Almost all the things we call new are just those things we managed to forget about. ECS this year prepares to launch a bunch of mainboards with a graphics processor installed on their PCBs. I have not heard about such products for about two or three years now, but I definitely remember that mainboards of such kind appeared first about ten, or, maybe, a bit less years ago.

This Chinese web-site unveiled that in the near future ECS will launch its P4S8AG, K7S7AG, L4VXAG/L4VXAG2 and K7VTA3G based on SIS648, SIS746, VIA P4X400 and KT333 (CF) core-logic sets respectively for Socket A and Socket 478 processors. Of course, all of them feature the latest I/O controllers and integrated sound and LAN chips as well. What is the most important thing about the forthcoming products is that the first three of them are equipped with Xabre200 graphics processor, while the remaining [L4VXAG2 and K7VTA3G] feature the RADEON 9100 (former 8500LE) GPU, hence, being able to show blazing speed in 3D-games! All mainboards are equipped with 64MB of DDR SDRAM for graphics in order not to affect system RAM performance. Since the mainboards feature a lot of different integrated things, there are not a lot of expansion capabilities, for example, all of them lack the AGP slot.

Another thing to point out from this news-story is the fact that ECS may have chosen to built graphics cards powered by graphics processors developed by ATI Technologies. If you remember, in late November we told you that the company had plans to build higher-end graphics cards (see this news-story), though at that point it was unclear whether they will use ATI or NVIDIA GPUs. Not it seems that the company decided to utilise ATI chips, but bear in mind that no official confirmations have been issued so far.