Creative Labs is among the most-respected and well-recognized vendors of multimedia PC hardware. The company that invented the legendary Sound Blaster is still considered as the indisputable leader in the field of multimedia, even though nowadays it does not manufacture the greater part of its products and some of its devices lack certain important features available on competitors’ offerings. Nonetheless, hardware from Creative is still quite nice and popular, hence, the brand is still an interesting opportunity for selling hardware. Reportedly, Creative Labs will soon start to sell Powered by ATI graphics cards in Europe.

Last year the Asian subsidiary of Creative Technology began to offer its clients RADEON 9700 PRO graphics cards, while the European division of the company said it had not plans to vend Powered by ATI graphics products, but to stick to NVIDIA, who has excellent marketing and advertising. What I have just learned from The Inquirer is that Creative Labs Europe will go with ATI RADEON hardware, but so far there is no information whether the company wants to drop NVIDIA or not.

Creative Labs America, who has not been too aggressive in graphics cards promotion in the recent years, is under question mark concerning Powered by ATI products.

It is very important to point out that Creative Labs does not manufacture graphics cards it sells. Asian division resells devices made by CP Technology, PC Partner or others, while the European subsidiary resells MSI graphics cards. There is no information who will manufacture Creative Labs’ RADEON goods, but it can be either CP Technology or MSI, at least, both have enough experience in manufacturing Powered by ATI RADEON parts as well as ties with Creative Technology.

In 2002 and 2003 ATI Technologies managed to sign a lot of contracts with different OEMs and AIB makers. Likewise, more and more well-respected graphics card makers go on to offer products based on the highly-acclaimed RADEON 9600 and 9800-series of VPUs. The trend is very positive for ATI Technologies because more partners in different markets mean better sales.