ATI (which stands for Array Technology
Industry) began taking shape in 1985, founded by three
immigrated gentlemen from
Hong Kong
and six employees. Starting out with a single graphics chip
design, ATI has now blossomed into one of the largest
manufacturers of graphics chips in the world. ATI now has
more than 1,900 employees based in Toronto
with revenues surpassing 1 billion for 2001.
ATI’s first breakthrough graphics
chip, the Mach64, was launched in 1994. Following the
success of the Mach64, ATI released such classics as the 3D
Rage I, 3D Rage II, and Rage Pro. During the explosion of 3D
graphics, companies such as 3Dfx, Savage, and NVIDIA
suddenly emerged and began to compete with aggressive
offerings like the Voodoo 1, Savage 3D, and the Riva 128.
ATI has always been very popular among OEMs, but gamers
began to jump ship to NVIDIA and 3Dfx due to faster cards
with better drivers. Now that 3Dfx is gone, NVIDIA is
ATI’s only real competition in the mainstream market,
relegating most others like Matrox to a reduced niche market
and Trident, plus a few others, to the low-end OEM.
ATI’s answer to NVIDIA has been the
Radeon product line, which is indeed re-establishing them in
the gaming community. Latest offerings include the 9000,
9500, and the flagship 9700. More specifically, the Radeon
9000 Pro is ATI’s direct competitor to the popular MX
cards from NVIDIA.
Like most of you should know today, ATI
is no longer the sole card manufacturer for their own chips,
in fact many OEM’s and manufacturers have jumped into
ATI’s bandwagon and today we’ll be taking a look at the
FIC AT009 Radeon 9000 Pro card, a powerful yet affordable
graphics solution which is targeted towards the gamer with
shallow pockets and budget in mind. In fact at the time of
posting the article we found similar Radeon 9000 Pro cards
selling for around
$90-100.
The card itself follows ATI’s
reference board specifications, powered by the Radeon 9000
Pro GPU like we mentioned before, this corresponds to the
core also known as RV250; manufactured on a .15micron
process and default clocked at 275MHz. The card came
equipped with 64mb of 3.6ns Hynix memory clocked at 275MHz
DDR, for an effective 550MHz output.
Radeon 9000 Pro GPU
Support for DirectX 8.1 & Open
GL
AGP 2X/4X
64 MB DDR RAM
Max Resolution Of 2048 x 1536 @
75MHz
8.8GB peak memory bandwidth
1100Mpixels/sec peak fill rate
1100Mtexels/sec peak fill rate
50 Million triangles/second peak
processing capability
2.4 Gigatexels per second
GPU fan/heat sink
Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
Texture Decompression
Features
Trueform Technology – makes
outlines of 3D characters and objects look smoother
Smartshader – adds DirectX 8.1
features to enhance texture and lighting effects
Smoothvision – anti-aliasing
Dual Display – Includes VGA and
DVI outputs for utilizing dual monitors
Video Immersion II – enables
integration of digital video features including digital
TV decode capability
Software – Power DVD and drivers
Included Items – DVI/VGA adaptor,
S-video/RCA adaptor, RCA video cable, and a S-video
cable
