ATI Radeon 32Mb DDR graphic card

Tuesday, November 21, 2000

Index:

Introduction

The ATI Radeon 32MB DDR that we have here today is a relatively new card based on a unique design. For one thing, the Radeon does not use an Nvidia chipset. Rather, it uses a chipset that was custom designed by ATI itself, specifically for their newest graphics wonder, and its future offspring. With the Radeon, and through ingenuity, and alot of elbow grease, ATI's engineers have finally managed to put together a product who's performance simply demands recognition.

The Radeon (which you can see pictured to the right side), is currently offered in three configurations, each differing in their memory specifications: the 32MB SDR, the 32MB DDR, and the 64MB DDR.

At the end of this page, you can read the manufacturers specifications.



Particularities of the Radeon

   

Here, instead of regurgitating the long, long list of technical information that is associated with the Radeon - which, in all likelyhood, you've probably heard somewhere, at some point already - we'll instead recommend that interested parties head over to ATI, and read their list of Frequently Asked Questions concerning the Radeon.


Next: The drivers

Index:

Technical specifications

RADEONTM

  • Powered by the ATI RADEONTM graphics processing unit (GPU)
  • 32MB of powerful double data rate (DDR) memory
  • Featuring ATI's CHARISMA ENGINETM and PIXEL TAPESTRYTM technologies
  • The most robust and integrated Transformation, Clipping and Lighting (T&L)
  • Accelerates all of today's top 3D games
  • Industry best DVD playback
  • Supports 3D resolutions (32-bit color) up to 2048x1536
  • AGP Universal bus (for AGP 2X/4X systems)
Click here for the RADEONTM FAQ

32MB of DDR Memory

  • RADEONTM comes powered by 32MB of DDR memory to power all of today's hottest 3D games
  • With DDR memory you get twice the memory bandwidth for the highest data transfer rates through the pipeline
  • Features ATI's HyperZTM technology that improves memory bandwidth without the added cost of embedded or proprietary memory.
  • Delivers immersive, realistic 32-bit true color 3D graphics at the fastest possible framerates

Powered by ATI's RADEONTM GPU

  • RADEONTM graphics boards feature the leading-edge technology of the RADEONTM GPU
  • The RADEONTM CHARISMA ENGINETM supports full transformation, clipping and lighting (T&L) at 30 million/second processing capability for a 10-fold improvement in 3D details
  • 3D game characters are brought to life with the CHARISMA ENGINETM support for other cutting-edge character animation such as vertex skinning and key frame interpolation
  • PIXEL TAPESTRYTM, the RADEONTM 3D rendering engine, powers up to an incredible 1.5 Gigatexels per second for unsurpassed graphics performance

Ultimate 3D Game Support

  • The most complete implementation of the DirectX® feature set
  • RADEONTM supports more features of DirectX® 8.0 than any other graphics board on the market
  • Instant superior 3D game support right out of the box with full acceleration for today's hottest 3D games

Industry Best DVD Playback

  • Process full-frame rate, full-screen DVD or MPEG-2 video
  • Hardware DVD saves the expense of buying a separate MPEG-2/DVD decoder card
  • Integrated iDCT and motion compensation allows for DVD decoding with minimum CPU usage
  • HDTV ready

 

System Requirements

  • Pentium® III/II/Celeron, AMD K6®/Athlon or compatible with AGP 2X or AGP 2X/4X universal slot
  • Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
  • DVD playback requires DVD drive
Graphics Controller
  • ATI RADEONTM graphics processing unit (GPU)
Memory Configurations
  • 32MB of double data rate memory
Operating Systems Support
  • Windows® 98/SE
  • Windows® ME
  • Windows® 2000
Monitor Support
  • CRT Monitor: 15 pin VGA connector
Display Support
  • Register compatible with VGA
  • BIOS compatible with VESA for super VGA
  • DDC1/2b/2b+ monitor support
  • VESA Display Power Management Support
  • Separate horiz & vert sync at TTL levels
3D Acceleration Features
  • CHARISMA ENGINETM
  • PIXEL TAPESTRYTM architecture
  • Integrated Transformation, Clipping and Lighting
  • Twin Cache Architecture
  • Texture Cache
  • Superscalar Rendering
  • Single-Pass Multi-texturing
  • True Color Rendering
  • Triangle Setup Engine
  • Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
  • Line & Edge Anti-aliasing
  • Full screen Anti-aliasing
  • Texture Compositing
  • Texture Decompression
  • Specular Highlights
  • Perspectively Correct Texture Mapping
  • Mip-Mapping
  • Z-buffering and Double-buffering
  • Hierarchial Z-buffer
  • Emboss, Dot Product 3 and Environment bump mapping
  • Spherical, Dual-Paraboloid and Cubic environment mapping
  • Fog effects, texture lighting, video textures, reflections, shadows, spotlights, LOD biasing and texture mapping
WARRANTY
    5-year limited warranty


Display Modes: Resolutions, Colors and Maximum Refresh Rates (Hz)
Resolution

640x480

800x600

1024x768

1152x864

256 colors
200
200
200
150
65K colors
200
200
200
150
16.7M colors (32bpp)
200
200
200
150
Continued from above
Resolution

1280x1024

1600x1200

1920x1440

2048x1536

256 colors
130
90
75
75
65K colors
130
90
75
75
16.7M colors (32bpp)
130
90
75
75

Resolution and refresh rates are subject to change.