The relationship between computer giant Dell and Nvidia has been distressed, to say the least, in recent times. On top of numerous issues with hardware failures, Dell has had to extend warranties just to keep customers happy, with the majority of the problems tracing back to mistakes made by the graphics firm. It came to a head when Nvidia eventually agreed to shell out $10 million to Dell earlier this year, though this was not widely known about until recently.

All those troubles have apparently worn Dell out. Without official confirmation it's still largely a rumor, but it appears that Nvidia's time with Dell might be over - at least temporarily. On their desktop lineups, Dell seems to be phasing out Nvidia hardware, with only certain XPS and AIO models showing their cards as options. Newer models appearing on their site have a wider selection of AMD-based cards as well, indicating that as existing models are replaced, their successors may lack Nvidia options altogether.

This is a bad sign for the company, who has up until recently been enjoying a comfortable lead over AMD/ATI. Much of Nvidia's growth has come from mobile GPUs, which is where most of their problems have been stemming from - and some believe it's possible that Apple may be getting itchy feet regarding GeForce as well. Not all is lost, of course. Nvidia is no slouch, and will certainly work hard to recover from last year's misfortunes. We may first see AMD take a larger piece of the market, though, as Nvidia works out a new game plan.