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The R200 is the second generation of GPUs used in
Radeon Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tech ...
graphics cards and developed by
ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. (commonly called ATI) was a Canadian semiconductor industry, semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Fo ...
. This GPU features
3D acceleration A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
based upon
Microsoft Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware a ...
8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding
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 h ...
design. The GPU also includes 2D GUI acceleration,
video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
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 In computer graphics, a computer graphics pipeline, rendering pipeline or simply graphics pipeline, is a conceptual model that describes what steps a graphics system needs to perform to  render a 3D scene to a 2D screen. Once ...
, each with 2 texture sampling units. It has 2
vertex shader unit Vertex, vertices or vertexes may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics and computer science *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, or edges meet *Vertex (computer graphics), a data structure that describes the position ...
s and a legacy Direct3D 7
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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 In 3D computer graphics, hidden-surface determination (also known as shown-surface determination, hidden-surface removal (HSR), occlusion culling (OC) or visible-surface determination (VSD)) is the process of identifying what surfaces and parts o ...
(hierarchical Z), fast
z-buffer A depth buffer, also known as a z-buffer, is a type of data buffer used in computer graphics to represent depth information of objects in 3D space from a particular perspective. Depth buffers are an aid to rendering a scene to ensure that the ...
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 Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video into a non-interlaced or Progressive scan, progressive form. Interlaced video signals are commonly found in analog television, digital television (HDTV) when in the 1080i format, some D ...
, temporal filtering,
motion compensation Motion compensation in computing, is an algorithmic technique used to predict a frame in a video, given the previous and/or future frames by accounting for motion of the camera and/or objects in the video. It is employed in the encoding of video d ...
, and iDCT. R200 introduced
pixel shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as ''shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of spec ...
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 In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering (abbreviated AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces of computer graphics that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the t ...
, Radeon 8500 uses a technique similar to that used in R100, but improved with
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 f ...
and some other refinements. However, it is still highly angle-dependent and the driver sometimes forces
bilinear filtering In mathematics, bilinear interpolation is a method for interpolating functions of two variables (e.g., ''x'' and ''y'') using repeated linear interpolation. It is usually applied to functions sampled on a 2D rectilinear grid, though it can be gen ...
for speed. NVIDIA's GeForce4 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 A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane (mathematics), plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to high-dimensional ...
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.


Performance

Radeon 8500's biggest initial 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-aliasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used be ...
support was only functional in Direct3D and was very slow. To dampen excitement for 8500, competitor
nVidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
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 GeForce3's performance. Several hardware review sites noted anomalies in actual game tests with the Radeon 8500. For example, ATI was detecting the executable " Quake3.exe" and forcing the texture filtering quality to a much lower level than normally produced by the card, presumably in order to improve performance. 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." However, even with the Detonator4 drivers, the Radeon 8500 was able to outperform the GeForce3 (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 GeForce3 Ti200 did become the first DirectX 8.0 card to offer 128 MB of video memory, instead of the common 64 MB norm for high-end cards of the time, it turned out that the GeForce3'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 GeForce3 Ti200 and GeForce4 MX 460, ATI launched the slower-clocked 8500 LE (later re-released as the 9100) which became popular with OEMs and enthusiasts due to its lower price, and overclockability to 8500 levels. Though the GeForce4 Ti4600 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 US$199), so it didn't offer direct competition. With the delayed release of the potentially competitive GeForce4 Ti4200, plus ATI's initiative in rolling out 128 MB 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 3 Ti500 and GeForce4 Ti4200. Over the years the dominant market position of GeForce 3/4 meant that not many games targeted the superior DX8.1 PS 1.4 feature level of the R200, but those that did could see significant performance gains over DX8, as certain operations could be processed in one instead of multiple passes. In these cases the Radeon 8500 may even compete with the newer GeForce4 series running a DX8 codepath. An example for such a game with multiple codepaths is
Half-Life 2 ''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was published by Valve through its distribution service Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and ...
. Radeon 8500 came with support for TruForm, an early implementation of
Tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane (mathematics), plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to high-dimensional ...
.


Implementations


Radeon 8500/8500 LE/9100

ATI's first R200-based card was the ''Radeon 8500'', launched in October 2001. In early 2002, ATI launched the ''Radeon 8500 LE'' (re-released later as the ''Radeon 9100''), 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 MB
DDR SDRAM Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR SDRAM) is a double data rate (DDR) synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) class of memory integrated circuits used in computers. DDR SDRAM, also retroactively called DDR1 ...
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 8500 LE. In 2002, three 128 MB cards were rolled out, the Radeon 8500, 8500 LE, 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. ATI claimed that the lower clock speed for the 8500DV was due to the
FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...
interface. In late 2002, the ''Radeon 9100'' was announced to satisfy strong market demand for products based on the R200 architecture.


Radeon 8500 XT (canceled)

An updated chip, the ''Radeon 8500 XT'' (R250) was planned for a mid-2002 release, to compete against the GeForce4 Ti line, particularly the top line Ti4600 (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 GeForce4 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. ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to
3dfx 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the l ...
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.


Radeon 9000

The ''Radeon 9000'' (RV250) was launched alongside the
Radeon 9700 The R300 GPU, introduced in August 2002 and developed by ATI Technologies, is its third generation of GPU used in '' Radeon'' graphics cards. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in fe ...
. The 9000 succeeded the
Radeon 7500 The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D computer graphics, 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL, OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host ...
(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 GeForce4 MX 440. Its main advantage over the MX 440 was that it had a full
DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...
8.1 vertex and pixel shader implementation. While the 9000 was not quite as fast as the 8500LE or the Nvidia GeForce3 Ti200, the 8500LE and Ti200 were to be discontinued, though the former was reintroduced due to strong market demand.


Radeon 9200

A later revision of the 9000 was the ''Radeon 9200'' (RV280) released April 16, 2003, which aside from supporting AGP 8X, was identical. There was also a cheaper version, the ''9200SE'', which had a 20% lower clock speed and only had a 64-bit
memory bus In computer architecture, a bus (shortened form of the Latin '' omnibus'', and historically also called data highway or databus) is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This ex ...
. Another board, called the ''Radeon 9250'' was launched in July 2004, being simply a slightly lower-clocked RV280. ATI had re-branded its products in 2001, intending the 7xxx series to indicate DirectX 7.0 capabilities, 8xxx for DirectX 8.1, and so on. However, in naming the Radeon 9000/9200, which only had DirectX 8.1 rendering features, ATI advertised them as "DirectX 9.0 compatible" while the truly DirectX 9.0-spec Radeon 9700 was "DirectX 9.0 compliant".


Laptop versions

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.


Models


Drivers


Unix-related operating systems

The
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
drivers from X.org/
Mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by ...
support almost all features provided by the R200 hardware. They are shipped by default on most
BSDs There are a number of Unix-like operating systems under active development, descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) series of UNIX variants developed (originally by Bill Joy) at the University of California, Berkeley Electrical Eng ...
and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
systems. Newer ATI Catalyst drivers do not offer support for any R500 or older architecture product. The PowerPC-based
Mac mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. , it is positioned between the consumer all-in-one iMac (Intel-based), iMac and the profes ...
and
iBook G4 iBook is a line of laptop computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted entry-level, consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end ...
, which run on
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
, were supplied with Radeon 9200 GPUs; the final
Power Mac G4 The Power Mac G4 is a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2004 as part of the Power Macintosh line. Built around the PowerPC G4 series of microprocessors, the Power Mac G4 was marketed by ...
"Mirrored Drive Door" systems had the 9000 and 9000 Pro cards available as a BTO option.


Windows drivers

This series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by AMD under
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
operating systems including
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...
(except
x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mo ...
),
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...
,
Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...
, and
Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...
. 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.


Classic Mac OS

The Radeon 9250 was the final ATI card to officially support
Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple Inc., Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by macOS, Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "T ...
.


AmigaOS

The R200 series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by the Amiga operating system, Release 4 and higher. 2D graphics are fully supported by all cards in the family, with 3D acceleration support for the 9000, 9200, and 9250-series of cards.


MorphOS

The R200 series of Radeon graphics cards is supported by
MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed Proprietary software, proprietary and Open-source software, open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amig ...


See also

*
ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. (commonly called ATI) was a Canadian semiconductor industry, semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Fo ...
*
Comparison of ATI Graphics Processing Units The following is a list that contains general information about GPUs and video cards by AMD, including those by ATI Technologies before 2006, based on official specifications in table-form. Field explanations The headers in the table listed b ...
*
List of AMD graphics processing units The following is a list that contains general information about GPUs and video cards by AMD, including those by ATI Technologies before 2006, based on official specifications in table-form. Field explanations The headers in the table listed b ...


References


Sources


"ATI Radeon 8500 64 MB Review (Part 1)"
by Dave Baumann, Beyond3D.Com, March 29, 2002, retrieved January 14, 2006
"ATI Radeon 8500 64 MB Review (Part 2)"
by Dave Baumann, Beyond3D.Com, April 4, 2002, retrieved January 14, 2006

by Tim Tscheblockov, X-Bit Labs, February 5, 2003, retrieved January 9, 2006
"ATI's Radeon 8500 & 7500: A Preview"
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Anandtech, August 14, 2001, retrieved January 9, 2006
"ATI's Radeon 8500: She's got potential"
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Anandtech, October 17, 2001, retrieved January 9, 2006
"ATI R200 Chip Details"
by Beyond3D, retrieved August 30, 2010
"ATI RV250 Chip Details"
by Beyond3D, retrieved August 30, 2010
"ATI RV280 Chip Details"
by Beyond3D, retrieved August 30, 2010


External links


techPowerUp! GPU Database
{{AMD graphics ATI Technologies products Computer-related introductions in 2001 Graphics cards