This month in the Labs we’ve mostly been testing graphics cards, and you’ll be able to read the results when the next issue of Pro is published in January. But I don’t think I’m giving too much away by revealing it’s not particularly happy reading for Nvidia.

Put simply, Nvidia’s desktop department is having a torrid time of it right now: when its own chipsets aren’t faulty they’re generally slower than ATI’s; and when they’re not faulty or slower than ATI’s, they are dearer, which negates any advantage they might have had.

It’s a cyclical thing. ATI had its troubled times before the HD 3000 cards arrived, and when new technology arrives the situation may well reverse again. But for evidence of where the strength lies you should alway look to the board partners – and it’s a one-way surge right now.

Today sees the news that XFX, as green as they come, has signed a deal to also ship ATI cards. And the gushing comments we’ve read accompanying the news leave us in no doubt as to who the partners are currently cosying up to. XFX’s defection follows Nvidia stalwarts eVGA and Gainward, and leaves the two graphics card manufacturers about level for exclusive partners, with a mere handful each.

In these credit-crunched times it may also be simply a case of getting cards to as many consumers as possible, so it won’t be entirely down to Nvidia’s current predicament, but the rave reviews on the red side surely can’t have helped.

And Nvidia almost seems resigned to its current fate, diverting most of its recent energies into promoting the excellent integrated graphics chipset in the last MacBooks, as well as its Ion platform to bring that chip into netbooks.

But it’s graphics cards the company is best known for, and so much now rests on the next major progression in the GeForce range. Whether Nvidia actually has something close to completion, and whether it’ll be enough to fight back, remain to be seen.