ATI last month made a bit of a song and dance about its new RADEON 9700 graphics accelerator family, or visual processing unit, as the firm likes to call it.

Today, Canada's biggest graphics chip maker announced its first retail product based on the chip, the RADEON(TM) 9700 PRO Graphics Board. It has a suggested retail price of US$399, has 128MB of DDR memory, and it starts shipping to shops in North America from Aug 19.

ATI reckons it has leapfrogged Nvidia with the 9700 card, and test samples have reviewed (or should that be previewed?) well. Here's Tom's Hardware's first take on the 9700.

In Europe, ATI sells in the European retail channel, exclusively (at least officially)through Guillemot. So we guess the games nuts will have to wait a little longer for product.

ATI plans more retail launches based on the 9000 and 9700 families later this year, but that's all the info is dishing out right now. ®