Two First-Tier mainboard companies today broadened their lineups of graphics cards with products powered by NVIDIA and ATI Technologies. With today’s announcements both ASUS and Gigabyte are now offering two totally different product lines to their customers: an NVIDIA-based one and ATI-based one.

ASUSTeK Computer, a leading mainboard maker, today announced its NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and GeForce FX 5700-based graphics cards to compliment ATI RADEON 9800 XT and other ATI-powered family launched early October. The new products carry 256MB of DDR SDRAM memory onboard and offer typical set of output connectors – D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out. ASUS’ V9980 and V9570 equipped with NV38 and NV36 graphics processors respectively are clocked at 475/950MHz and 425/550MHz for core and memory, according to 3DChips-fr.

Gigabyte Technology, who recently re-joined the list of NVIDIA add-in-card partners with its GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and other powerful GPUs from the Santa Clara, California-based GPU designer, today also reiterated its commitment to ATI Technologies by showcasing its RADEON 9800 XT and 9600 XT products. The solutions are made fully according to specifications proposed by Markham, Ontario-based ATI Technologies.

So to make their products more valuable to their customers, Gigabyte and ASUS will bundle their special multimedia software as well as modern games with the new GeForce and RADEON devices.

The graphics card manufacturers now have two product families using the latest chips from NVIDIA and ATI. This may potentially help them to increase their sales by addressing previously unavailable customers. On the other hand, competition between Gigabyte and ASUS will be substantially fiercer.

Actual pricing and availability timeframes of the mentioned products were not announced and may vary depending on the region of the world.