XFX, a division of Pine Technologies, will reportedly cease exclusive sales of Nvidia-branded graphics cards and will start shipping products based on ATI Radeon HD graphics processing units (GPUs). If the information is correct, then it emphasizes that market positions of ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, are improving.

XFX will bring to market a range of ATI Radeon HD graphics cards early in 2009, according to a news-story at Hexus.net web-site. It remains to be seen whether XFX will bring to market its well-known heavily factory-overclocked XXX-edition ATI Radeon HD graphics cards, or will only offer standard products only. It is reported that the formal announcement will be made on Tuesday, December 16, 2008.

Even though the market share of XFX is hardly high, it is a rather popular brand name among enthusiasts that can further popularize ATI Radeon brand among gamers. Moreover, if XFX brings substantially faster Radeon graphics cards to market, they will pressure a lot of pre-overclocked Nvidia GeForce adapters that are available widely.

In fact, XFX has dropped exclusive usage of Nvidia GeForce and Nvidia nForce chips on its products with the release of Intel chipset based mainboards. The company currently ships at least one Intel G31-based mainboard and it is highly likely that the range will be expanded along with the expansion of XFX’s motherboard business.

A number of Nvidia Corp.'s partners have decided to drop exlusivity to the company in the recent months after ATI unveiled its Radeon HD 4800-series GPUs. Nevertheless, in Q3 2008 Nvidia commanded 60% of the market of standalone graphics chips for desktop computers. At present Nvidia still has a number of partners who maintains exclusive sales of Nvidia GeForce graphics cards, including BFG Technologies, EVGA Corp. and Leadtek Research.

XFX and ATI/AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: XFX, ATI, AMD, Radeon, Nvidia, Geforce, Nforce, Intel