ATI Technologies, one of the two major GPU makers, has entered the chipset market segment for a boost in its sales revenue from other sources. ATI will also compete against NVIDIA, its archrival for GPUs and now chipsets. These companies will battle each other in the same market segments, as ATI and NVIDIA will only produce chipsets for AMD microprocessors.

ATI’s Radeon Xpress 200 series of chipsets is designed for AMD’s K8, 64-bit, Athlon 64 microprocessors. The chipset is equipped with on-board video, which performs about the same as its PCIe predecessor, X300XT, ATI’s lower-end card of its graphics line. The on-board video also accepts Microsoft’s DirectX 9.0 technology for current most performance.

Since Athlon 64 chips do not support PCIe solutions like Intel, the Xpress 200 chipset will feature standard 32-bit PCI slots for add-on peripherals.

ATI said motherboards based on their new chipset are expected to enter the market soon.

According to CoolTechZone sources, some board makers are unsure of adopting ATI’s Xpress 200 series of chipsets as they are simply confused by ATI’s move.

Numerous publications promoted the new chipset contender to be of high value with commendable performance especially since it’s coming from an original GPU maker. "Congratulations, ATI, you managed to pull it off! The last announcement of Round 3 of the Athlon 64 chipset wars may turn out to be the most significant introduction of all," reported Wesley Fink, Senior Editor, AnandTech.com.