Radeon
Encyclopedia
Radeon icon is a brand of graphics processing unit
s (GPU) and random access memory (RAM) produced by Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD), 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 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. The brand was previously known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to create a more unified brand image. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding.
, XFX
, Asus
, Gigabyte
, MSI
, Biostar
, Gainward
, Diamond
, HIS, PowerColor
, Club 3D
, VisionTek and Force3D.
The first number is the generation number (e.g. 5000) and is related to the chipset used by the video card.
The second number indicates the series quality in the generation, starting from:
The third digit is the relative quality, within a series–a 5850 is less powerful than a 5870. Typically, a card of a higher series will always have more processing power than a card in a lower series, even if the relative quality is better (a 5770 will be outperformed by a 5850).
Since ATI's first DirectX 9-class GPU, the company has followed a naming scheme that relates each product to a market segment.
Stream processors only applicable to Radeon HD 2000 series video cards.
ATI had re-branded its products midway in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.0, and so on. However in 2002, when 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".
Since the release of the Radeon HD 3000 series products, previous PRO, XT, GT, and XTX suffixes
were eliminated, products will be differentiated by changing the last two digits of the product model number (for instance, HD 3850 and HD 3870, giving the impression that the HD 3870 model having higher performance than HD 3850). Similar changes to the integrated graphics processor (IGP) naming were spotted as well, for the previously launched AMD M690T chipset with side-port memory, the IGP is named Radeon X1270, while for the AMD 690G chipset, the IGP is named Radeon X1250, as for AMD 690V chipset, the IGP is clocked lower and having fewer functions and thus named Radeon X1200. The new numbering scheme of video products are shown below:
The last two digits denotes variant, similar to the previous suffixes
, which 70 is in essence the XT variant while 50 is actually the Pro variant. Stream processors only applicable to Direct3D 10-class video components and above (Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000/5000 series).
Since the release of the Evergreen GPU family (R800), the X2 suffix, which indicated the presence of two graphic chips on the same card, has been dropped in favour of placing the number "9" as second digit of the model number in Radeon HD5000 series (i.e. HD 5970) or the number "9" on both second and third digits for HD6000 series (i.e. HD 6990). It is still unknown whether the "HDX990" trend will continue with the HD7000 Southern Islands series dual-GPU cards.
With the release of AMD Fusion
SoC products in late 2010 and throughout 2011, the naming conventions of Radeon discrete and integrated GPUs are shifting again beginning with the Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics IC
s
operating system is called AMD Catalyst.
There are unofficial modifications available such as Omega drivers
and DNA drivers. These drivers typically consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry
variables altered and are advertised as offering superior performance or image quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such, are not guaranteed to function correctly. Some of them also provide modified system files for hardware enthusiasts to run specific graphics cards outside of their specifications.
. Mac OS X drivers can be downloaded from Apple's support website, while Mac OS Classic drivers can be obtained from 3rd party websites that host the older drivers for users to download. ATI used to provide a preference panel for use in Mac OS X called ATI Displays which can be used both with retail and OEM versions of its 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.
ATI stopped support for Mac OS 9
after the Radeon R200
cards, making the last officially supported card the Radeon 9250. The Radeon R100
cards up to the Radeon 7200 can still be used with even older Mac OS
versions such as System 7
, although not all features are taken advantage of by the older operating system.
, instead giving hardware specifications and documentation to Direct Rendering Infrastructure
(DRI) developers under various non-disclosure agreement
s.
In mid 2004, however, ATI 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 Windows 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 could support R200 (Radeon 8500-9200, 9250) chips. For a better display driver, the drivers from a distribution's official repositories are recommended.
The frequency of driver updates increased in late 2004, releasing Linux drivers every two 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.
In 2008, ATI changed its release cycles and driver versions; now referred to as Catalyst., the driver package still includes an internal 8.xx.x driver revision, but it is now monthly, sharing a common code base with the Windows driver (starting with internal release 8.43). In 2009, the Catalyst driver officially dropped support for R500 and older chips, the FOSS driver being deemed stable and complete enough. The last driver release supporting older architectures is Catalyst 9.3.
For information on alternative Open Source
drivers, see below.
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, remained experimental due to being reverse-engineered from ATI's proprietary drivers, but with the release of official documentation by AMD (following its buyout of ATI), all Radeon families up to R700 have at least 2D support in the FOSS drivers, with basic video acceleration and power management, and up to R500, have at least 'basic' (up to OpenGL 1.5 feature set, GLSL is still a work in progress) 3D acceleration. On R600/700, 3D is still very much experimental, and Evergreen support has barely started due to lack of documentation.
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 (64-bit beta driver available as of December 3, 2009). In the meantime, the release is similar to Linux.
supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200, and R300 chipsets. This support is similar to FreeBSD and Linux.
users gained partial support for R100/R200 Radeon cards (Radeon 8500/9100 have no 3D support). Currently, RadeonHD R700 Amiga OS4 driver is under development by 3rd party developer. The AmigaOne X1000
, slated for release in 2010, will include an R700 based GPU.
, it provides hardware and technical documentation to the Haiku Project
who provide drivers with full 2D and video in/out support on older Radeon chipsets (up to r500). ATI is the sole graphics manufacturer in any way still supporting BeOS. A Radeon HD (r600
+) driver is currently in development by the Haiku developers.
supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100 and R200 chipsets. It also supports R300 series with 2D acceleration.
for the RV630 (Radeon HD 2600 PRO and Radeon HD 2600 XT) and M56 (Mobility Radeon X1600) chips for open source driver development, for its strategic open source driver development initiative. This initial documentation released sufficient programming information for a skeleton display detection and modesetting driver to be released. This was version 1.0.0 of the radeonhd driver, developed in cooperation with Novell. The register reference guides for M76 (Mobility Radeon HD 2600/2700/3600/3800 series) and RS690 (AMD 690 chipset series) were also released on January 4, 2008.
Most of the work is shared with the existing Xorg radeon driver that also supports older Radeon architectures. Conceptually, radeonhd initially tried to directly hit a card's register to perform its operations, while Xorg's driver radeon makes use of AtomBIOS (an abstraction layer created by Ati to ease the programming of new video card drivers) when available. Since AtomBIOS headers have been made public by AMD and are kept up to date, the argument went rather moot.
As of December 2009, the DRM
part of the radeon driver is now included in the mainstream Linux kernel, the first version appearing in kernel version 2.6.32, used by default on several GNU/Linux distributions.
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
s (GPU) and random access memory (RAM) produced by Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets...
(AMD), first launched in 2000 by 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...
, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by the 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,...
generation they support. More specific distinctions can also be followed, such as the HyperZ
HyperZ
HyperZ is the name of a set of computer graphics processing techniques used by ATI Technologies in their Radeon video cards.On the Radeon R100-based cores, Radeon DDR through 7500, where HyperZ debuted, ATI claimed a 20% improvement in overall rendering efficiency...
version, the number of pixel pipelines, and of course, the memory
Computer storage
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers....
and processor
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
clock speeds. The brand was previously known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to create a more unified brand image. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding.
Card brands
AMD no longer sells Radeon cards directly at the retail level. Instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell the Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Manufacturers of the Radeon cards include SapphireSapphire Technology
Sapphire Technology is a Hong Kong-based technology company, which produces graphics cards for personal computers and workstations, motherboards, TV tuner cards, digital audio players and LCDTVs...
, XFX
XFX
XFX is the manufacturing division of Hong Kong-based Pine Technology Holdings Limited . The XFX division, begun in 2002, has its major office in Ontario, California and specializes in the manufacturing of video cards based on Nvidia and AMD graphics processing units and motherboards...
, Asus
ASUS
ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated is a multinational computer technology and consumer electronics product manufacturer headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Its product range includes motherboards, desktops, laptops, monitors, tablet PCs, servers and mobile phones...
, Gigabyte
Gigabyte Technology
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of computer hardware products best known for its motherboards. The company is publicly held and traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange .-Company:...
, MSI
Micro-Star International
Micro-Star International Co., Ltd is a Taiwan-based electronics company and one of the world's largest motherboard and video card manufacturers.-Overview:MSI is one of the top three motherboard and video card manufacturers worldwide...
, Biostar
Biostar
Biostar or Biostar Microtech International Corp, is a motherboard manufacturer based in Taiwan, designing and manufacturing of computer hardware products such as motherboards, video cards, barebone computers and industrial PCs, to meet the demands of market development by providing more integrated...
, Gainward
Gainward
Gainward is a computer hardware company which produces video cards. Their graphic cards used to be exclusively based on Nvidia chipsets; however, the company also announced ATI-based graphics solutions after the successful launch of ATI 4800-series hardware, although Gainward does not currently...
, Diamond
Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers...
, HIS, PowerColor
PowerColor
The PowerColor brand was established in 1997 by the TUL corporation, based in Taipei, Taiwan. PowerColor maintains office locations in a number of countries, including Taiwan, Holland, and the United States...
, Club 3D
Club 3D
Club 3D, founded in 1997 as Colour Power , is a European brand of video cards and digital multimedia products such as TV tuner cards and digital sound cards for PCs, featuring partners such as AMD and NVIDIA and their graphic chipsets and technologies.- History :Pioneers in the introduction of the...
, VisionTek and Force3D.
Processor generations
| Retail/card series name | Chip series | Graphics API Application programming interface An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other... s support |
Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DirectX | OpenGL | |||
| R7000-R7200 | 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... |
DirectX 7.0 | OpenGL 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... 1.3 |
ATI's first graphics processor to be fully 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,... 7 compliant, first introduced in 2000. R100 brought with it large gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through the new HyperZ HyperZ HyperZ is the name of a set of computer graphics processing techniques used by ATI Technologies in their Radeon video cards.On the Radeon R100-based cores, Radeon DDR through 7500, where HyperZ debuted, ATI claimed a 20% improvement in overall rendering efficiency... technology. Initial models included Radeon SDR, DDR, LE(DDR) and 7000/VE. |
| R7500 | RV200 | Die-shrink of the former R100 with some core logic tweaks for clockspeed, introduced in 2001. The only release was the Radeon 7500. | ||
| R8500,R9000-R9250 | R200 Radeon R200 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... |
DirectX 8.1 | OpenGL 1.4 | ATI's second generation Radeon. This design included ATI's first programmable pixel shader architecture and introduced the more advanced pixel shader 1.4. This line includes Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200 and 9250. |
| R9500-R9800, X300-X600, X1050 | R300 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... |
DirectX 9.0 | OpenGL 2.0 | ATI's DirectX 9.0 technology, released in 2002, incorporated pixel shader. Included in this generation are Radeon 9500–9800, X300–X600, and X1050. |
| X700-850 | R420 Radeon R420 The Radeon R420 core from ATI Technologies was the company's basis for its 3rd-generation DirectX 9.0/OpenGL 2.0-capable graphics cards. Used first on the Radeon X800, R420 was produced on a 0.13 micrometer low-K process and used GDDR-3 memory... |
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. | |
| X1300-1950 | R520 Radeon R520 ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,... |
DirectX 9.0c | ATI's DirectX 9.0c series of graphics cards, with complete Shader Model 3.0 Shader In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility... support. Launched in October 2005, this series brought a number of enhancements including the floating point render target technology necessary for HDR rendering High dynamic range rendering In 3D computer graphics, high dynamic range rendering , also known as high dynamic range lighting, is the rendering of computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in a larger dynamic range. This allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios... with anti-aliasing Anti-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... . Cards released include X1300–X1950. These were the last graphics cards to be released with the prefix 'X'- new cards use the prefixes 'HD', although sometimes called 'R'. |
|
| HD2000-HD3000 | R600 Radeon R600 The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies... |
DirectX 10.0/ DirectX 10.1 (RV670) |
OpenGL 3.3 | ATI's first series of ATI Radeon GPUs supporting the Direct3D 10.0 specification and the company's second graphics solution to employ unified shader Unified shader model Unified Shader Model term is used to describe two similar but separate concepts: Unified Shading Architecture and Unified Shader Model.- Unified Shader Model :... technology. Releases of this platform include the HD 2400, HD 2600 and HD 2900. There are also products supporting DirectX 10.1, known as the HD 3000 series, with a die shrink. |
| HD4000 | R700 Radeon R700 The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a graphics processing unit series developed by Advanced Micro Devices under the ATI brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0 initiative launch media... |
DirectX 10.1 | Based on the R600 architecture. Mostly a bolstered card with many more stream processors, with improvements to power consumption and GDDR5 support for the high-end RV770 and RV740(HD4770) chips. It arrived in late June 2008. The HD 4850 and HD 4870 have 800 stream processors and GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory, respectively. | |
| HD5000 | Evergreen | DirectX 11 | OpenGL 4.1 | The series was launched on September 23, 2009. It features a 40 nm fabrication process (instead of 55 nm before), with more stream cores and compatibility with the next major version of the DirectX API, DirectX 11, which launched on October 22, 2009 along with Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... Windows 7. The Rxxx/RVxxx codename scheme was scrapped entirely. The first cards out of the gate are the 5870 and 5850. ATI has released beta drivers that introduces full OpenGL 4.0 support on the all variants of this series. |
| HD6000 | Northern Islands Northern Islands (GPU family) The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices for its Radeon line, based on the 40 nm process.Starting with this family, the former ATI brand was officially discontinued in favor of making a correlation between the graphics products and the AMD branding for... |
This is the first series to be marketed solely under the "AMD" brand. It features a 3rd generation 40 nm design, rebalancing the existing architecture with redesigned shaders to give it better performance. It was released first on October 22, 2010, in the form of the 6850 and 6870. 3D output is enabled with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort DisplayPort DisplayPort is a digital display interface standard produced by the Video Electronics Standards Association . The specification defines a royalty-free digital interconnect for audio and video. The interface is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor... 1.2 outputs. |
||
| HD7000 | Southern Islands Southern Islands (GPU family) The Southern Islands series is a family of Radeon GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices. Products in the Southern Islands series will be based on the 28 nm manufacturing process. AMD will build 28 nm graphics chips at TSMC.-Early details:... |
OpenGL 4.2 | To be based on a 28 nm process and a new computing architecture "AMD Graphic Core Next". | |
Nomenclature
Currently, ATI names each card by generation, series, and by performance.The first number is the generation number (e.g. 5000) and is related to the chipset used by the video card.
The second number indicates the series quality in the generation, starting from:
- 0400 to 0600 at entry level, for media and home theatre,
- 0700 for low intensity video games (typically using older graphics engineGraphics engineGraphics engine may refer to:*Game engine: a physics model typically implemented in software for use in computer games*Graphics engine : a specialized computer hardware device, typically integrated with a framebuffer or other video display circuitry, for performing graphics calculations...
s, or widespread games, such as StarcraftStarCraftStarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
and World of WarcraftWorld of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
) or high-intensity games with lowered settings, and - 0800 for high-intensity games, such as CrysisCrysisCrysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek , published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, and released in November 2007. It is the first game of a trilogy. A separate game entitled Crysis Warhead was released on September 12, 2008, and follows similar...
or Far Cry 2Far Cry 2Far Cry 2 is an open world first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008...
. - 0900 is a special denotation, first used on the Radeon 5970, relating to a dual chip or internal ATI CrossFireATI CrossFireAMD CrossFireX is a brand name for the multi-GPU solution by Advanced Micro Devices, originally developed by ATI Technologies. The technology allows up to four GPUs to be used in a single computer to improve graphics performance.-First-generation:CrossFire was first made available to the public...
card.
The third digit is the relative quality, within a series–a 5850 is less powerful than a 5870. Typically, a card of a higher series will always have more processing power than a card in a lower series, even if the relative quality is better (a 5770 will be outperformed by a 5850).
Since ATI's first DirectX 9-class GPU, the company has followed a naming scheme that relates each product to a market segment.
| Product category | Card name ( |
Usual suffixes | Price range (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... ) |
Memory | Outputs | Example products | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Width (bit Bit A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states... ) |
Size (MiB) | ||||||
| Enthusiast/ high-end |
|
XTX, XT, XT PE, XL, Pro, GTO, GT | >$150 | GDDR3 GDDR3 Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory... , GDDR4 GDDR4 GDDR4 SDRAM is a type of graphics card memory specified by the JEDEC Semiconductor Memory Standard. It is a rival medium to Rambus's XDR DRAM... , GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 SDRAM is a type of high performance DRAM graphics card memory designed for computer applications requiring high bandwidth... |
256, or 512 |
256, 512, or 1,024 | Dual DVI Digital Visual Interface The Digital Visual Interface is a video interface standard covering the transmission of video between a source device and a display device. The DVI standard has achieved widespread acceptance in the PC industry, both in desktop PCs and monitors... with HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface HDMI is a compact audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data. It is a digital alternative to consumer analog standards, such as radio frequency coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, or VGA... (HD 2000 Radeon R600 The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies... dongle) |
9800 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... , X800 Radeon R420 The Radeon R420 core from ATI Technologies was the company's basis for its 3rd-generation DirectX 9.0/OpenGL 2.0-capable graphics cards. Used first on the Radeon X800, R420 was produced on a 0.13 micrometer low-K process and used GDDR-3 memory... , X1950 Radeon R520 ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,... , HD 2900 Radeon R600 The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies... |
| Mainstream | |
XT, XL, Pro, SE, GTO, GT, HD | $100–150 | DDR2 DDR2 DDR2 may refer to:* DDR2 SDRAM, the computer memory technology* Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix, the video game* DDR2 , a human gene... , GDDR3, GDDR4 |
128 | 128, 256, 512, or 1,024 | D-sub D-subminiature The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems.... ,DVI/ Dual DVI with HDMI (HD 2000 dongle) |
7500, X700 Radeon R420 The Radeon R420 core from ATI Technologies was the company's basis for its 3rd-generation DirectX 9.0/OpenGL 2.0-capable graphics cards. Used first on the Radeon X800, R420 was produced on a 0.13 micrometer low-K process and used GDDR-3 memory... , X1600 Radeon R520 ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,... , HD 2600 Radeon R600 The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies... |
| Budget/value | 7000, 9000, 9200, 9250 |
SE, HM HyperMemory HyperMemory is ATI Technologies' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer memory on their line of Radeon video cards and motherboard chipsets... |
<$99 | DDR2, GDDR3 |
64 | 64, or 128 (HM HyperMemory HyperMemory is ATI Technologies' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer memory on their line of Radeon video cards and motherboard chipsets... : 768, or 1,024) |
D-sub, DVI with HDMI (HD 2000 dongle) |
X300 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... , X1050 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... , X1400 Radeon R520 ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,... , HD 2400 Radeon R600 The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies... |
Stream processors only applicable to Radeon HD 2000 series video cards.
ATI had re-branded its products midway in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.0, and so on. However in 2002, when 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".
Since the release of the Radeon HD 3000 series products, previous PRO, XT, GT, and XTX suffixes
ATI Video Card Suffixes
ATI video cards can have one of multiple suffixes attached to their name indicating relative level of performance, the use of suffixes was abandoned with the release of Radeon HD 3000 series products, the last two digits of the model number was then used to indicate relative performance of the...
were eliminated, products will be differentiated by changing the last two digits of the product model number (for instance, HD 3850 and HD 3870, giving the impression that the HD 3870 model having higher performance than HD 3850). Similar changes to the integrated graphics processor (IGP) naming were spotted as well, for the previously launched AMD M690T chipset with side-port memory, the IGP is named Radeon X1270, while for the AMD 690G chipset, the IGP is named Radeon X1250, as for AMD 690V chipset, the IGP is clocked lower and having fewer functions and thus named Radeon X1200. The new numbering scheme of video products are shown below:
| Product category | Model number range (steps of 10) |
Price range (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... ) |
Memory | Outputs | Product(s) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Width (bit Bit A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states... ) |
Size (MiB) | |||||
| Enthusiast/ high-end |
800–990 | >$300 | GDDR3, GDDR4, GDDR5 |
256 | 256, 512, or 1,024 | 2 DVI, HDMI, DP DisplayPort DisplayPort is a digital display interface standard produced by the Video Electronics Standards Association . The specification defines a royalty-free digital interconnect for audio and video. The interface is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor... (dongle) |
HD 3850/3870 HD 4830/4850/4870/4890 Radeon R700 The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a graphics processing unit series developed by Advanced Micro Devices under the ATI brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0 initiative launch media... HD 5830/5850/5870/5970 |
| Mainstream | 600–790 | $150–250 | DDR2, GDDR3, GDDR4 |
128 | 128, 256, 512, or 1,024 | D-sub, DVI | HD 3650 HD 4650/4670 HD 5670/5750/5770 |
| DVI, 2 DP, HDMI (dongle) |
|||||||
| Budget/value | 330–590 | <$150 | DDR2, GDDR3 |
64 | 64, or 128 (HM HyperMemory HyperMemory is ATI Technologies' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer memory on their line of Radeon video cards and motherboard chipsets... : 768, or 1,024) |
D-sub, DVI, HDMI, DP (dongle) |
HD 3450/3470 HD 5450/5550/5570 |
| Integrated graphics processor (IGP) |
000–300 | N/A | UMA, side-port memory (GDDR2/GDDR3) |
UMA, 16 (side-port) | 64, UMA (OS dependent) |
D-sub, DVI, HDMI, DP, Component (YCbCr) Component video Component video is a video signal that has been split into two or more component channels. In popular use, it refers to a type of component analog video information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals... |
X1270/X1250/X1200 HD 3200/HD 3100/2100 |
The last two digits denotes variant, similar to the previous suffixes
ATI Video Card Suffixes
ATI video cards can have one of multiple suffixes attached to their name indicating relative level of performance, the use of suffixes was abandoned with the release of Radeon HD 3000 series products, the last two digits of the model number was then used to indicate relative performance of the...
, which 70 is in essence the XT variant while 50 is actually the Pro variant. Stream processors only applicable to Direct3D 10-class video components and above (Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000/5000 series).
Since the release of the Evergreen GPU family (R800), the X2 suffix, which indicated the presence of two graphic chips on the same card, has been dropped in favour of placing the number "9" as second digit of the model number in Radeon HD5000 series (i.e. HD 5970) or the number "9" on both second and third digits for HD6000 series (i.e. HD 6990). It is still unknown whether the "HDX990" trend will continue with the HD7000 Southern Islands series dual-GPU cards.
With the release of AMD Fusion
AMD Fusion
AMD Fusion is the marketing name for a series of APUs by AMD. There are two flavors of Fusion currently available, one with its CPU logic based on the Bobcat core and the other its CPU logic based on the 10h core. In both cases the GPU logic is HD6xxx, which itself is based on the mobile variant of...
SoC products in late 2010 and throughout 2011, the naming conventions of Radeon discrete and integrated GPUs are shifting again beginning with the Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics IC
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
s
| Product category | Model number range (steps of 10) |
Price range (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... ) |
Memory | Outputs | Product(s) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Width (bit Bit A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states... ) |
Size (MiB) | |||||
| Enthusiast/ high-end |
900–990 | >$300 | GDDR5 | 256 | 2,048 2 x 2,048 |
2 DVI, HDMI, mini-DP DisplayPort DisplayPort is a digital display interface standard produced by the Video Electronics Standards Association . The specification defines a royalty-free digital interconnect for audio and video. The interface is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor... |
HD 6950/6970 HD 6990 |
| Performance/Mid-range | 700-890 | $150–299 | GDDR5 | 128 256 |
1,024 | 2 DVI, HDMI, 2 mini-DP | HD 6750/6770 HD 6790/6850/6870 |
| Mainstream/Value | 500-690 | <$150 | DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5 |
128 | 512 or 1,024 | D-sub, DVI, HDMI, mini-DP | HD 6570/6670 |
| Mainstream Fusion SoC AMD Fusion AMD Fusion is the marketing name for a series of APUs by AMD. There are two flavors of Fusion currently available, one with its CPU logic based on the Bobcat core and the other its CPU logic based on the 10h core. In both cases the GPU logic is HD6xxx, which itself is based on the mobile variant of... |
400–690 | N/A | UMA, side-port memory (DDR3)? |
UMA, side-port? | 128, UMA (OS dependent) |
D-sub, DVI, HDMI, mini-DP | HD 6450 Llano IGP: HD 6550D/6530D |
| Low-power Fusion SoC AMD Fusion AMD Fusion is the marketing name for a series of APUs by AMD. There are two flavors of Fusion currently available, one with its CPU logic based on the Bobcat core and the other its CPU logic based on the 10h core. In both cases the GPU logic is HD6xxx, which itself is based on the mobile variant of... |
000–390 | N/A | UMA | UMA, | 64, UMA (OS dependent) |
D-sub, DVI, HDMI, mini-DP | Ontario/Zacate IGP: HD 6320D/6310D/6290D/6250D |
Windows
The ATI Radeon graphics driver package for 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 system is called AMD Catalyst.
There are unofficial modifications available such as Omega drivers
Omega drivers
Omega Drivers are unofficial, third-party device drivers for ATI and nVidia graphics cards, created by Angel Trinidad. They differ from the official drivers in that they offer more customization and extra features...
and DNA drivers. These drivers typically consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry
Windows registry
The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems. It contains settings for low-level operating system components as well as the applications running on the platform: the kernel, device drivers, services, SAM, user...
variables altered and are advertised as offering superior performance or image quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such, are not guaranteed to function correctly. Some of them also provide modified system files for hardware enthusiasts to run specific graphics cards outside of their specifications.
Macintosh
ATI previously offered driver updates for their retail and integrated Macintosh video cards and chipsets. However, ever since ATI's acquisition by AMD, ATI no longer supplies or supports drivers for Mac OS Classic nor Mac OS XMac 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...
. Mac OS X drivers can be downloaded from Apple's support website, while Mac OS Classic drivers can be obtained from 3rd party websites that host the older drivers for users to download. ATI used to provide a preference panel for use in Mac OS X called ATI Displays which can be used both with retail and OEM versions of its cards. Though it gives more control over advanced features of the graphics chipset, ATI Displays has limited functionality compared to their Catalyst for Windows
Microsoft 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...
product.
ATI stopped support for Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
after the Radeon R200
Radeon R200
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...
cards, making the last officially supported card the Radeon 9250. The 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...
cards up to the Radeon 7200 can still be used with even older Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
versions such as System 7
System 7
System 7 is the name of a Macintosh operating system introduced in 1991.System 7 may also refer to:* System 7 , a British dance/ambient band* System 7 , 1991 album* IBM System/7, a 1970s computer system...
, although not all features are taken advantage of by the older operating system.
Linux
Initially, ATI did not produce Radeon drivers for LinuxLinux
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...
, instead giving hardware specifications and documentation to Direct Rendering Infrastructure
Direct Rendering Infrastructure
In computing, the Direct Rendering Infrastructure is an interface and a free software implementation used in the X Window System to securely allow user applications to access the video hardware without requiring data to be passed through the X server. Its primary application is to provide...
(DRI) developers under various non-disclosure agreement
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement , also known as a confidentiality agreement , confidential disclosure agreement , proprietary information agreement , or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties...
s.
In mid 2004, however, ATI started to support 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...
(XFree86
XFree86
XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and is now available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It is developed by the...
, X.Org
X.Org
X.Org refers to several things related to the X Window System:* X.Org, the organisation in charge of X standards from 1999 * The X.Org Foundation, a community-based foundation which took over X stewardship in 2004...
), hiring a new Linux driver team to produce fglrx. Their new proprietary
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
Linux drivers, instead of being a port of the Windows 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 could support R200 (Radeon 8500-9200, 9250) chips. For a better display driver, the drivers from a distribution's official repositories are recommended.
The frequency of driver updates increased in late 2004, releasing Linux drivers every two 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.
In 2008, ATI changed its release cycles and driver versions; now referred to as Catalyst
For information on alternative Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
drivers, see below.
FreeBSD
FreeBSDFreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
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, remained experimental due to being reverse-engineered from ATI's proprietary drivers, but with the release of official documentation by AMD (following its buyout of ATI), all Radeon families up to R700 have at least 2D support in the FOSS drivers, with basic video acceleration and power management, and up to R500, have at least 'basic' (up to OpenGL 1.5 feature set, GLSL is still a work in progress) 3D acceleration. On R600/700, 3D is still very much experimental, and Evergreen support has barely started due to lack of documentation.
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 (64-bit beta driver available as of December 3, 2009). In the meantime, the release is similar to Linux.
MidnightBSD
MidnightBSDMidnightBSD
MidnightBSD is a free Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD 6.1. It borrows heavily from the NEXTSTEP graphical user interface.- History and development :...
supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200, and R300 chipsets. This support is similar to FreeBSD and Linux.
AmigaOS
Since the introduction of AmigaOS 4AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4, , is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and partially on version 3.9 developed by Haage & Partner...
users gained partial support for R100/R200 Radeon cards (Radeon 8500/9100 have no 3D support). Currently, RadeonHD R700 Amiga OS4 driver is under development by 3rd party developer. The AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000
AmigaOne X1000 is a PowerPC based computer intended as a high-end platform for AmigaOS 4. It was announced by A-Eon Technology CVBA in partnership with Hyperion Entertainment and is expected in late 2011...
, slated for release in 2010, will include an R700 based GPU.
Haiku / BeOS
Although ATI does not provide its own drivers for BeOSBeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
, it provides hardware and technical documentation to the Haiku Project
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
who provide drivers with full 2D and video in/out support on older Radeon chipsets (up to r500). ATI is the sole graphics manufacturer in any way still supporting BeOS. A Radeon HD (r600
Radeon R600
The graphics processing unit codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies...
+) driver is currently in development by the Haiku developers.
MorphOS
MorphOSMorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100 and R200 chipsets. It also supports R300 series with 2D acceleration.
FOSS drivers
On September 12, 2007, AMD released documentation without an NDANon-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement , also known as a confidentiality agreement , confidential disclosure agreement , proprietary information agreement , or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties...
for the RV630 (Radeon HD 2600 PRO and Radeon HD 2600 XT) and M56 (Mobility Radeon X1600) chips for open source driver development, for its strategic open source driver development initiative. This initial documentation released sufficient programming information for a skeleton display detection and modesetting driver to be released. This was version 1.0.0 of the radeonhd driver, developed in cooperation with Novell. The register reference guides for M76 (Mobility Radeon HD 2600/2700/3600/3800 series) and RS690 (AMD 690 chipset series) were also released on January 4, 2008.
Most of the work is shared with the existing Xorg radeon driver that also supports older Radeon architectures. Conceptually, radeonhd initially tried to directly hit a card's register to perform its operations, while Xorg's driver radeon makes use of AtomBIOS (an abstraction layer created by Ati to ease the programming of new video card drivers) when available. Since AtomBIOS headers have been made public by AMD and are kept up to date, the argument went rather moot.
As of December 2009, the DRM
Direct Rendering Manager
The Direct Rendering Manager is a component of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, a system to provide efficient video acceleration on Unix-like operating systems, e.g...
part of the radeon driver is now included in the mainstream Linux kernel, the first version appearing in kernel version 2.6.32, used by default on several GNU/Linux distributions.
Memory
On August 7, 2011 AMD expanded the Radeon name to include a new random access memory venture, selling mainstream, "gamer", and enterprise DDR3 RAM modules.See also
- Comparison of AMD graphics processing units
- ATI RageATI RageThe ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
– previous series of ATI's video cards - NvidiaNVIDIANvidia 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...
- Video In Video OutVideo In Video OutVideo In Video Out, usually seen as the acronym VIVO , is a graphics port which enables some video cards to have bidirectional analog video transfer through a mini-DIN connector, usually of the 9-pin variety, and a specialised splitter cable .VIVO is found on high-end ATI and NVIDIA...
(VIVO)
External links
- ATI Technologies Inc.
- DRI Wiki: ATI Radeon
- Performance of all the latest Radeon and competitors cards
- Rage3D: Support community for ATI hardware and drivers. News and discussion.
- Driver downloads for all Radeon cards.
- strags.com: WHQL certified Mobility Radeon HD driver archive.
- Information about all Radeon based graphics cards.