in New York on the morning of July 24, 2006, to publicly announce the deal.…