Intel Corp., the world’s largest maker of processors, chipsets and other semiconductors, and ATI Technologies, one of the world’s largest makers of graphics processors, are rumoured to launch a co-marketing initiative to promote the recently unveiled PCI Express bus.

According to a report from DigiTimes, Intel will bundle ATI’s "own-brand" RADEON X600-series graphics cards with PCI Express x16 interface with its mainboards based on i925X and i915P chipsets. Clients of Intel will get $20 - $30 discounts from every bundle compared to the aggregated price of the mainboard and the graphics card separately.

The initiative will be called “Driving Change” and will kick off on the 2^nd of August, 2004. The target of the campaign is to promote PCI Express technology along with new processors, chipsets and DDR2 memory among system integrators who buy mainboards from Intel.

It is necessary to point out that current costs of DDR2 SDRAM memory are likely to erode the $20 - $30 of discount, which is why systems with PCI Express x16 graphics will still be more expensive compared to computers with AGP 8x graphics cards inside.

The move is likely to put some pressure on companies offering i925X and i915P mainboards as well as makers of RADEON X600 graphics cards, as some system integrators may prefer to use bundles from Intel instead of acquiring different components from different companies.

Intel and ATI representatives did not comment on the story.