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INTEL IS TO BUY in a bunch of SIS chips to launch two new low-end desktop boards.

In a bid to further diversify its range of products and to spend less time worrying about the razor-thin-margins in the low end of the motherboard market, Intel will buy in the SiS671 and 672 chipsets, according to China's Economic Daily News.

This news comes on the back of another announcement from SiS that its chipsets would be included in a new low-cost PC from Dell. That's lower cost, in fact, since the cheaper-than-Dell Dell machine will be designed for so-called emerging markets.

Between the Dell order and Intel's new-found desire to stop fiddling with cheapo chipsets, SiS should see its chipset shipments climb about 50%, according to sources. That rather indicates how few it was shipping in the first place. Honestly, who do you know that has a SiS chipset in their machine?

Like Intel's low-end parts, the 672 and 671 both have integrated graphics functionality, although performance is even worse than Intel's graphics core (yes, we never thought we'd say that either).