Rumors were flying today around Wall Street trading desks of a pending Intel buyout of NVIDIA, which helped the graphics company to a hefty raise in shares, but didn't do much to validate the whisperings that have been going around ever since AMD snapped up ATI in July. The word was the deal is supposed to go down tonight, so we'll keep an eye out for sure, but we're not holding our breath. There are reasons aplenty for Intel to stay away from NVIDIA, including a hefty asking price -- about three times that of ATI -- and of course the fact that Intel already has some rather successful integrated graphics thank you very much, so the key reasoning behind the AMD / ATI deal just isn't present here. All the same, it'd be pretty badass to have the two biggest CPU processor manufacturers duking it out with the two biggest GPU manufacturers under their respective wings, so we've got our fingers crossed for some gauntlet throwdown tonight.