eXtreme Graphics Innovation reportedly plans to start marketing graphics cards itself later in the year. The motives for the decision are unclear, but the obvious advantages the move may bring is robust quality control and higher gross-margin.

DigiTimes reported that XGI will try not to affect its add-in-card partners with its own graphics cards business, though, it is not clear how the firm plans to accomplish this. Currently XGI partners with ABIT, Chaintech and Triplex, while Tul Corporation decided to withdraw from manufacturing products based on XGI Volari graphics processors. Additionally, XGI inked deals with Chinese manufacturers Hasee Science & Technology and Lian Guan (Crown Electronic Technology).

Some sources said that one of XGI’s shareholders is Asian electronics equipment giant Foxconn, who recently entered channel business. The company produces mainboards, graphics cards as well as loads of other products and may become the largest maker of XGI-based graphics cards, if the information is correct.

In the past four years graphics chip designers gradually withdrew from the market of graphics cards leaving to dedicated makers. The trend to make graphics cards using the company’s own manufacturing emerged in the late nineties when 3dfx and S3 Graphics set up their card-assembly product lines.

Later this year XGI plans to introduce a new lineup of graphics processors with native support for PCI Express x16 and capabilities exceeding DirectX 9.0 requirements.