Asus and Gigabyte have formally announced a plan to create a joint-venture to market their motherboards and graphics cards under the Gigabyte brand. The JV's own name has yet to be decided, the partners admitted today.

Whatever it's called, it will go into action on 1 January 2007. Gigabyte will own 51 per cent of the new firm, the rest by Asus. Gigabyte also gets to pick the chair of the board and all but two of the board's other members.

The move is all about competing more effectively with rivals like MSI, Elitegroup and Foxconn.

In March this year, it was claimed MSI and Gigabyte would be merging, though the two companies admitted they had discussed the possibility in the past. ®

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