Despite of earlier anxiety, ATI’s new high-end  part RADEON X800 PRO is gaining momentum in retail across the world. Right now the graphics cards are available in the USA and Japan as well as some graphics cards makers are preparing the push of their products later this month in other regions.

ATI RADEON X800 PRO graphics solution is ATI Technologies’ new product to serve $399 price-point, something that is very close to the company’s top-of-the-line graphics offering, but that is still a little bit less powerful. The RADEON X800 PRO chip contains 12 pixel pipelines with 6 geometry pipelines and is clocked at 475MHz. The graphics card itself comes with 256MB of 256-bit 2.0ns GDDR3 memory as well as D-Sub, DVI, TV-Out and optional VIVO connector.

Akiba PC Hotline web-site reports that certain stores in Tokyo, Japan, are now selling RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards from Sapphire Technology. Earlier it was reported that the first batch of the RADEON X800 PRO will retail in Tokyo only on the 14^th of May. The novelty is priced at $477 to $537, which is considerably more expensive compared to officially recommended price of $399.

A spokesman from Sapphire Technology in Moscow, Russia, said that the company plans to start selling RADEON X800 PRO-based graphics cards in middle-East, Russia and Asia in the second half of the month.

Numerous US-based stores, including CompUSA, Allstarshop, US-Depot and some others are selling the RADEON X800 PRO for $430 to $509, which is also substantially more compared to MSRP of $399. The availability at this point is still pretty limited.

Even though the RADEON X800 PRO graphics cards are pretty overpriced at the moment, the products deliver the highest performance that money can buy today. Albatron, an NVIDIA Corporation’s add-in graphics cards partner, promises to bring its high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra offering sometimes next week to Japan and Taiwan, while the USA and the EU are likely to get the products later. Club3D, a European graphics company, said it would ship the GeForce 6800 Ultra in the second half of June. ATI’s RADEON top-of-the-line SKU RADEON X800 XT is also slated for release only next month, according to sources. Once the high-end products are available, the price of the RADEON X800 PRO will dip.