ArtX was a company formed in 1997 by a group of engineers from Silicon Graphics, Inc. that worked on the Nintendo 64's graphics chip. Focused on delivering a PC graphics chip that was high performance and cost effective, they would be able to instantly compete with the giants in the industry, 3DFX and nVidia. David Orton who was head of Silicon Graphics' advanced-graphics division, was appointed Present of ArtX who has now become CEO of ATi Technologies. They demonstrated their first graphics chipset, the ArtX1 at Comdex in the fall of 1999. ArtX was contracted to create a graphics chipset (called the "Flipper chip") for Nintendo's next generation gameconsole, the GameCube.
The company was acquired by ATi Technologies, Inc. in February 2000 for $400 million dollars in stock options. ArtX paved the way for the development of the R300 graphics chipset from ATi, which was the chipset that turned ATi Technologies into the leader in graphics chipsets. ATi closely rivals the nVidia Corporation in an intense race for the fastest, and most advanced graphics processor.