ATI Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has
been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000 and the
successor to their Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by
the DirectX generation they support. More specific distinctions can also be followed, such as
the HyperZ version, the number of pixel pipelines,
and of course, the memory and processor clock speeds.
ATI Radeon Processor Generations
| Series |
Graphics APIs support |
Notes |
| Windows |
Other |
| R100 |
DirectX 7.0 |
OpenGL 1.3 |
Was ATI's first graphics processor to be fully DirectX 7 compliant. It was first introduced
in 2000. R100 brought with it large gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through the new HyperZ technology. Initial models included Radeon SDR, DDR and 7000/VE. The final release was the Radeon
7500. |
| R200 |
DirectX 8.1 |
OpenGL 1.4 |
ATI's second generation Radeon. This design included ATI's first programmable shader architecture and introduced pixel shader
1.4, the most advanced shader model prior to 2.0. This line includes Radeon 8500 - 9250. |
| R300 |
DirectX 9.0 |
OpenGL 2.0 |
ATI's breakthrough DirectX 9.0 technology, released in 2002, made ATI the technology leader for several years with its
industry-leading pixel shader 2.0 performance. Included in this generation are Radeon 9500 - 9800, X300 - X600, X1050. |
| R420 |
DirectX 9.0b |
While heavily based upon the previous generation, this line included extensions to the Shader Model 2 feature-set. Shader
Model 2b, the specification ATI and Microsoft defined with this generation, offered somewhat more shader program flexibility.
This generation's technology is used in Radeon X700 - X850. |
| R520 |
DirectX 9.0c |
ATI's DirectX 9.0c series of graphics cards, with complete Shader Model 3.0 support. Launched
in October 2005, this series brought a number of enhancements including the floating point render target technology necessary for
HDR rendering with anti-aliasing.
Cards released include X1300 - X1950. |
| R600 |
DirectX 10.0 |
AMD's first series of ATI Radeon GPUs supporting the Direct3D 10.0 specification and the
company's second graphics solution to employ unified shader technology. Releases of this platform include the HD 2400, HD 2600
and HD 2900. |
Product naming scheme
Since ATI's first DirectX 9-class GPU, the company has followed a naming scheme that relates each product to a market
segment.
- 1, Stream Processors only applicable to Radeon HD 2000 series video cards.
| Product Category |
Card Name
(* denotes wildcard) |
Usual Suffixes |
Price range (USD) |
Shader amount (VS/PS/SPU)1 |
Memory |
Outputs |
Example products |
| Type |
Width
(bit) |
Size (MiB) |
Enthusiast
(high-end) |
**9**
**8** |
XTX, XT,
XT PE, Pro,
GTO |
>$150 |
75-100% |
GDDR3,
GDDR4 |
256-bit/
512-bit |
512/1024 |
Dual DVI with
HDMI (HD 2000 dongle) |
X800, X1950,
HD 2900 |
| Mainstream |
**7**
**6**
**5** |
Pro, SE, XT,
GTO, GT |
$100-$150 |
37.5-75% |
DDR2,
GDDR3,
GDDR4 |
128-bit |
128/256/512 |
D-Sub, DVI
Dual DVI with
HDMI (HD 2000 dongle) |
X700, X1600,
HD 2600 |
| Budget/Value |
**4**
**3**
7x00, 9000, 9200, 9250 |
SE, HM |
<$99 |
25-50% |
DDR2,
GDDR3 |
64-bit |
64/128
(HM: 768/1024) |
D-Sub, DVI |
X300, X1400,
HD 2400 |
Suffix indicate different layers of performance. See ATI Video Card
Suffixes.
Drivers
Windows
The ATI Radeon graphics driver package for Windows operating system is called ATI
Catalyst. The Catalyst software was instituted after the release of the Radeon 8500. This new driver development paradigm at ATI
promised monthly driver updates which included performance enhancements, bug fixes, and new features. As of 2006, the Catalyst
driver package typically included ATI Catalyst Control Center; an interface for manipulating many of the hardware's functions
within Windows XP, such as 3D settings, monitor controls, video options, among other things. It also offered a small 3D preview,
allowing the user to see how changes to the graphics settings affected the quality of the rendered image. The old control panel
interface (within Windows' Display Properties) was previously a fall-back option, but that has been discontinued as of Catalyst
5.13. The Catalyst package can be downloaded in pieces as well, for non-broadband users. For example, the display driver can be
downloaded alone, separated from the Catalyst Control Center and WDM VIVO drivers. The day that Microsoft Vista launched, ATI
provided a Microsoft certified Catalyst driver referenced as Catalyst 7.1
There are also unofficial drivers available such as the Omega drivers or DNA drivers, claiming to boost performance when compared to the official Catalyst. These drivers typically
consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry variables
altered and potentially offer superior performance or quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such are not guaranteed
to function correctly or quantitatively improve functionality (placebo effect). Some of them also provide modified or patched DLL
files for hardware enthusiasts to modify their cards (as 9500non-pro and 9500Pro use the same chips, and 9800SE and 9800 use the
same chips, some of them can be modified by activating all 8 pixel pipelines).
Windows XP Professional x64
ATI has yet to produce mobile 64 bit drivers for the Windows XP x64 Professional operating system. This may be due to a number
of factors. One factor is that most people use the 32-bit version of Windows XP, due not only to video card driver issues, but
other driver compatibility issues as well. Nonetheless, it is possible to obtain a proper driver for this type of setup. In order
to do so, one requires the use of an unsupported application: ModtoolV4 which can be found here. ModtoolV4 is a 3rd party utility
which modifies recent desktop Radeon drivers to work with Mobility Radeon graphics cards (works with Catalyst Control Centre 7.3
- not working with 7.4). Thus, one can download the 64-bit Radeon Catalyst Control Center from ATI's website - running the
install program and cancelling the operation is followed by running ModtoolV4 and selecting the folder where the Catalyst Control
Center and driver were extracted. After execution, the setup for the driver and Catalyst Control Center occurs automatically.
Macintosh
ATI used to only offer driver updates for their retail Mac video cards, but now also offer drivers for all ATI Mac products,
including the GPUs in Apple's portable lines. Apple also includes ATI driver updates whenever they release a new OS update. ATI
provides a preference panel for use in Mac OS X called ATI Displays which can be used both with
retail and OEM versions of their cards. Though it gives more control over advanced features of the graphics chipset, ATI Displays
has limited functionality compared to their Catalyst for Windows product. As Microsoft does not license DirectX for other OS platforms, Mac OS X uses OpenGL exclusively, though in the past with OS 9, Apple used the now-defunct RAVE API.
Linux
Initially, ATI did not produce Radeon drivers for Linux, instead giving hardware specifications
and documentation to Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) developers
under various non-disclosure agreements. ATI has in mid 2004, however, started
to support Linux (XFree86, X.Org), hiring a new Linux driver team to produce fglrx. Their new
proprietary Linux drivers, instead of being a port of the Catalyst drivers, were
based on the Linux drivers for the FireGL (the FireGL drivers worked with Radeons before, but
didn't officially support them), a card geared towards graphics producers, not gamers; though the display drivers part is now
based on the same sources as the ones from Windows Catalyst since version 4.x in late 2004. The proprietary Linux drivers don't
support the R100 chips (Radeon 7000-7500).
The frequency of driver updates increased in late 2004, releasing Linux drivers every 2 months, half as often as their Windows
counterparts. Then since late 2005 this has been increased to monthly releases, inline with the Windows CATALYST releases. On
April 12, 2006, ATI released binary drivers for the ATI R5x0
chips (x1300/x1600/x1800 cards), approximately six months after first releasing these cards.
However the ATI Linux graphics driver is lacking features and has bad performance: The drivers still do not provide modern
compositing technologies (AIGLX) as used in
recent Linux distributions to render desktop effects. Furthermore, 2D benchmarks show that ATI
cards using these drivers are two orders of magnitude slower than competing cards in basic tasks. [1] More information about the
problems can be found on the Fglrx driver page. As of the 8.25.18 proprietary Linux driver release
R200 support is completely broken. There has been no comment from ATI on the problem. [2]
The efforts to provide free drivers for these cards continue, though. While the R100
and R200-series chipset drivers were written using specifications provided by ATI (r200 driver), the R300 and R400 series
hardware acceleration was written through reverse engineering (r300 driver) the methods used by ATI's proprietary driver. The
reverse-engineered code is now in X.Org and Mesa, bringing
experimental support for some of the current Radeon cards. All r3xx cards and all r4xx excluding the Xpress integrated chips
should be supported by the new experimental r300 driver; as of June 2007, there is experimental support for the Xpress chips in the DRI and Mesa git repositories.
There are a number of unofficial community websites for Bug Tracking and a Wiki.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD systems have the same open-source support for Radeon hardware as Linux, including 2D
and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200, and R300-series chipsets. The R300 support, as with Linux, remains experimental due to
being reverse-engineered from ATI's proprietary drivers.
ATI does not support its proprietary fglrx driver on FreeBSD, it has been partly ported by a third party as of January 2007.
This is in contrast to its main rival, NVIDIA, which has periodically released its proprietary driver for FreeBSD since November
2002. In the meantime the release is similar to Linux.
BeOS
Although ATI does not provide its own drivers for BeOS, it provides hardware and technical
documentation to the Haiku Project who provide drivers with full 2D and video
in/out support. They are the sole graphics manufacturer in any way still supporting BeOS.
Open source drivers
In September 12, 2007, AMD released specs for the RV630
(Radeon HD 2600 PRO and Radeon HD 2600 XT) and M56 (Radeon Mobility X1600) chips for open source driver development, for its
strategic open source driver development initiative [1],
with more documentation likely to follow in the near future, as well as baseline open source drivers. [2] All specs are available without NDA. AMD collaborates with Novell to build new free driver
(called RadeonHD) based on these specifications. Currently (September 2007) driver is very experimental. Its development can be
tracked on git repository at Freedesktop.org
website. [3]
Pulse-Width Modulation (fan control)
Unlike NVIDIA, ATI implements PWM (pulse-width modulation) on some of their
newer graphics cards to control fan speeds. Some computer motherboards use this technology for fan control, as well. PWM is used
to reduce the total amount of power delivered to a load without losses normally incurred when a power source is limited by
resistive means. As the name of the technology says, PWM delivers power through pulses instead of resistance-based constant
voltage. However, this can create a clicking sound on the video card when the fan is at certain speeds. Some users see this as
hindering the ability to build a quiet computer system. In recent releases of products, digital PWM was used.
See also
References
External links
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