AMD was once considering purchasing NVidia and not ATI, so claim a cabal of former AMD employees.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to Forbes, these employees claim that AMD was actively courting NVidia for acquisition. The hold up for AMD, however, was that NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang insisted that as a condition of the deal he be made chief executive of the combined company.

When the AMD-ATI deal was first signed in 2006 – for a cool $5.4 billion – technology analysts and pundits pondered whether the deal was the right move. Despite AMD’s corporate governance troubles, the deal eventually turned out to be a success: AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 is the fastest single-GPU card on the market.

Should AMD have acquired NVidia instead, Mr. Huang would have replaced former CEO Hector Ruiz who, while taking the company off “death watch” according to technology journalist Tim Eaton, resigned in disgrace after AMD reported its seventh quarterly loss in 2008.

Currently, AMD owns a larger share of the graphics market than NVidia with the company taking 24.8 percent compared to NVidia’s 15.7.