In a bid to win benchmarks, reviews and look more competitive in the eyes of end-users, ATI Technologies recommended its partners to overclock graphics cards based on the Radeon X1000-series chips. Potentially, this may allow some of ATI’s partners to earn more money by shipping higher-end products, but for smaller makers such policy may create difficulties.

According to a slide published by HKEPC web-site, which is a part of ATI Technologies’ document seen earlier by X-bit labs, the Markham, Ontario-based graphics chip designer would not limit its partners with recommended clock-speeds for its products and would allow them to overclock Radeon X1000-series graphics chips to the maximum considered by the supplier of the board.

Add-in card partners still have to brand the graphics card according to the branding of the chip (e.g., not based on the clock-speed) and implement an efficient cooling system, as thermally stressed GPUs will not be covered by ATI’s warranty. Additionally, the partners will not be able to lower clock-speeds from those recommended by ATI.

Several partners of ATI Technologies, such as Asustek Computer and Sapphire Technologies, have already launched Radeon X1800-series and Radeon X1900-series graphics cards with increased clock-speeds.

Some of Nvidia Corp.’s partners have been selecting graphics cards and chips with high overclocking potential, tweaked BIOS and shipped at higher price points for years. However, such practices usually cost additional money and efforts and usually inspire demand towards pre-overclocked products, not graphics cards at standard speed. For large makers of graphics cards this is not an issue, as their brand-names are well-known, but smaller makers have to create demand for every specific product either with increased performance, or with low price.  Makers of pre-overclocked components should differentiate their products very clearly in terms of pricing in order to sustain demand for standard versions of their products.

ATI Technologies did not comment on the news-story.