Preview : ATI's All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro

ATI says that the AIW 9700 Pro will ship in late October or early November, so it should be on shelves in time for most holiday shoppers. Yup, another paper launch. The Radeon 9700 Pro is already out and has been for a while now, so there's no reason to believe that ATI will have problems or delays tacking on the AIW's AV and PVR components. Even this release schedule should put considerable pressure on NVIDIA, who have yet to formally announce their NV30. Initial NV30-based cards probably won't support even the current Personal Cinema incarnation.

As you might expect, the AIW 9700 Pro won't be cheap when it finally arrives. ATI is shooting for a price tag under $500. For a card that doesn't support multiple monitors in any really meaningful way and lacks a Firewire port, the price is pretty steep. But the AIW 9700 Pro has no truly comparable competition, especially on the GPU level. The closest competitor is Compro's GeForce4 Ti 4600 Personal Cinema, but that costs $449, and calling it a competitor is a bit of a stretch. ATI has already dropped the price of its AIW Radeon 8500DV to only $199, which is a steal of a deal considering you get a Remote Wonder, Firewire support, and a fully DirectX 8.1-compatible GPU for only $10 more than a Personal Cinema version of NVIDIA's GeForce4 MX 440.