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At least one add-in board manufacturing partner of ATI Technologies, a leading supplier of graphics processors, is planning to begin shipments of graphics cards for accelerated graphics port (AGP) bus that are based on the company’s latest Radeon X1950 Pro graphics processing unit.

Several online stores are currently taking orders on GeCube Radeon X1950 Pro for AGP 8x bus graphics cards. The novelty has the same specifications as its PCI Express counterpart: it has fully fledged Radeon X1950 Pro chip onboard, 256MB of GDDR3 memory, two DVI outputs and so on. Given that the code-named RV570 graphics processing unit (GPU) was designed to work with PCI Express bus, the new board is equipped with a special bridge chip to “converts” PCI Express signals into AGP signals.

UK-based Overclockers.co.uk online store is currently offering GeCube Radeon X1950 Pro AGP version for £187.99 ($350) including value added tax (VAT), meanwhile, numerous Germany-based stores offer to preorder the same board for €218 – €242 ($273 - $303).

ATI Technologies said that the AGP 8x version of the Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card was designed by itself and it provided reference designs to the add-in card suppliers. The official recommended price for the part is higher compared to PCI Express version of the product.

The new ATI Radeon X1950 Pro AGP products are likely to become the fastest add-in graphics accelerators for outdated personal computers with AGP 8x slot, but their success on the market is uncertain, as those, who seek for truly high performance graphics cards are very likely to own a computer with a PCI Express x16 slot. This is the first high-performance offering for accelerated graphics port from ATI in two years, as previously the company downplayed the importance of AGP upgrade market.