At least one online store is offering its clients to pre-order a yet unannounced ATI RADEON X800 PRO graphics card. The web-shop is promising that the products will be available in stock on the 7^th of May, 2004.

ATI Technologies reportedly plans to roll-out various versions of the code-named R420 VPU branded as RADEON X800 PRO, RADEON X800 XT, RADEON X880 XT and RADEON X800 SE. The solutions will enable different number of rendering pipelines: 12, 16, 16, 8 and will function at different clock-speeds that are still to be decided. Higher-end graphics cards, such as RADEON X800 PRO, X800 XT and X880 XT will have 256 or 512MB of GDDR3 memory functioning at clock-speed in the range of 1000MHz. The performance-mainstream offering RADEON X800 SE will use memory with 128-bit bus that is clocked at lower clock-speed compared to high-end products.

The RADEON X800 XT is ATI’s highest-end offering, which pricing is typically on the $499 point. The RADEON X800 PRO is something that delivers lower performance and that is usually priced at $399. The remaining flavour of the new ATI’s graphics technology – the RADEON X800 SE – will be offered for performance-mainstream and eventually mainstream market segments and is likely to be priced at $299 or below.

Allstarshop.com online store is offering the “Built by ATI” RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards for $499, a higher price-point that is likely to be for this particular SKU. The product is equipped with 256MB of memory, D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out connectors.

The fact of the offering may imply that ATI is likely to be fast-to-market with its new graphics processors, in contrast to rival NVIDIA Corporation whose official plans claim about late May availability of the GeForce 6800-series graphics cards. However, some of NVIDIA’s add-in graphics cards partners want to be in the market with their new offerings already in early May.

Nevertheless, even if some high-end graphics cards based on the latest processors from NVIDIA and ATI are looming into the market already in the first half of May, there will be a question whether this is actually a volume availability of the parts, or selling of a very limited batch just to make customers looking for the products.