After a week of darkness about the unseemly row between Abit and Nvidia, we've just received a statement in which it announced its partnership with ATI. It seems that Abit won't use ATI reference design cards and that it will introduce an Abit engineered ATI VGA card, possibly powered with its OTES cooling solutions later on. The statement says that Abit hopes to be able to offer fast ATI-based VGA cards and meet the needs of users "more then ever before" or should it be "more then Nvidia before".
Abit will offer mainstream Radeon 9600XT and top end Radeon 9800XT cards and it is preparing for a next generation of cards including the R420 Loki card and future PCI Express solutions as well. It's still unclear what will happen to the Nvidia VGA line up but I suspect that you won't see any more Nvidia graphic cards from Abit. The first Radeon 9800XT looks extremely like an ATI reference design with Abit sticker but I guess time will wreak its inexorable changes on future designs. When will the cards be available? How much will they cost? Only Abit marketeers and possibly Gypsy Rose Lee know the answers to these questions.
News source: The Inq
