Radeon

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Radeongraphicslogo.jpg Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000 and the successor to their Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by the DirectX generation they support. More specific distinctions can also be followed, such as the HyperZ version, the number of pixel pipelines, and of course, the memory and processor clock speeds.

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DirectX 7.0

  • R100: was ATi's first graphics processor with full DirectX 7 capability, introduced in 2000. "R100" was used initially for Radeon 256 (quickly changed to Radeon, now known as Radeon 7200). There were several variants including "RV100" (Radeon VE/7000), "RV200" (Radeon 7500). Mobility Radeon began here with both "RV100" and "RV200".
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DirectX 8.0

  • R200: ATi's Direct-X 8.1 technology. Released in 2001 and initially used on Radeon 8500 (later renamed to Radeon 9100). Variants of "R200" included "RV250" (Radeon 9000) and "RV280" (Radeon 9200/9250). The Radeon 9000 and 9200 were also used in the Mobility Radeons with the same names.
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DirectX 9.0

  • R300: ATI's breakthrough DirectX 9.0b technology, released in 2002, that made ATI the technology leader for several years. "R300" itself was built on a refined 150 nm process (as "R200" was), while "RV350" (9600) was built with 130 nm (and its successors used 130 nm Low-K). Variants of "R300" (chips with similar features) were "R350" (9800) and "R360" (9800XT). "RV350" itself had variants as well, including "RV360", "RV370", and "RV380", which were used on 9550, 9600 XT, X300, and X600. Again, Mobility Radeons were created using the "RV3x0" chips.
  • R420: After testing the 130 nm Low-k waters with Radeon 9600XT, ATI made use of this advanced fabrication process to build a refinement of the "R300" technology to hit the new "high-end" market of 2004. "R420" again supported DirectX 9b technology, but had reduced power consumption, and extended to 16 pixel pipelines and 6 vertex shaders. The chip didn't differ significantly from "R300" in many ways, mostly just in some tweaks to improve deficiencies of the architecture. "R420" was used on Radeon X800. Variants included "RV410" (X700), "R423" (X800) PCI-E, "R430" (X800) 0.11 micrometre, "R480" (X850) PCI-E, and "R481" (X850) AGP. Mobility Radeons included X700, X800, and a MR9800 based on "R420" technology.
  • R520: ATI's DirectX 9C series of graphics cards, with Shader Model 3 support. It was represented by the Radeon X1800 line of cards. The first wholly new core since the R300 launched, manufactured on a 90 nm process. Released in late 2005. The variant available for this series are as follows "R580" for Radeon X1900, "RV515" for Radeon X1300, "RV530" for Radeon X1600.
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Drivers

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Windows

ATI's Windows Radeon driver package is called CATALYST. The CATALYST program was instituted after the release of the Radeon 8500, as a marketing effort to match nVidia's universal Detonator driver packages. This new driver development paradigm at ATI promised monthly driver updates which included performance enhancements, bug fixes, and new features. As of 2006, the CATALYST driver package typically included ATI's CATALYST Control Center; an interface for manipulating many of the hardware's functions within Windows XP, such as 3D settings, monitor controls, video options, among other things. It also offered a small 3D preview, allowing the user to see how changes to the graphics settings affected the quality of the rendered image. The old control panel interface (within Windows' Display Properties) was previously a fall-back option, but that has been discontinued as of CATALYST 5.13. The CATALYST package can be downloaded in pieces as well, for non-broadband users. For example, the display driver can be downloaded alone, separated from the CATALYST Control Center and WDM VIVO drivers.

There are also unofficial drivers available such as the Omega Drivers, claiming to boost performance when compared to the official Catalyst. These drivers typically consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry variables altered and potentially offer superior performance or quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such are not guaranteed to function correctly or quantitatively improve functionality (placebo effect). Some of them also provide modified or patched dll files for hardware enthusiasts to modify their cards (as 9500non-pro and 9500Pro use the same chips, and 9800SE and 9800 use the same chips, some of them can be modified by activating all 8 pixel pipelines).

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Macintosh

ATI used to only offer driver updates for their retail Mac video cards, but now also offer drivers for all ATI Mac products, including the GPUs in Apple's portable lines. Apple also includes ATI driver updates whenever they release a new OS update. ATI provides a preference panel for use in Mac OS X called ATI Displays which can be used both with retail and OEM versions of their cards. Though it gives more control over advanced features of the graphics chipset, ATI Displays has limited functionality compared to their Catalyst for Windows product. As Microsoft does not license DirectX for other OS platforms, Mac OS X uses OpenGL exclusively, though in the past with OS 9, Apple used the now-defunct RAVE API.

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Linux

Initially, ATI did not produce Radeon drivers for Linux, instead giving hardware specifications and documentation to Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) developers under various non-disclosure agreements. ATI has in mid 2004, however, started to support Linux (XFree86, X.Org), hiring a new Linux driver team. Their new proprietary Linux drivers, instead of being a port of the Catalyst drivers, were based on the Linux drivers for the FireGL (the FireGL drivers worked with Radeons before, but didn't officially support them), a card geared towards graphics producers, not gamers; though the display drivers part is now based on the same sources as the ones from Windows Catalyst since version 4.x in late 2004. The frequency of driver updates increased in late 2004, releasing Linux drivers every 2 months, half as often as their Windows counterparts. Then since late 2005 this has been increased to monthly releases, inline with the Windows CATALYST releases. The proprietary Linux drivers don't support the R100 chips (Radeon 7000-7500).

The efforts to provide free drivers for these cards continue, though. While the R100 and R200-series chipset drivers were written using specifications provided by ATI, the R300-R500 hardware acceleration was written through reverse engineering the methods used by ATI's proprietary driver. The reverse-engineered code is now in X.Org and Mesa, bringing experimental support for some of the current Radeon cards.

On April 12, 2006, ATI released binary drivers for the ATI R5x0/R600 chips (x1300/x1600/x1800 cards), approximately six months after first releasing these cards.

There are a number of unoffical community websites for Bug Tracking and Wiki.

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FreeBSD

FreeBSD systems have the same open-source support for Radeon hardware as Linux, including 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200, and R300-series chipsets. The R300 support, as with Linux, remains experimental due to being reverse-engineered from ATI's proprietary drivers.

ATI does not support its proprietary fglrx driver on FreeBSD, and it has not been ported as of 2005. This is in contrast to its main competitor, NVIDIA, which has periodically released its proprietary driver for FreeBSD since November 2002 (though less frequently than for other operating systems).

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BeOS

Although ATI does not provide its own drivers for BeOS, it provides hardware and technical documentation to the Haiku Project who provide drivers with full 2D and video in/out support. They are the sole graphics manufacturer in any way still supporting BeOS.

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See also

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External links

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