ATI unveils Radeon X800

ATI today announced the Radeon X800 Visual Processing Unit. The new Radeon X800 offers 16 pixel pipelines, double that of the previous generation's Radeon 9700/9800 architecture, and two additional vertex units.

Manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's low-k, 0.13 micron process, the Radeon X800 is able to reach higher clock speeds than ATI's last generation Radeon 9800 XT graphics processor.

"The RADEON X800 builds on the great success of the RADEON 9700 and RADEON 9800, the most sought-after high-end visual processors in the world," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President Marketing, General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc.

In ATI's initial release, the Radeon X800 will be available in two variations. The Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition will feature a full 16-pixel pipeline clocked at 520MHz and will be coupled with 256MB of 560MHz (1.12GHz effective) GDDR3 memory. The Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition will have an MSRP of $499 and will ship later this month.

The $399 Radeon X800 Pro will have a 12-pixel pipeline clocked at 475MHz and will feature 256MB of 450MHz (900MHz effective) GDDR3 memory. ATI states that the Radeon X800 Pro is shipping immediately, but the actual time before mass availability will be a "few weeks" according to one graphics card manufacturer.

System builders ABS, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Velocity Micro, VoodooPC and ZT Group will offer high-performance system configurations featuring the Radeon X800. Graphics card manufacturers shipping Radeon X800 based products include ABIT, ASUS, Celestica, Club 3D, Connect 3D, Creative, Diamond, Elsa, FIC, Gigabyte, Hightech Information Systems, Info-Tek, MSI, Sapphire, Tul, VisionTek, Xpertvision and Yuan.

For more information on ATI's new Radeon X800, check out our ATI Radeon X800 Hands-On Preview.