XFX to Begin Selling ATI Graphics Cards

It’s been long-rumored, but today it’s official: XFX will begin producing ATI graphics cards. For the most part, this isn’t a surprising move, as having both company’s GPUs in your inventory is going to increase your overall sales, and given that ATI’s been impressing everyone lately, it’s hard to deal with only NVIDIA, it seems. The new relationship begins now, and the first products will be seen next month.

It’s not currently known whether XFX is going to carry ATI’s lower-end cards off the get-go, or stick to the 4800-series, but that’s all that’s mentioned in the press release. I’m sure we will be seeing a nice HD 4870 X2 release though, perhaps an XXX or Black Edition model, at the launch, along with the single-GPU HD 4850 and 4870 cards.

The question now is whether or not XFX will be the sole company to decide to move to providing both GPUs. Other companies, like ASUS and Palit, have been providing both for a while, and it seems to be working out well for them, so unless NVIDIA delivers blowout cards with their GTX 285 and 295, or is able to sweet talk these vendors, we might see more of this happening.

“In the world of PC gaming, XFX is synonymous with the extreme performance that enthusiasts crave,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “Their decision to partner with AMD and launch AMD GPU-based XFX graphics cards, including the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, widely regarded as the world’s fastest graphics card1 by technology enthusiasts around the world, speaks to the level of excellence achieved by the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series.”