Diamond Multimedia, a supplier of graphics cards from the U.S. , said Thursday that it had no plans to release AGP version of its ATI RADEON X1800-based graphics cards to the market. The firm said that the advertising which was shown on its web-site during the weekend was a typo.

“RADEON X1800-series for AGP will not be available at this point. There has been a misprint on our website. We are fixing it,” said Linda Waty, a spokeswoman for Diamond Multimedia.

Diamond Multimedia advertised its Diamond Viper ATI RADEON X1800 graphics cards with AGP 8x and PCI Express x16 support on its web-site. The page noted that the products were expected to be available in November, 2005, but did not indicate any details.

ATI RADEON X1800 XL and XT graphics processors feature native PCI Express x16 interface, thus, to make a graphics card with AGP 8x based on the chip will require a special PCI Express-to-AGP bridge called ATI Rialto. Earlier this year numerous makers of graphics cards used Rialto to make RADEON X800 XL and RADEON X800 GTO-based graphics cards for AGP using Rialto bridge. While there are no technical restrictions to integrate the Rialto bridge onto the RADEON X1800 XL graphics card, there hardly would be demand for such parts.

“With Rialto, ATI have made the technology available to our partners to create whichever AGP products they believe will work in their markets. If, in 2006, you do not see any new AGP cards that cost over $400, then you have to assume that the add-in-card makers have decided that the market is not there anymore. PCI cards still sell to this day, but only at the very low end. Over time, the same will be true of AGP,” Andrzej Bania, a spokesman for ATI said.

Minimal batch of graphics cards at a manufacturer is about 5000 - 10 000 units, it is unlikely that there would be demand for that amount of graphics cards that cost about $400 or more.