Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) gets closer to NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Computer graphics cards maker NVIDIA Corporation(NASDAQ:NVDA) has been engaged by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to provide its Kepler-based discrete graphics solutions for its desktop range.

At the launch event on Tuesday Apple unveiled a 13 inch retina MacBook Pro and an updated iMac desktop line, which has the Nvidia graphics card.

According to Seeking Alpha, "Apple is really pushing aggressive display resolutions in its notebooks, tablets, and now its desktops. While integrated graphics is certainly capable of competently driving such high resolutions for basic web surfing, more advanced multi-media applications and games will want as much graphical horsepower and fast on-board graphics memory as possible."

It is basically competition between integrated graphics as provided by Intel and discrete graphics provided by Nvidia, for high resolution displays.

There's a market for both, though some fear that Intel's integrated graphics chips such as the upcoming `Haswell' will drive graphics makers such as Nvidia into a peripheral role.

Users of discrete add-in boards are those who are into heavy-duty gaming and professionals who need as much graphical horsepower as they can get.

What Apple is seeking to do is make the need for discrete graphics much more widely acceptable. If Apple makes high-end graphics more commonly available on its desktop products, other computer makers such as Dell and HP will have no other choice than to follow suit.

"There will be a more widespread push to higher resolution displays on the desktop/all-in-one side of things, especially targeted towards the multimedia crowd," Seeking Alpha said.

"The creativity that the PC OEMs are showing with the "Ultrabooks" in the fight against Apple is refreshing, and I expect this to extend to the all-in-one PC side of things," Ashraf Eassa wrote.