Demand for mainstream graphics card recently began picking up, driven by Intel’s integrated chipset shortage, according to Paul Sun, general manager of Nvidia Taiwan Sales.

The rising demand is expected to contribute an additional one million graphics card shipments to the industry every month in the second half of this year, Sun said.

Currently, only ATI Technologies provides an integrated PCIe-supporting chipset equivalent to Intel’s 915G/GL integrated chipsets, sources at motherboard makers noted. Integrated chipsets from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies are not slated for mass production until the fourth quarter of this year, at the earliest.

In addition, motherboard makers are not satisfied with the graphics performance of integrated chipsets on the AGP platform, so the motherboard makers are now placing more orders for discrete chipsets, the sources explained.

Source = Digitimes