Creative to buy 3Dlabs - New graphics warrior born?

Creative Labs has agreed to buy 3Dlabs for $103 million in stock and cash. The company already owns 1.8 million shares in 3Dlabs. Creative, a $1.7 billion dollar powerhouse on the Singapore stock exchange and still the reigning king of computing retail channels, is looking to be a competitive player in the graphics market. Having been burned by both 3dfx and nVidia, Creative has struggled to grow its graphics business and leverage the muscle it has as a result of its strength in audio. Now, Creative has its own graphics chip company, although 3Dlabs is known more for its high-end workstation graphics than anything else. However, 3Dlabs was facing stiff competition from ATI and nVidia coming at the workstation market with low cost solutions of their own, FireGL and Quadro4. This is really interesting stuff.