ATI Technologies Inc. today announced the addition of the RADEON 9700 PRO graphics board, featuring the RADEON 9700 PRO visual processing unit (VPU), to its successful retail lineup. Based on the RADEON 9700 series VPUs introduced in July, the RADEON 9700 PRO board will deliver breakneck performance to the gaming and enthusiast market.

"In this fast paced industry, customers demand that products ship soon after announcement," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, Marketing and General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. "We are on target for our mid-August shipping date, when customers will be able to experience first hand the major innovations that the RADEON 9700 VPUs deliver to gaming and the computer graphics industry."

Featuring eight parallel rendering pipelines, complete Microsoft DirectX 9 support, AGP 8X support and a fully programmable floating point architecture, the RADEON 9700 PRO leads the industry into a new era of cinematic-quality real time graphics.

ATI will begin shipping the RADEON 9700 PRO board to retail customers and distributors beginning August 19, where it will join the recently introduced RADEON 9000 PRO, and ATI's other strong retail products in stores and online. RADEON 9700 PRO boards will be available from ATI's board partners later this month.

Other retail products based on the RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9000
architectures will be introduced later this year.