ATI nosed past Nvidia last quarter to retake its long-lost leadership of the graphics chip market, according to figures from market watcher Mercury Research cited in a Goldman Sachs customer report.

Nvidia needn't worry too much, and ATI has no room to get cocky. The latter's Q4 2003 market share was 24.9 per cent - Nvidia's was 24.7 per cent.

Those figures cover the wider graphics hardware business, in which both were behind Intel, which took 31.7 per cent of the market, thanks to strong sales of its integrated-graphics chipsets.

Intel's share was down 3.3 percentage points on the previous quarter. ATI's was up 3.9 points. Nvidia's overall share remained static, dropping a mere 0.3 per cent. However, the company did lose share in the standalone graphics chip arena, largely to ATI. ®