Radeon R200
Encyclopedia
The Radeon R200 is the second generation of Radeon
graphics chips from ATI Technologies
. The architecture features 3D acceleration
based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3
, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100
design. The GPU also includes 2D GUI acceleration
, video
acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R200" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.
clear, and z-buffer compression. The GPU is capable of dual display output (HydraVision) and is equipped with a video decoding engine (Video Immersion II
) with adaptive hardware deinterlacing
, temporal filtering, motion compensation
, and iDCT
.
R200 introduced pixel shader version 1.4 (PS1.4), a significant enhancement to prior PS1.x specifications. Notable instructions include "phase", "texcrd", and "texld". The phase instruction allows a shader program to operate on two separate "phases" (2 passes through the hardware), effectively doubling the maximum number of texture addressing and arithmetic instructions, and potentially allowing the number of passes required for an effect to be reduced. This allows not only more complicated effects, but can also provide a speed boost by utilizing the hardware more efficiently. The "texcrd" instruction moves the texture coordinate values of a texture into the destination register, while the "texld" instruction will load the texture at the coordinates specified in the source register to the destination register.
Compared to R100's 2x3 pixel pipeline architecture, R200's 4x2 design is more robust despite losing one texture unit per pipeline. Each pipeline can now address a total of 6 texture layers per pass. The chip achieves this by using a method known as 'loop-back'. Increasing the number of textures accessed per pass reduces the number of times the card is forced into multi-pass rendering.
The texture filtering capabilities of R200 are also improved over its predecessor. For anisotropic filtering
, Radeon 8500 uses a technique similar to that used in R100, but improved with trilinear filtering
and some other refinements. However, it is still highly angle-dependent and the driver sometimes forces bilinear filtering
for speed. NVIDIA's GeForce 4 Ti series offered a more accurate anisotropic implementation, but with a greater performance impact.
R200 has ATI's first implementation of a hardware-accelerated tessellation
engine (a.k.a. higher order surfaces), called Truform
, which can automatically increase the geometric complexity of 3D models. The technology requires developer support and is not practical for all scenarios. It can undesirably round-out models. As a result of very limited adoption, ATI dropped TruForm support from its future hardware.
support was only functional in Direct3D and was very slow. To dampen excitement for 8500, competitor nVidia
released their Detonator4 driver package on the same day as most web sites previewed the Radeon 8500. nVidia's drivers were of better quality, and they also further boosted the GeForce 3's performance.
Several hardware review sites discovered that the performance of the Radeon 8500 in some actual game tests was lower than benchmarks reflected. For example, ATI was detecting the executable "Quake3.exe" and forcing the texture filtering quality to much lower than normally produced by the card. HardOCP
was the first hardware review web site to bring the issue to the community, and proved its existence by renaming all instances of "Quake" in the executable to "Quack." The result was improved image quality, but lower performance.
However, even with the Detonator4 drivers, the Radeon 8500 was able to outperform the GeForce 3 (which the 8500 was intended to compete against) and in some circumstances its faster revision, the Ti500, the higher clocked derivative Nvidia had rolled out in response to the R200 project. Later, driver updates helped to further close the performance gap between the 8500 and the Ti500, while the 8500 was also significantly less expensive and offered additional multimedia features such as dual-monitor support. Though the GeForce 3 Ti200 did become the first DirectX 8.0 card to offer 128 MiB of video memory, instead of the common 64 MiB norm for high-end cards of the time, it turned out that the GeForce 3's limitations prevented it from taking full advantage of it, while the Radeon 8500 was able to more successfully exploit that potential.
In early 2002, to compete with the cheaper GeForce 3 Ti200 and GeForce 4 MX 460, ATI launched the slower-clocked 8500LE (known as 9100 in Europe) which became popular with OEMs and enthusiasts due to its lower price, and overclockability to 8500 levels. Though the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 took the performance crown, it was a top line solution that was priced almost double that of the Radeon 8500 (MSRP of $350-399 versus $199 USD), so it didn't offer direct competition. With the delayed release of the potentially competitive GeForce 4 Ti 4200, plus ATI's initiative in rolling out 128 MiB versions of the 8500/LE kept the R200 line popular among the mid-high performance niche market. The greater features of the All-In-Wonder (AIW) Radeon 8500 DV and the AIW Radeon 8500 128 MB proved superior to Nvidia's Personal Cinema equivalents which used the faster GeForce 4 Ti 4200.
DDR SDRAM
configurations; the later 128 MB Radeon 8500 boards received a small performance boost resulting from a memory interleave mode.
In November 2001 was the release of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV, with 64 MB and a slower clock speed like the 8500LE. In 2002, three 128 MB cards were rolled out, the Radeon 8500, 8500LE, and the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128 MB, which was clocked at full 8500 speeds but had fewer video-related features than the AIW 8500 DV.
A Radeon 8500 running at 300 MHz clock speeds would have hardly defeated the GeForce 4 Ti4600, let alone a newer card from NVIDIA. At best it could have been a better performing mid-range solution than the lower-complexity Radeon 9000 (RV250, see below), but it would also have cost more to produce and would have been poorly suited to the Radeon 9000's dual laptop/desktop roles due to die size and power draw. Notably, overclockers found that Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 could not reliably overclock to 300 MHz without additional voltage, so undoubtedly R250 would have had similar issues because of its greater complexity and equivalent manufacturing technology, and this would have resulted in poor chip yields, and thus, higher costs.http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon8500-overclocking.html http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=953
ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx
when they took focus off their "Rampage" processor, abandoned the R250 refresh in favor of finishing off their next-generation DirectX 9.0
card which was released as the Radeon 9700. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The new Radeon 9700 flagship, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh, and it easily took the performance crown from the Ti4600.
. The 9000 succeeded the Radeon 7500
(RV200) in the mainstream market segment, with the latter being moved to the budget segment. This chip was a significant redesign of R200 to reduce cost and power usage. Among hardware removed is one of the two texture units
, the "TruForm" function, Hierarchical-Z, the DirectX 7 TCL unit and one of the two vertex shaders. In games, the Radeon 9000 performs similarly to the GeForce 4 MX 440. Its main advantage over the MX 440 was that it had a full DirectX
8.1 vertex and pixel shader implementation. While the 9000 was not quite as fast as the 8500LE or the Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti200, the 8500LE and Ti200 were to be discontinued.
A later revision of the 9000 was the Radeon 9200 (RV280), which aside from supporting AGP
8X, was identical. There was also a cheaper version, the 9200SE, which only had a 64-bit memory bus
. Another board, called the Radeon 9250 was launched in summer 2004, being simply a lower-clocked RV280.
ATI had re-branded its products in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.0, and so on. However in naming the Radeon 9000/9200, which only had DirectX 8.0 rendering features, ATI advertised them as "DirectX 9.0 compatible" while the truly DirectX 9.0-spec Radeon 9700 was "DirectX 9.0 compliant".
A Mobility Radeon 9200 later followed as well, derived from the desktop 9200. The Mobility Radeon 9200 was also used in many Apple laptops, including the Apple iBook G4.
has released no driver support for BSD based operating systems, however they do provide drivers for the X Window System
running on Linux
. Despite this, newer ATI Catalyst driver for Linux
X Window System
does not offer support for any R500 or older architecture product. Users are referred to using older drivers for older kernels, or the open source "radeon" driver for newer kernels. The PowerPC-based Mac mini
and iBook G4, which run on Mac OS X
, were supplied with Radeon 9200 cards.
Some segments of the Linux user community, which prefer to avoid the IP
-encumbered ATI drivers due to stability and long term maintainability reasons, or run Linux on hardware platform not supported by the official binary-only drivers still prefer the R200-based chips, as they are among the fastest modern video cards with stable open source 3D drivers.
operating systems including Windows XP
(except x64
), Windows 2000
, Windows Me
, and Windows 98
. Other operating systems may have support in the form of a generic driver that lacks complete support for the hardware. Driver development for the R200 line ended with the Catalyst 6.11 drivers for Windows XP.
Radeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
graphics chips from ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
. The architecture features 3D acceleration
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
design. The GPU also includes 2D GUI acceleration
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
, video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R200" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.
Architecture
R200's 3D hardware consists of 4 pixel pipelines, each with 2 texture sampling units. It has 2 vertex shaders and a legacy Direct3D 7 TCL unit, marketed as Charisma Engine II. It is ATI's first GPU with programmable pixel and vertex processors, called Pixel Tapestry II and compliant with Direct3D 8.1. R200 has advanced memory bandwidth saving and overdraw reduction hardware called HyperZ II that consists of occlusion culling (hierarchical Z), fast z-bufferZ-buffering
In computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
clear, and z-buffer compression. The GPU is capable of dual display output (HydraVision) and is equipped with a video decoding engine (Video Immersion II
Video Immersion
Video Immersion is the name of a set of computer graphics processing technologies used by ATI Technologies in their Radeon video cards. It is the Brand Name ATI uses to refer to the Video compression acceleration feature in their R100, R200, and R300 Video cards...
) with adaptive hardware deinterlacing
Deinterlacing
Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video, such as common analog television signals or 1080i format HDTV signals, into a non-interlaced form....
, temporal filtering, motion compensation
Motion compensation
Motion compensation is an algorithmic technique employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture...
, and iDCT
Discrete cosine transform
A discrete cosine transform expresses a sequence of finitely many data points in terms of a sum of cosine functions oscillating at different frequencies. DCTs are important to numerous applications in science and engineering, from lossy compression of audio and images A discrete cosine transform...
.
R200 introduced pixel shader version 1.4 (PS1.4), a significant enhancement to prior PS1.x specifications. Notable instructions include "phase", "texcrd", and "texld". The phase instruction allows a shader program to operate on two separate "phases" (2 passes through the hardware), effectively doubling the maximum number of texture addressing and arithmetic instructions, and potentially allowing the number of passes required for an effect to be reduced. This allows not only more complicated effects, but can also provide a speed boost by utilizing the hardware more efficiently. The "texcrd" instruction moves the texture coordinate values of a texture into the destination register, while the "texld" instruction will load the texture at the coordinates specified in the source register to the destination register.
Compared to R100's 2x3 pixel pipeline architecture, R200's 4x2 design is more robust despite losing one texture unit per pipeline. Each pipeline can now address a total of 6 texture layers per pass. The chip achieves this by using a method known as 'loop-back'. Increasing the number of textures accessed per pass reduces the number of times the card is forced into multi-pass rendering.
The texture filtering capabilities of R200 are also improved over its predecessor. For anisotropic filtering
Anisotropic filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture appears to be non-orthogonal In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering...
, Radeon 8500 uses a technique similar to that used in R100, but improved with trilinear filtering
Trilinear filtering
Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps.Bilinear filtering has several weaknesses that make it an unattractive choice in many cases: using it on a full-detail texture when scaling to a very small size...
and some other refinements. However, it is still highly angle-dependent and the driver sometimes forces bilinear filtering
Bilinear filtering
Bilinear filtering is a texture filtering method used to smooth textures when displayed larger or smaller than they actually are.Most of the time, when drawing a textured shape on the screen, the texture is not displayed exactly as it is stored, without any distortion...
for speed. NVIDIA's GeForce 4 Ti series offered a more accurate anisotropic implementation, but with a greater performance impact.
R200 has ATI's first implementation of a hardware-accelerated tessellation
Tessellation
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art...
engine (a.k.a. higher order surfaces), called Truform
Truform
TruForm was an early tessellation implementation created by ATI and employed in DirectX 8 and OpenGL graphics cards, on both Mac and Windows. The technology was first employed on the Radeon 8500 in 2001...
, which can automatically increase the geometric complexity of 3D models. The technology requires developer support and is not practical for all scenarios. It can undesirably round-out models. As a result of very limited adoption, ATI dropped TruForm support from its future hardware.
| DirectX 8.0 Pixel Shader 1.1 |
DirectX 8.1 Pixel Shader 1.4 |
||
| Max. Texture Inputs | 4 | 6 | |
| Max. Program Length | 12 instructions (up to 4 texture sampling, 8 color blending) |
22 instructions (up to 6 texture sampling, 8 texture addressing, 8 color blending) |
|
| Instruction Set | 13 address operations, 8 color operations | 12 address / color operations | |
| Texture Addressing Modes | 40 | virtually unlimited |
Performance
Radeon 8500's biggest disappointment was its early driver releases. At launch, the card's performance was below expectations and it had numerous software flaws that caused problems with games. The chip's anti-aliasingAnti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
support was only functional in Direct3D and was very slow. To dampen excitement for 8500, competitor nVidia
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
released their Detonator4 driver package on the same day as most web sites previewed the Radeon 8500. nVidia's drivers were of better quality, and they also further boosted the GeForce 3's performance.
Several hardware review sites discovered that the performance of the Radeon 8500 in some actual game tests was lower than benchmarks reflected. For example, ATI was detecting the executable "Quake3.exe" and forcing the texture filtering quality to much lower than normally produced by the card. HardOCP
HardOCP
[H]ard|OCP is an online magazine that offers news, reviews, and editorials that relate to computer hardware, software, modding, overclocking and cooling, owned and operated by Kyle Bennett, who started the website in 1997.- Product Reviews :[H]ard|OCP is known for reviewing products and...
was the first hardware review web site to bring the issue to the community, and proved its existence by renaming all instances of "Quake" in the executable to "Quack." The result was improved image quality, but lower performance.
However, even with the Detonator4 drivers, the Radeon 8500 was able to outperform the GeForce 3 (which the 8500 was intended to compete against) and in some circumstances its faster revision, the Ti500, the higher clocked derivative Nvidia had rolled out in response to the R200 project. Later, driver updates helped to further close the performance gap between the 8500 and the Ti500, while the 8500 was also significantly less expensive and offered additional multimedia features such as dual-monitor support. Though the GeForce 3 Ti200 did become the first DirectX 8.0 card to offer 128 MiB of video memory, instead of the common 64 MiB norm for high-end cards of the time, it turned out that the GeForce 3's limitations prevented it from taking full advantage of it, while the Radeon 8500 was able to more successfully exploit that potential.
In early 2002, to compete with the cheaper GeForce 3 Ti200 and GeForce 4 MX 460, ATI launched the slower-clocked 8500LE (known as 9100 in Europe) which became popular with OEMs and enthusiasts due to its lower price, and overclockability to 8500 levels. Though the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 took the performance crown, it was a top line solution that was priced almost double that of the Radeon 8500 (MSRP of $350-399 versus $199 USD), so it didn't offer direct competition. With the delayed release of the potentially competitive GeForce 4 Ti 4200, plus ATI's initiative in rolling out 128 MiB versions of the 8500/LE kept the R200 line popular among the mid-high performance niche market. The greater features of the All-In-Wonder (AIW) Radeon 8500 DV and the AIW Radeon 8500 128 MB proved superior to Nvidia's Personal Cinema equivalents which used the faster GeForce 4 Ti 4200.
Radeon 8500/8500LE/9100
ATI's first R200-based card was the Radeon 8500, launched in October 2001. In early 2002, ATI launched the Radeon 8500LE (re-released later as the Radeon 9100 in Europe), an identical chip with a lower clock speed and slower memory. Whereas the full 8500 was clocked at 275 MHz core and 275 MHz RAM, the 8500LE was clocked more conservatively at 250 MHz for the core and 200 or 250 MHz for the RAM. Both video cards were first released in 64 MBMegabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
DDR SDRAM
DDR SDRAM
Double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory is a class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM has been superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, neither of which are either forward or backward compatible with DDR SDRAM, meaning that DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules...
configurations; the later 128 MB Radeon 8500 boards received a small performance boost resulting from a memory interleave mode.
In November 2001 was the release of the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV, with 64 MB and a slower clock speed like the 8500LE. In 2002, three 128 MB cards were rolled out, the Radeon 8500, 8500LE, and the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128 MB, which was clocked at full 8500 speeds but had fewer video-related features than the AIW 8500 DV.
Radeon 8500XT (canceled)
An updated chip, the Radeon 8500XT (R250) was planned for a mid-2002 release, to compete against the GeForce 4 Ti line, particularly the top line Ti 4600 (which retailed for an MSRP of $350-399 USD). Prerelease information touted a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the "R250" chip.A Radeon 8500 running at 300 MHz clock speeds would have hardly defeated the GeForce 4 Ti4600, let alone a newer card from NVIDIA. At best it could have been a better performing mid-range solution than the lower-complexity Radeon 9000 (RV250, see below), but it would also have cost more to produce and would have been poorly suited to the Radeon 9000's dual laptop/desktop roles due to die size and power draw. Notably, overclockers found that Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 could not reliably overclock to 300 MHz without additional voltage, so undoubtedly R250 would have had similar issues because of its greater complexity and equivalent manufacturing technology, and this would have resulted in poor chip yields, and thus, higher costs.http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon8500-overclocking.html http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=953
ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
when they took focus off their "Rampage" processor, abandoned the R250 refresh in favor of finishing off their next-generation DirectX 9.0
Radeon R300
The Radeon R300 is the third generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R200 design. R300 was the first fully Direct3D...
card which was released as the Radeon 9700. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The new Radeon 9700 flagship, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh, and it easily took the performance crown from the Ti4600.
Radeon 9000/9200
The Radeon 9000 (RV250) was launched alongside the Radeon 9700Radeon R300
The Radeon R300 is the third generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R200 design. R300 was the first fully Direct3D...
. The 9000 succeeded the Radeon 7500
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
(RV200) in the mainstream market segment, with the latter being moved to the budget segment. This chip was a significant redesign of R200 to reduce cost and power usage. Among hardware removed is one of the two texture units
Graphics pipeline
In 3D computer graphics, the terms graphics pipeline or rendering pipeline most commonly refers to the current state of the art method of rasterization-based rendering as supported by commodity graphics hardware. The graphics pipeline typically accepts some representation of a three-dimensional...
, the "TruForm" function, Hierarchical-Z, the DirectX 7 TCL unit and one of the two vertex shaders. In games, the Radeon 9000 performs similarly to the GeForce 4 MX 440. Its main advantage over the MX 440 was that it had a full DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
8.1 vertex and pixel shader implementation. While the 9000 was not quite as fast as the 8500LE or the Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti200, the 8500LE and Ti200 were to be discontinued.
A later revision of the 9000 was the Radeon 9200 (RV280), which aside from supporting AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
8X, was identical. There was also a cheaper version, the 9200SE, which only had a 64-bit memory bus
Memory bus
The memory bus is the computer bus which connects the main memory to the memory controller in computer systems. Originally, general-purpose buses like VMEbus and the S-100 bus were used, but to reduce latency, modern memory buses are designed to connect directly to DRAM chips, and thus are...
. Another board, called the Radeon 9250 was launched in summer 2004, being simply a lower-clocked RV280.
ATI had re-branded its products in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.0, and so on. However in naming the Radeon 9000/9200, which only had DirectX 8.0 rendering features, ATI advertised them as "DirectX 9.0 compatible" while the truly DirectX 9.0-spec Radeon 9700 was "DirectX 9.0 compliant".
Mobility
The Mobility Radeon 9000 was launched in early summer 2002 and was the first DirectX 8 laptop chip. It outperformed the DirectX 7-based nVidia GeForce 2 Go and was more feature-rich than the GeForce 4 Go.A Mobility Radeon 9200 later followed as well, derived from the desktop 9200. The Mobility Radeon 9200 was also used in many Apple laptops, including the Apple iBook G4.
UNIX-related operating systems
ATIATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
has released no driver support for BSD based operating systems, however they do provide drivers for the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
running on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. Despite this, newer ATI Catalyst driver for Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
does not offer support for any R500 or older architecture product. Users are referred to using older drivers for older kernels, or the open source "radeon" driver for newer kernels. The PowerPC-based Mac mini
Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
and iBook G4, which run on Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, were supplied with Radeon 9200 cards.
Some segments of the Linux user community, which prefer to avoid the IP
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
-encumbered ATI drivers due to stability and long term maintainability reasons, or run Linux on hardware platform not supported by the official binary-only drivers still prefer the R200-based chips, as they are among the fastest modern video cards with stable open source 3D drivers.
Windows drivers
This series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by AMD under Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating systems including Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
(except x64
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition released on April 25, 2005 is an edition of Windows XP for x86-64 personal computers. It is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86-64 architecture....
), Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
, Windows Me
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me , is a graphical operating system released on September 14, 2000 by Microsoft, and was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series. Support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006....
, and Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
. Other operating systems may have support in the form of a generic driver that lacks complete support for the hardware. Driver development for the R200 line ended with the Catalyst 6.11 drivers for Windows XP.