XFX moves in with ATI

Now rooming with NVIDIA. They're the original odd couple!

There's been some rumours, hearsay and conjecture floating around the interwebs over the past week about the status of the then NVIDIA-only manufacturer, XFX. Until now, they've been sole manufacturers of NVIDIA products, and have been synonymous with the green graphics giant.

Seems the time has come where NVIDIA's products are no longer sufficient to satisfy XFX, and they've formed a deal with AMD/ATI to begin producing ATI cards in early 2009. XFX's support and bundling is usually very good, so we're interested to see what they think they can bring to the game that isn't already out from someone else.

While we're not sure why this move has happened, we can only assume that economic pressure coupled with ATI's current dominance of the graphics market meant that stress had been placed on the company, giving them reason and motivation to look to other arenas for increased profit. We've spoken with XFX reps, and they've been unsurprisingly vague about the reasons.

The rep did say there are new cards on the horizon, however. XFX has done some great things with their bundles recently, offering top flight games instead of the usual budget-bin offerings. Hopefully the new ATI releases will follow this trend.

The situation doesn't seem as peachy for NVIDIA, who now only have BFG and EVGA as the only manufacturers who solely make NVIDIA products - and we know that there were rumours about EVGA considering doing exactly this only a few months back.

Ultimately this can only be a good thing for us enthusiasts - more graphics cards in the market will mean that competition will become more intense, driving prices down further, or at least giving us bundles that are actually worth considering. And no matter which team you bat for, red or green, you'll be able to get either of them from XFX. If there's any updates on this situation, we'll keep you posted.