German web-site reports about a local store selling ATI RADEON graphics cards made by MSI and sold under MSI’s own brand-name. This is the first evidence of partnership between Microstar International and ATI Technologies in the field of add-in graphics cards.

tecCHANNEL web-site claims that Alternate.de sells retail graphics cards from MSI based on RADEON 9200 SE, RADEON 9600 SE and RADEON 9800 PRO graphics processors. All products are equipped with 128MB of DDR SDRAM memory and are priced at 59, 89 and 256 Euros respectively.

MSI have always been one of the main partners of NVIDIA Corporation – the arch-rival of ATI Technologies – whose market share is just 0.2% below than that of Markham, Ontario-based graphics company. Besides graphics cards, MSI has been one of the premier suppliers of NVIDIA nForce2-based mainboards to system integrators.

Microstar International shipped about 700 thousand of graphics cards monthly, a bit below its level of shipments in late 2002. The company reportedly wants to sharply increase shipments of graphics cards starting from the second quarter of the year. To catalyze the growth in demand for its products, MSI was expected to add Powered by ATI SKUs into the lineup of retail graphics cards it sells.

Officials from ATI Technologies and Microstar International did not comment on the story.


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