Radeon R600
Encyclopedia
The graphics processing unit
(GPU) codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon
HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video card
s developed by ATI Technologies
. The HD 2000 cards competed with nVidia's GeForce 8000 series, while the HD 3000 cards competed against the GeForce 9 series.
graphics processing unit (GPU) from ATI
based on a unified shader
architecture. It is ATI's second generation unified shader design and is based on the Xenos GPU implemented in the Xbox 360
game console, which used the world's first such shader architecture. Previous GPU architectures implement separate processors for each type of graphics function. A unified architecture leverages many flexible processors which can be scheduled to process a variety of shader types, thereby significantly increasing GPU throughput (dependent on application instruction mix as noted below). The R600 core processes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders as outlined by the Direct3D
10.0 specification for Shader Model 4.0 in addition to full OpenGL
3.0 support.
The new unified shader functionality is based upon a very long instruction word
(VLIW) architecture in which the core executes operations in parallel.
A shader cluster is organized into 5 stream processing units. Each stream processing unit can retire a finished single precision floating point MAD (or ADD or MUL) instruction per clock, dot product (DP, and special cased by combining ALUs), and integer ADD. The 5th unit is more complex and can additionally handle special transcendental function
s such as sine
and cosine. Each shader cluster can execute 6 instructions per clock cycle (peak), consisting of 5 shading instructions plus 1 branch.
Notably, the VLIW architecture brings with it some classic challenges inherent to VLIW designs, namely that of maintaining optimal instruction flow. Additionally, the chip cannot co-issue instructions when one is dependent on the results of the other. Performance of the GPU is highly dependent on the mixture of instructions being used by the application and how well the real-time compiler in the driver can organize said instructions.
R600 core includes 64 shader clusters, while RV610 and RV630 cores have 8 and 24 shader clusters respectively.
. This unit allows a developer to take a simple polygon mesh and subdivide it based on a curved surface evaluation function, with different tessellation forms as Bézier surface
s with N-patches
, B-spline
s and NURBS
, and even some subdivision surface techniques, which usually comes with a displacement map texture. Essentially, this allows a simple, low-polygon model to be increased dramatically in polygon density in real-time with minimized performance loss. Scott Wasson of Tech Report noted during an AMD demo of the technology that the resulting model was so dense with millions of polygons that it appeared to be solid.
This unit is reminiscent of ATI's earlier TruForm
technology, used initially in the Radeon 8500
, which performed a similar function in hardware. While this tessellation hardware is not part of the current OpenGL or Direct3D requirements, and competitors such as the GeForce 8 series
lack similar hardware, Microsoft has included Tessellation as part of their D3D10.1 future plans.
The TruForm technology from the past received little attention from software developers and was only utilized in a few game titles (such as Madden NFL 2004
, Serious Sam
, Unreal Tournament 2003
and 2004
, and unofficially Morrowind), because it was not a feature shared with NVIDIA GPUs which had a competing tessellation solution using Quintic-RT patches which met with even less support from developers. Since the Xenos contains similar hardware, and Microsoft sees hardware surface tessellation as a major GPU feature with proposed implementation of hardware tessellation support in future DirectX releases (presumably DirectX 11), dedicated hardware tessellation units may receive increased developer awareness in future titles. It remains to be seen whether ATI's implementation will be compatible with the eventual DirectX standard.
. The Ultra-Threaded Dispatch Processor is a major architectural component of the R600 core, just as it was with the Radeon X1000 GPUs. This processor manages a large number of in-flight threads of three distinct types (vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders) and switches amongst them as needed. With a large number of threads being managed simultaneously it is possible to reorganize thread order to optimally utilize the shaders. In other words, the dispatch processor evaluates what goes in the other parts of the R600 and attempts to keep processing efficiency as high as possible. There are lower levels of management as well; each SIMD array of 80 stream processors has its own sequencer and arbiter. The arbiter decides which thread to process next, while the sequencer attempts to reorder instructions for best possible performance within each thread.
The render output units (ROPs) of Radeon HD 2000 series now performs the task of multi-sample anti-aliasing
(MSAA) with programmable sample grids and maximum of 8 sample points, instead of using pixel shaders as in Radeon X1000 series
. Also new is the capability to filter FP16 textures, popular with HDR
lighting, at full-speed. ROP can also perform trilinear
and anisotropic filtering
on all texture formats. On R600, this totals 16 pixels per clock for FP16 textures, while higher precision FP32 textures filter at half-speed (8 pixels per clock).
Anti-aliasing capabilities are more robust on R600 than on the R520 series. In addition to the ability to perform 8× MSAA, up from 6× MSAA on the R300 through R580, R600 has a new custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) mode. CFAA refers to an implementation of non-box filters that look at pixels around the particular pixel being processed in order to calculate the final color and anti-alias the image. CFAA is performed by shader, instead of in the ROPs. This brings greatly enhanced programmability because the filters can be customized, but may also bring potential performance issues because of the use of shader resources. As of launch of R600, CFAA utilizes wide and narrow tent filters. With these, samples from outside the pixel being processed are weighted linear
ly based upon their distance from the centroid
of that pixel, with the linear function adjusted based on the wide or narrow filter chosen.
(UVD) for hardware decoding of MPEG4, VC-1
, and H.264 video streams, this capability being the major part of AVIVO HD technology. In terms of functionality, NVIDIA's Purevideo 2 offers similar hardware video acceleration, with UVD including greater VC-1 offloading.
HDTV encoding support is implemented via the integrated AMD Xilleon encoder; the companion Rage Theater chip used on the Radeon X1000 series was replaced with the digital Theater 200 chip, providing VIVO
capabilities.
For display outputs, all variants include two dual-link TMDS transmitters, except for HD 2400 and HD 3400, which include one single and one dual-link TMDS transmitters. Each DVI output includes dual-link HDCP
encoder with on-chip decipher key. HDMI
was introduced, supporting display resolutions up to 1,920×1,080, with integrated HD audio controller with 5.1-channel LPCM
and AC3 encoding support. Audio is transmitted via DVI port, with specially designed DVI-to-HDMI dongle for HDMI output that carries both audio and video.
All variants support CrossFireX technology. CrossFire efficiency was improved and shows performance approaching the theoretical maximum of twice the performance of a single card.
While some of the architecture of Radeon HD 2000 family is similar to Xenos, Radeon HD 2000 family does not have embedded DRAM (eDRAM
) frame buffer. Xenos' eDRAM is designed tightly around the limited resolutions at which the Xbox 360 operates. Personal computers operate at maximum efficiency at a much wider range of resolutions, which would require a significantly larger amount of eDRAM to be effective.
(55 nm) variants: RV670, RV635 and RV620. All variants support PCI Express 2.0, DirectX
10.1 with Shader Model 4.1 features, dedicated ATI Unified Video Decoder
(UVD) for all models and PowerPlay technology
for desktop video cards.
Except the Radeon HD 3800 series, all variants supported 2 integrated DisplayPort outputs, supporting 24- and 30-bit displays for resolutions up to 2,560×1,600. Each output included 1, 2, or 4 lanes per output, with data rate up to 2.7 Gbit/s per lane.
ATI claimed that the support of DirectX 10.1 can bring improved performance and processing efficiency with reduced rounding error (0.5 ULP
compared with average error 1.0 ULP as tolerable error), better image details and quality, global illumination
(a technique used in animated films, and more improvements to consumer gaming systems therefore giving more realistic gaming experience. )
HD 2000 series, with the enthusiast segment being the Radeon HD 2900 series which originally comprised the Radeon HD 2900 XT with GDDR3
memory released on May 14, and the higher-clocked GDDR4
version in early July.
The mainstream and budget segment products were the Radeon HD 2600 and Radeon HD 2400 series respectively, both launched June 28, 2007.
Previously there were no HD 2000 series products being offered in the performance segment while ATI used models from the previous generation to address that target market; the situation was not changed until the release of variants of the Radeon HD 2900 series, the Radeon HD 2900 Pro and GT, which filled the gap of the performance market for a short period of time.
10. It was also the first product of the R600 architecture and was launched on May 14, 2007.
The Radeon HD 2900 Pro was clocked lower at 600 MHz core and 800 MHz memory (1,600 MHz effective), configured with 512 MiB or 1 GiB (GDDR3/GDDR4) of video memory and the same 512-bit memory controller as the Radeon HD 2900 XT instead of the previously rumored 256-bit memory controller.
The Radeon HD 2900 GT was a 48-shader cluster variant clocked the same as the HD 2900 Pro with 256 MiB of video memory on a 256-bit interface.
with a PCI-E
bridge splitting the PCI-E ×16 bandwidth into two groups of PCI-E ×8 lanes (each 2.0 Gbit/s). The card provides 4 DVI
outputs or HDMI
outputs via dongle and supports CrossFire configurations. AMD calls this product the Radeon HD 2600 X2 as seen by some vendors and as observed inside the INF file
of Catalyst 7.9 version 8.411. Sapphire and other vendors including PowerColor and GeCube have either announced or demonstrated their respective dual GPU (connected by crossfire) products. Catalyst 7.9 added support for this hardware in September 2007. However, AMD did not provide much publicity to promote it. A vendor may offer cards containing 256 MiB, 512 MiB, or 1 GiB of video memory. Although the memory technology utilized is at a vendor's discretion, most vendors have opted for GDDR3 and DDR2
due to lower manufacturing cost and positioning of this product for the mainstream rather than performance market segment.
Reports has that the first batch of the RV610 core (silicon revision A12), only being released to system builders, has a bug that hindered the UVD from working properly, but other parts of the die operated normally. Those products were officially supported with the release of Catalyst 7.10 driver, which the cards were named as Radeon HD 2350 series.
The RV670 GPU is also the base of the FireStream 9170
stream processor, which uses the GPU to perform general purpose floating-point calculations
which were done in the CPU previously.
The Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 became available mid-November 2007.
A further announcement was made that there would be a Radeon HD 3830 variant bearing the same features as Radeon HD 3690, but with a unique device ID that does not allow add-in card partners in China to re-enable the burnt-out portion of the GPU core for more memory bandwidth.
The Radeon HD 3690 was released early February 2008 for the Chinese market only.
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 uses the same approach for communications between the two GPU cores as the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual and Radeon HD 2600 X2. The GPU cores communicate to each other through an onboard PCI-E switch, providing each core with ×8 (Radeon X1950 Pro Dual) to ×16 (Radeon HD 2600 X2) PCI-E bandwidth and becoming a software CrossFire setup, supporting two extra hardware CrossFire bridges. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 uses PEX8547 PCI-E switch, but each core shares ×16 PCI-E bandwidth. The card only sees one CrossFire bridge being placed onboard and between the cores, thus only allowing one CrossFire bridge to be plugged onto the card.
AMD stated the possibility of supporting 4 Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards, allowing 8 GPUs to be used on several motherboards, including the MSI K9A2 Platinum and Intel D5400XS
, because these motherboards have sufficient spaces between PCI-E slots for dual-slot cooler video cards, presumably as a combination of two separate hardware CrossFire setups with a software CrossFire setup bridging the two, but currently with no driver support.
The only variant, the Radeon HD 3650, was released on January 23, 2008.
One of the notable features is that the Radeon HD 3400 series (including Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series) video cards support ATI Hybrid Graphics
.
The Radeon HD 3450 and Radeon HD 3470 were released on January 23, 2008.
7.0 features, which are augmented from the previous generation's PowerPlay 6.0.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2300 is a budget product which includes UVD in silica but lacks unified shader architecture and DirectX
10.0/SM
4.0 support, limiting support to DirectX
9.0c/SM 3.0 using the more traditional architecture of the previous generation. A high-end variant, the Mobility Radeon HD 2700, with higher core and memory frequencies than the Mobility Radeon HD 2600, was released in mid-December 2007.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2400 is offered in two model variants; the standard HD 2400 and the HD 2400 XT.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2600 is also available in the same two flavors; the plain HD 2600 and, at the top of the mobility lineup, the HD 2600 XT.
The half-generation update treatment had also applied to mobile products. Announced prior to CES
2008 was the Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series. Released in the first quarter of 2008, the Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series consisted of two families, the Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series and the Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series. The Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series also featured the industry's first implementation of on-board 128-bit GDDR4 memory.
About the time of late March to early April, 2008, AMD renewed the device ID list on its website with the inclusion of Mobility Radeon HD 3850 X2 and Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 and their respective device IDs. Later in Spring IDF
2008 held in Shanghai, a development board of the Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 was demonstrated alongside a Centrino 2 platform demonstration system. The Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 was based on two M88 GPUs with the addition of a PCI Express switch chip on a single PCB. The demonstrated development board is on PCI Express 2.0 ×16 bus, while the final product is expected to be on AXIOM/MXM
modules.
and tamper with the operating system kernel, was resolved in the Catalyst 7.8 release (version 8.401). The AVIVO video converter for Windows Vista
, and color temperature
control in Catalyst Control Center was added with the release of Catalyst 7.9, package version 8.411. Software CrossFire was enabled for HD 2600 and HD 2400 series video cards with the release of Catalyst 7.10 (package version 8.421)
The Catalyst 8.1, package version 8.451, supports for MultiView technology for accelerated OpenGL rendering on multiple video card setup (CrossFire). The driver also allows CrossFire configurations for Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 video cards.
The Catalyst 8.3 is described by AMD as a milestone release, supporting DirectX 10.1, ATI CrossFire X technology and allowing the mixing of different Radeon HD 3800 series video cards to form a CrossFire X setup with 2 to 4 GPUs. Catalyst 8.3 introduced to new video controls to further enhance the video playback quality, these controls includes edge enhancement and noise reduction settings. There is also the support for extended desktop in CrossFire X mode. The anti-aliasing support for Unreal Engine 3.0 in DirectX 9.0 games, support for CFAA filters (wide tent and box tent) to be enabled when Super AA is enabled, and other features as developer support for hardware surface tessellation, hardware accelerated wide aspect ratio LCD scaling, HydraVision support for Windows Vista
allowing to add maximum 9 virtual desktops and new Folding@Home
client (version 6.10) are also officially supported in this release.
The Catalyst 8.5, package version 8.493 brought new features include component video
with 480i
and 480p
resolutions, SECAM
TV output support, 1080p
HDTV
custom mode via HDMI, 1080p24 (1080p resolution at 24 Hz) support, HDMI Audio for non-standard TV modes (CEA 861b), support for adaptive anti-aliasing (and later, in Catalyst 8.6, also support for custom filters ) under OpenGL
, Windows XP SP3 support and un-install utility enhancements. The driver also includes performance improvements and fixes some instability issues and rendering issues on some games.
Current Catalyst drivers do not support the AGP versions of Radeon HD 2000/3000 series cards with RIALTO bridge. Installing Catalyst drivers on those cards will yield the following error message: "setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system." or simply fail outright. The AGP cards in question are supported unofficially by ATI/AMD with a hot-fixed
Catalyst driver-set each month since May 2008 with the Catalyst 8.5 hotfix. Their PCI vendor IDs are listed below:
Another Linux driver is the Radeon driver, an open-source AMD display driver, it is developed in part by specifications that AMD has openly published. To date, AMD has released register specifications for M56
, M76, RV630 and RS690 GPUs and 3D programming guide for the R500 family of GPUs. AMD has committed to releasing their R500 and R600 GPU documentation along with publishing their specifications for past generations of GPUs.
(xf86-video-ati). Initial register documentation and parser code to execute the AtomBIOS ROM routines were released in September 2007. The R600 family Instruction Set Architecture guide was released on June 11, 2008. Sample code and register headers for the R600 and R700 3D engines were released in December 2008. AMD released the specifications for both the r6xx and r7xx
families on January 26, 2009.
were eliminated, products were 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). While for dual-GPU products, a new suffix X2 will be used to identify its nature as dual-GPU on one PCB solution. Similar changes to the 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, while 90 appeared once in the lineup and can be seen as the XTX variant. Stream Processors only applicable to Direct3D 10-class video components (Radeon HD 2000/3000 series). All Dual-GPU solutions will have an X2 suffix after the model number. Side-port memory as local frame buffer is only available on selected IGP models, not all IGP models have this feature.
with AVIVO
capabilities.
It should be noted that several products, branded the Mobility Radeon X2000 series, are in fact based on the older R520
architecture and spotting the support of DirectX 9.0c only and do not have UVD on die.
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...
(GPU) codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon
Radeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video card
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
s developed 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...
. The HD 2000 cards competed with nVidia's GeForce 8000 series, while the HD 3000 cards competed against the GeForce 9 series.
Unified shaders
The R600 is the first personal computerPersonal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
graphics processing unit (GPU) from ATI
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...
based on a 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 :...
architecture. It is ATI's second generation unified shader design and is based on the Xenos GPU implemented in the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
game console, which used the world's first such shader architecture. Previous GPU architectures implement separate processors for each type of graphics function. A unified architecture leverages many flexible processors which can be scheduled to process a variety of shader types, thereby significantly increasing GPU throughput (dependent on application instruction mix as noted below). The R600 core processes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders as outlined by the Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
10.0 specification for Shader Model 4.0 in addition to full 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...
3.0 support.
The new unified shader functionality is based upon a very long instruction word
Very long instruction word
Very long instruction word or VLIW refers to a CPU architecture designed to take advantage of instruction level parallelism . A processor that executes every instruction one after the other may use processor resources inefficiently, potentially leading to poor performance...
(VLIW) architecture in which the core executes operations in parallel.
A shader cluster is organized into 5 stream processing units. Each stream processing unit can retire a finished single precision floating point MAD (or ADD or MUL) instruction per clock, dot product (DP, and special cased by combining ALUs), and integer ADD. The 5th unit is more complex and can additionally handle special transcendental function
Transcendental function
A transcendental function is a function that does not satisfy a polynomial equation whose coefficients are themselves polynomials, in contrast to an algebraic function, which does satisfy such an equation...
s such as sine
Sine
In mathematics, the sine function is a function of an angle. In a right triangle, sine gives the ratio of the length of the side opposite to an angle to the length of the hypotenuse.Sine is usually listed first amongst the trigonometric functions....
and cosine. Each shader cluster can execute 6 instructions per clock cycle (peak), consisting of 5 shading instructions plus 1 branch.
Notably, the VLIW architecture brings with it some classic challenges inherent to VLIW designs, namely that of maintaining optimal instruction flow. Additionally, the chip cannot co-issue instructions when one is dependent on the results of the other. Performance of the GPU is highly dependent on the mixture of instructions being used by the application and how well the real-time compiler in the driver can organize said instructions.
R600 core includes 64 shader clusters, while RV610 and RV630 cores have 8 and 24 shader clusters respectively.
Hardware tessellation
The GPU is equipped with an extra feature which is not part of the current DirectX 10.0 specification. It contains programmable tessellation units, similar to those within the Xenos GPU (codenamed C1) also developed by ATIAti
As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
. This unit allows a developer to take a simple polygon mesh and subdivide it based on a curved surface evaluation function, with different tessellation forms as Bézier surface
Bézier surface
Bézier surfaces are a species of mathematical spline used in computer graphics, computer-aided design, and finite element modeling.As with the Bézier curve, a Bézier surface is defined by a set of control points...
s with N-patches
Truform
TruForm was an early tessellation implementation created by ATI and employed in DirectX 8 and OpenGL graphics cards, on both Mac and Windows. The technology was first employed on the Radeon 8500 in 2001...
, B-spline
B-spline
In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, a B-spline is a spline function that has minimal support with respect to a given degree, smoothness, and domain partition. B-splines were investigated as early as the nineteenth century by Nikolai Lobachevsky...
s and NURBS
Nonuniform rational B-spline
Non-uniform rational basis spline is a mathematical model commonly used in computer graphics for generating and representing curves and surfaces which offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analytic and freeform shapes.- History :Development of NURBS began in the 1950s by...
, and even some subdivision surface techniques, which usually comes with a displacement map texture. Essentially, this allows a simple, low-polygon model to be increased dramatically in polygon density in real-time with minimized performance loss. Scott Wasson of Tech Report noted during an AMD demo of the technology that the resulting model was so dense with millions of polygons that it appeared to be solid.
This unit is reminiscent of ATI's earlier TruForm
Truform
TruForm was an early tessellation implementation created by ATI and employed in DirectX 8 and OpenGL graphics cards, on both Mac and Windows. The technology was first employed on the Radeon 8500 in 2001...
technology, used initially in the Radeon 8500
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...
, which performed a similar function in hardware. While this tessellation hardware is not part of the current OpenGL or Direct3D requirements, and competitors such as the GeForce 8 series
GeForce 8 Series
The GeForce 8 Series, is the eighth generation of NVIDIA's GeForce line of graphics processing units. The third major GPU architecture developed at NVIDIA, the GeForce 8 represents the company's first unified shader architecture.-Naming:...
lack similar hardware, Microsoft has included Tessellation as part of their D3D10.1 future plans.
The TruForm technology from the past received little attention from software developers and was only utilized in a few game titles (such as Madden NFL 2004
Madden NFL 2004
Madden NFL 2004 is the 14th installment of the Madden NFL series of American football video games. Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback, is on the cover. New features in Madden 2004 include a new owner mode option that allows the player to control a franchise...
, Serious Sam
Serious Sam
Serious Sam is the first game in the Serious Sam series. It is a first-person shooter created by the Croatian development house Croteam...
, Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 or UT2003 is a first-person shooter video game designed mainly for multiplayer gaming. The game is part of the Unreal franchise's series of games, and is a sequel to Unreal Tournament ....
and 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes...
, and unofficially Morrowind), because it was not a feature shared with NVIDIA GPUs which had a competing tessellation solution using Quintic-RT patches which met with even less support from developers. Since the Xenos contains similar hardware, and Microsoft sees hardware surface tessellation as a major GPU feature with proposed implementation of hardware tessellation support in future DirectX releases (presumably DirectX 11), dedicated hardware tessellation units may receive increased developer awareness in future titles. It remains to be seen whether ATI's implementation will be compatible with the eventual DirectX standard.
Ultra threaded dispatch processor
Although the R600 is a significant departure from previous designs, it still shares many features with its predecessorsRadeon 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,...
. The Ultra-Threaded Dispatch Processor is a major architectural component of the R600 core, just as it was with the Radeon X1000 GPUs. This processor manages a large number of in-flight threads of three distinct types (vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders) and switches amongst them as needed. With a large number of threads being managed simultaneously it is possible to reorganize thread order to optimally utilize the shaders. In other words, the dispatch processor evaluates what goes in the other parts of the R600 and attempts to keep processing efficiency as high as possible. There are lower levels of management as well; each SIMD array of 80 stream processors has its own sequencer and arbiter. The arbiter decides which thread to process next, while the sequencer attempts to reorder instructions for best possible performance within each thread.
Texturing and anti-aliasing
Texturing and final output aboard the R600 core is similar but also distinct from R580. R600 is equipped with 4 texture units that are decoupled (independent) from the shader core, like in the R520 and R580 GPUs.The render output units (ROPs) of Radeon HD 2000 series now performs the task of multi-sample 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...
(MSAA) with programmable sample grids and maximum of 8 sample points, instead of using pixel shaders as in Radeon X1000 series
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,...
. Also new is the capability to filter FP16 textures, popular with HDR
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...
lighting, at full-speed. ROP can also perform trilinear
Trilinear filtering
Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps.Bilinear filtering has several weaknesses that make it an unattractive choice in many cases: using it on a full-detail texture when scaling to a very small size...
and anisotropic filtering
Anisotropic filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture appears to be non-orthogonal In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering...
on all texture formats. On R600, this totals 16 pixels per clock for FP16 textures, while higher precision FP32 textures filter at half-speed (8 pixels per clock).
Anti-aliasing capabilities are more robust on R600 than on the R520 series. In addition to the ability to perform 8× MSAA, up from 6× MSAA on the R300 through R580, R600 has a new custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) mode. CFAA refers to an implementation of non-box filters that look at pixels around the particular pixel being processed in order to calculate the final color and anti-alias the image. CFAA is performed by shader, instead of in the ROPs. This brings greatly enhanced programmability because the filters can be customized, but may also bring potential performance issues because of the use of shader resources. As of launch of R600, CFAA utilizes wide and narrow tent filters. With these, samples from outside the pixel being processed are weighted linear
Linear
In mathematics, a linear map or function f is a function which satisfies the following two properties:* Additivity : f = f + f...
ly based upon their distance from the centroid
Centroid
In geometry, the centroid, geometric center, or barycenter of a plane figure or two-dimensional shape X is the intersection of all straight lines that divide X into two parts of equal moment about the line. Informally, it is the "average" of all points of X...
of that pixel, with the linear function adjusted based on the wide or narrow filter chosen.
Memory controllers
Memory controllers are connected via internal bi-directional ring bus wrapped around the processor. In Radeon HD 2900, it is a 1,024-bit bi-directional ring bus (512-bit read and 512-bit write), with 8 64-bit memory channels for a total bus width of 512-bits on the 2900 XT.; in Radeon HD 3800, it is a 512-bit ring bus; in Radeon HD 2600 and HD 3600, it is a 256-bit ring bus; In Radeon HD 2400 and HD 3400, there is no ring bus.Video processing, display and miscellaneous features
All video cards except the Radeon HD 2900 series include dedicated ATI's Unified Video DecoderUnified Video Decoder
The Unified Video Decoder, previously called Universal Video Decoder, or UVD in short, is the video decoding unit from ATI Technologies to support hardware decode of H.264 and VC-1 video codec standards, and being a part of ATI Avivo HD technology....
(UVD) for hardware decoding of MPEG4, VC-1
VC-1
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
, and H.264 video streams, this capability being the major part of AVIVO HD technology. In terms of functionality, NVIDIA's Purevideo 2 offers similar hardware video acceleration, with UVD including greater VC-1 offloading.
HDTV encoding support is implemented via the integrated AMD Xilleon encoder; the companion Rage Theater chip used on the Radeon X1000 series was replaced with the digital Theater 200 chip, providing VIVO
Video In Video Out
Video 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...
capabilities.
For display outputs, all variants include two dual-link TMDS transmitters, except for HD 2400 and HD 3400, which include one single and one dual-link TMDS transmitters. Each DVI output includes dual-link HDCP
High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections...
encoder with on-chip decipher key. 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...
was introduced, supporting display resolutions up to 1,920×1,080, with integrated HD audio controller with 5.1-channel LPCM
LPCM
Linear pulse-code modulation is a method of encoding audio information digitally. The term also refers collectively to formats using this method of encoding...
and AC3 encoding support. Audio is transmitted via DVI port, with specially designed DVI-to-HDMI dongle for HDMI output that carries both audio and video.
All variants support CrossFireX technology. CrossFire efficiency was improved and shows performance approaching the theoretical maximum of twice the performance of a single card.
While some of the architecture of Radeon HD 2000 family is similar to Xenos, Radeon HD 2000 family does not have embedded DRAM (eDRAM
EDRAM
eDRAM stands for "embedded DRAM", a capacitor-based dynamic random access memory integrated on the same die as an ASIC or processor. The cost-per-bit is higher than for stand-alone DRAM chips but in many applications the performance advantages of placing the eDRAM on the same chip as the processor...
) frame buffer. Xenos' eDRAM is designed tightly around the limited resolutions at which the Xbox 360 operates. Personal computers operate at maximum efficiency at a much wider range of resolutions, which would require a significantly larger amount of eDRAM to be effective.
Half-generation update
The series saw a half-generation update with die shrinkDie shrink
The term "die shrink" refers to a simple semiconductor scaling of semiconductor devices, mainly transistors. The act of shrinking a die is to create a somewhat identical circuitry using a more advanced fabrication process, usually involving an advance of lithographic node...
(55 nm) variants: RV670, RV635 and RV620. All variants support PCI Express 2.0, 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,...
10.1 with Shader Model 4.1 features, dedicated ATI Unified Video Decoder
Unified Video Decoder
The Unified Video Decoder, previously called Universal Video Decoder, or UVD in short, is the video decoding unit from ATI Technologies to support hardware decode of H.264 and VC-1 video codec standards, and being a part of ATI Avivo HD technology....
(UVD) for all models and PowerPlay technology
ATI PowerPlay
ATI PowerPlay is a collective name for a set of technologies implemented in a series of graphics adapters manufactured by ATI, including the Mobility Radeon, the Imageon handheld chipset, and the Radeon family of desktop GPUs...
for desktop video cards.
Except the Radeon HD 3800 series, all variants supported 2 integrated DisplayPort outputs, supporting 24- and 30-bit displays for resolutions up to 2,560×1,600. Each output included 1, 2, or 4 lanes per output, with data rate up to 2.7 Gbit/s per lane.
ATI claimed that the support of DirectX 10.1 can bring improved performance and processing efficiency with reduced rounding error (0.5 ULP
Unit in the Last Place
In computer science and numerical analysis, unit in the last place or unit of least precision is the spacing between floating-point numbers, i.e., the value the least significant bit represents if it is 1...
compared with average error 1.0 ULP as tolerable error), better image details and quality, global illumination
Global illumination
Global illumination is a general name for a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes...
(a technique used in animated films, and more improvements to consumer gaming systems therefore giving more realistic gaming experience. )
Desktop products
The R600 family is called the RadeonRadeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
HD 2000 series, with the enthusiast segment being the Radeon HD 2900 series which originally comprised the Radeon HD 2900 XT with 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...
memory released on May 14, and the higher-clocked 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...
version in early July.
The mainstream and budget segment products were the Radeon HD 2600 and Radeon HD 2400 series respectively, both launched June 28, 2007.
Previously there were no HD 2000 series products being offered in the performance segment while ATI used models from the previous generation to address that target market; the situation was not changed until the release of variants of the Radeon HD 2900 series, the Radeon HD 2900 Pro and GT, which filled the gap of the performance market for a short period of time.
Radeon HD 2900
The Radeon HD 2900 series was based on the codenamed R600 GPU, packed 700 million transistors on an 80 nm fabrication process and had a 420 mm2 die size. The Radeon HD 2900 XT was the first graphics card product to implement digital PWM onboard, specifically 7-phase PWM, and was the first graphics card from ATI to support DirectXDirectX
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,...
10. It was also the first product of the R600 architecture and was launched on May 14, 2007.
The Radeon HD 2900 Pro was clocked lower at 600 MHz core and 800 MHz memory (1,600 MHz effective), configured with 512 MiB or 1 GiB (GDDR3/GDDR4) of video memory and the same 512-bit memory controller as the Radeon HD 2900 XT instead of the previously rumored 256-bit memory controller.
The Radeon HD 2900 GT was a 48-shader cluster variant clocked the same as the HD 2900 Pro with 256 MiB of video memory on a 256-bit interface.
Radeon HD 2600
The Radeon HD 2600 series was based on the codenamed RV630 GPU and packed 390 million transistors on a 65 nm fabrication process. The Radeon HD 2600-series video cards included GDDR3 support, a 128-bit memory ring bus and 4-phase digital PWM, spanning a die size of 153 mm2. Neither of the GDDR3 reference PCI-E designs required additional power connectors whereas the HD 2600 Pro and XT AGP variants required additional power through either 4-pin or 6-pin power connectors, Official claims state that the Radeon HD 2600 series consumes as little as 45 W of power.Radeon HD 2600 X2
The Radeon HD 2600 X2 is a dual-GPU product which includes 2 RV630 cores onto a single PCBPrinted circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
with a PCI-E
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
bridge splitting the PCI-E ×16 bandwidth into two groups of PCI-E ×8 lanes (each 2.0 Gbit/s). The card provides 4 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...
outputs or 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...
outputs via dongle and supports CrossFire configurations. AMD calls this product the Radeon HD 2600 X2 as seen by some vendors and as observed inside the INF file
INF file
An INF file or Setup Information file, is a plain text file used by Microsoft Windows for installation of software and drivers. INF files are most commonly used for installing device drivers for hardware components. Windows includes IExpress.exe for the creation of INF-based installations...
of Catalyst 7.9 version 8.411. Sapphire and other vendors including PowerColor and GeCube have either announced or demonstrated their respective dual GPU (connected by crossfire) products. Catalyst 7.9 added support for this hardware in September 2007. However, AMD did not provide much publicity to promote it. A vendor may offer cards containing 256 MiB, 512 MiB, or 1 GiB of video memory. Although the memory technology utilized is at a vendor's discretion, most vendors have opted for GDDR3 and DDR2
DDR2 SDRAM
DDR2 SDRAM is a double data rate synchronous dynamic random-access memory interface. It supersedes the original DDR SDRAM specification and has itself been superseded by DDR3 SDRAM...
due to lower manufacturing cost and positioning of this product for the mainstream rather than performance market segment.
Radeon HD 2400
The Radeon HD 2400 series was based on the codenamed RV610 GPU. It had 180 million transistors on a 65 nm fabrication process. The Radeon HD 2400 series used a 64-bit-wide memory bus. The die size is 85 mm2. The official PCB design implements only a passive-cooling heatsink instead of a fan, and official claims of power consumption are as little as 35 W. The core has 16 kiB unified vertex/texture cache away from dedicated vertex cache and L1/L2 texture cache used in higher end model.Reports has that the first batch of the RV610 core (silicon revision A12), only being released to system builders, has a bug that hindered the UVD from working properly, but other parts of the die operated normally. Those products were officially supported with the release of Catalyst 7.10 driver, which the cards were named as Radeon HD 2350 series.
Radeon HD 3800
The Radeon HD 3800 series was based on the codenamed RV670 GPU, packed 666 million transistors on a 55 nm fabrication process and had a die size at 192 mm2, with the same 64 shader clusters as the R600 core, but the memory bus width was reduced to 256 bits.The RV670 GPU is also the base of the FireStream 9170
AMD FireStream
The AMD FireStream is a stream processor produced by Advanced Micro Devices to utilize the stream processing/GPGPU concept for heavy floating-point computations to target various industries, such as the High Performance Computing , scientific, and financial sectors...
stream processor, which uses the GPU to perform general purpose floating-point calculations
GPGPU
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units is the technique of using a GPU, which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditionally handled by the CPU...
which were done in the CPU previously.
The Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 became available mid-November 2007.
Radeon HD 3690/3830
The Radeon HD 3690, which was limited only to the Chinese market where it was named HD 3830, has the same core as the Radeon 3800 series but with only a 128-bit memory controller and 256 MiB of GDDR3 memory. All other hardware specifications are retained.A further announcement was made that there would be a Radeon HD 3830 variant bearing the same features as Radeon HD 3690, but with a unique device ID that does not allow add-in card partners in China to re-enable the burnt-out portion of the GPU core for more memory bandwidth.
The Radeon HD 3690 was released early February 2008 for the Chinese market only.
Radeon HD 3800 X2
Radeon HD 3870 X2 (codenamed R680) was released on January 28, 2008, featuring 2 RV670 cores with a maximum of 1 GiB GDDR3 SDRAM, targeting the enthusiast market and replacing the Radeon HD 2900 XT. The processor achieved a peak single-precision floating point performance of 1.06 TFLOPS, being the world's first single-PCB graphics product breaking the 1 TFLOP mark.The Radeon HD 3870 X2 uses the same approach for communications between the two GPU cores as the Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro Dual and Radeon HD 2600 X2. The GPU cores communicate to each other through an onboard PCI-E switch, providing each core with ×8 (Radeon X1950 Pro Dual) to ×16 (Radeon HD 2600 X2) PCI-E bandwidth and becoming a software CrossFire setup, supporting two extra hardware CrossFire bridges. The Radeon HD 3870 X2 uses PEX8547 PCI-E switch, but each core shares ×16 PCI-E bandwidth. The card only sees one CrossFire bridge being placed onboard and between the cores, thus only allowing one CrossFire bridge to be plugged onto the card.
AMD stated the possibility of supporting 4 Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards, allowing 8 GPUs to be used on several motherboards, including the MSI K9A2 Platinum and Intel D5400XS
Intel Skulltrail
Intel's Skulltrail is an enthusiast gaming platform that was released on February 19, 2008. It is based on the company's 5400 "Seaburg" workstation chipset. The primary difference between Skulltrail and Intel's current and past enthusiast chipsets is a dual CPU socket design that allows two...
, because these motherboards have sufficient spaces between PCI-E slots for dual-slot cooler video cards, presumably as a combination of two separate hardware CrossFire setups with a software CrossFire setup bridging the two, but currently with no driver support.
Radeon HD 3600
The Radeon HD 3600 series was based on the codenamed RV635 GPU, packed 378 million transistors on 55 nm fabrication process, and had 128-bit memory bus width. The support for HDMI and D-sub ports is also achieved through separate dongles. Beside the DisplayPort implementations, there also exists other display output layouts as dual DVI port or DVI with D-sub display output layout.The only variant, the Radeon HD 3650, was released on January 23, 2008.
Radeon HD 3400
The Radeon HD 3400 series was based on the codenamed RV620 GPU, packed 181 million transistors on a 55 nm fabrication process, and had 64-bit memory bus width. Products were available in full height ATX cards and low-profile cards.One of the notable features is that the Radeon HD 3400 series (including Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series) video cards support ATI Hybrid Graphics
ATI Hybrid Graphics
The ATI Hybrid Graphics technology, is a collective brand from AMD for its Radeon line of discrete and integrated GPU, promoting higher performance and productivity while saving energy consumption in GPUs. The technology currently applies to selected chipsets of the AMD 700 chipset series and AMD...
.
The Radeon HD 3450 and Radeon HD 3470 were released on January 23, 2008.
Mobile products
All Mobility Radeon HD 2000/3000 series share the same feature set support as their desktop counterparts, as well as the addition of the battery-conserving PowerPlayATI PowerPlay
ATI PowerPlay is a collective name for a set of technologies implemented in a series of graphics adapters manufactured by ATI, including the Mobility Radeon, the Imageon handheld chipset, and the Radeon family of desktop GPUs...
7.0 features, which are augmented from the previous generation's PowerPlay 6.0.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2300 is a budget product which includes UVD in silica but lacks unified shader architecture and 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,...
10.0/SM
High Level Shader Language
The High Level Shader Language or High Level Shading Language is a proprietary shading language developed by Microsoft for use with the Microsoft Direct3D API. It is analogous to the GLSL shading language used with the OpenGL standard...
4.0 support, limiting support to 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,...
9.0c/SM 3.0 using the more traditional architecture of the previous generation. A high-end variant, the Mobility Radeon HD 2700, with higher core and memory frequencies than the Mobility Radeon HD 2600, was released in mid-December 2007.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2400 is offered in two model variants; the standard HD 2400 and the HD 2400 XT.
The Mobility Radeon HD 2600 is also available in the same two flavors; the plain HD 2600 and, at the top of the mobility lineup, the HD 2600 XT.
The half-generation update treatment had also applied to mobile products. Announced prior to CES
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
2008 was the Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series. Released in the first quarter of 2008, the Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series consisted of two families, the Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series and the Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series. The Mobility Radeon HD 3600 series also featured the industry's first implementation of on-board 128-bit GDDR4 memory.
About the time of late March to early April, 2008, AMD renewed the device ID list on its website with the inclusion of Mobility Radeon HD 3850 X2 and Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 and their respective device IDs. Later in Spring IDF
Intel Developer Forum
Intel Developer Forum , is a gathering of technologists to discuss Intel products and products based around Intel products. The first IDF was in 1997...
2008 held in Shanghai, a development board of the Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 was demonstrated alongside a Centrino 2 platform demonstration system. The Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 was based on two M88 GPUs with the addition of a PCI Express switch chip on a single PCB. The demonstrated development board is on PCI Express 2.0 ×16 bus, while the final product is expected to be on AXIOM/MXM
Mobile PCI Express Module
A Mobile PCI Express Module is an interconnect standard for GPUs in laptops using PCI Express created by MXM-SIG...
modules.
Windows
The Purple Pill tool issue, which could allow unsigned drivers to be loaded into Windows VistaWindows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
and tamper with the operating system kernel, was resolved in the Catalyst 7.8 release (version 8.401). The AVIVO video converter for Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
, and color temperature
Color temperature
Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black-body radiator that radiates light of...
control in Catalyst Control Center was added with the release of Catalyst 7.9, package version 8.411. Software CrossFire was enabled for HD 2600 and HD 2400 series video cards with the release of Catalyst 7.10 (package version 8.421)
The Catalyst 8.1, package version 8.451, supports for MultiView technology for accelerated OpenGL rendering on multiple video card setup (CrossFire). The driver also allows CrossFire configurations for Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 video cards.
The Catalyst 8.3 is described by AMD as a milestone release, supporting DirectX 10.1, ATI CrossFire X technology and allowing the mixing of different Radeon HD 3800 series video cards to form a CrossFire X setup with 2 to 4 GPUs. Catalyst 8.3 introduced to new video controls to further enhance the video playback quality, these controls includes edge enhancement and noise reduction settings. There is also the support for extended desktop in CrossFire X mode. The anti-aliasing support for Unreal Engine 3.0 in DirectX 9.0 games, support for CFAA filters (wide tent and box tent) to be enabled when Super AA is enabled, and other features as developer support for hardware surface tessellation, hardware accelerated wide aspect ratio LCD scaling, HydraVision support for Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
allowing to add maximum 9 virtual desktops and new Folding@Home
Folding@home
Folding@home is a distributed computing project designed to use spare processing power on personal computers to perform simulations of disease-relevant protein folding and other molecular dynamics, and to improve on the methods of doing so...
client (version 6.10) are also officially supported in this release.
The Catalyst 8.5, package version 8.493 brought new features include component video
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...
with 480i
480i
480i is the shorthand name for a video mode, namely the US NTSC television system or digital television systems with the same characteristics. The i, which is sometimes uppercase, stands for interlaced, the 480 for a vertical frame resolution of 480 lines containing picture information; while NTSC...
and 480p
480p
480p is the shorthand name for a video display resolution. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The 480 denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixel high vertically scanning lines, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 aspect ratio or a horizontal resolution of...
resolutions, SECAM
SECAM
SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France....
TV output support, 1080p
1080p
1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
HDTV
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
custom mode via HDMI, 1080p24 (1080p resolution at 24 Hz) support, HDMI Audio for non-standard TV modes (CEA 861b), support for adaptive anti-aliasing (and later, in Catalyst 8.6, also support for custom filters ) under 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...
, Windows XP SP3 support and un-install utility enhancements. The driver also includes performance improvements and fixes some instability issues and rendering issues on some games.
Current Catalyst drivers do not support the AGP versions of Radeon HD 2000/3000 series cards with RIALTO bridge. Installing Catalyst drivers on those cards will yield the following error message: "setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system." or simply fail outright. The AGP cards in question are supported unofficially by ATI/AMD with a hot-fixed
Hotfix
A hotfix was originally the term applied to software patches that were applied to live i.e. still running systems. Similar use of the terms can be seen in hot swappable disk drives...
Catalyst driver-set each month since May 2008 with the Catalyst 8.5 hotfix. Their PCI vendor IDs are listed below:
| GPU core | Product | PCI device ID |
|---|---|---|
| RV610 | Radeon HD 2400 Pro | 94C4 |
| RV620 (M82SE) | Radeon HD 3430 | 95C2 |
| RV620 | Radeon HD 3450 | 95C6 |
| RV630 | Radeon HD 2600 Pro | 9587 |
| RV630 | Radeon HD 2600 XT | 9586 |
Linux
The official proprietary ATI Linux driver was named fglrx, then renamed as Catalyst for Linux. In the past there was no support for the AGP versions of the HD 2400 and HD 2600, but support was added in version 8.5 of fglrx.Another Linux driver is the Radeon driver, an open-source AMD display driver, it is developed in part by specifications that AMD has openly published. To date, AMD has released register specifications for M56
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,...
, M76, RV630 and RS690 GPUs and 3D programming guide for the R500 family of GPUs. AMD has committed to releasing their R500 and R600 GPU documentation along with publishing their specifications for past generations of GPUs.
Documentation release
AMD committed to releasing register documentations for each generations of GPU to support the open source community and an open source driver – Radeon 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...
(xf86-video-ati). Initial register documentation and parser code to execute the AtomBIOS ROM routines were released in September 2007. The R600 family Instruction Set Architecture guide was released on June 11, 2008. Sample code and register headers for the R600 and R700 3D engines were released in December 2008. AMD released the specifications for both the r6xx and r7xx
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...
families on January 26, 2009.
New model numbering scheme
The numbering schemes for Radeon HD 3000 series as well as Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series were notably changed. While previous PRO, XT, GT, and XTX suffixesATI 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 were 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). While for dual-GPU products, a new suffix X2 will be used to identify its nature as dual-GPU on one PCB solution. Similar changes to the 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.... ) |
Shader amount (VS/PS/SPU Stream processing Stream processing is a computer programming paradigm, related to SIMD , that allows some applications to more easily exploit a limited form of parallel processing... ) |
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 Dual GPU |
800 X2–990 X2 | >$250 | 200% | 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... |
2× 256-bit | 512/1,024 | 2 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... , 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... , 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 3870 X2/HD 3850 X2 |
| Enthusiast /high-end |
800–990 | >$150 | 75–100% | GDDR3, GDDR4 |
256-bit | 256/512/1,024 | 2 DVI, HDMI, DP (dongle) |
HD 3870/3850 |
| Mainstream | 600–790 | $100–150 | 37.5–75% | DDR2 DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 SDRAM is a double data rate synchronous dynamic random-access memory interface. It supersedes the original DDR SDRAM specification and has itself been superseded by DDR3 SDRAM... , GDDR3, GDDR4 |
128-bit | 128/256/512 | D-sub, DVI | HD 3650/3690 |
| DVI, 2 DP, HDMI (dongle) |
||||||||
| Budget/Value | 350–590 | <$99 | 25–50% | DDR2, GDDR3 |
64-bit | 64/128 (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... : 768/1,024) |
D-sub, DVI, HDMI, DP (dongle) |
HD 3450/3470 |
| IGP | 000–300 | 25–50% | UMA, side-port memory (GDDR2/GDDR3) |
UMA, 32-bit (side-port) |
64/1284, 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 HD3200/HD3100/2100/HD4200/HD4290 |
|
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, while 90 appeared once in the lineup and can be seen as the XTX variant. Stream Processors only applicable to Direct3D 10-class video components (Radeon HD 2000/3000 series). All Dual-GPU solutions will have an X2 suffix after the model number. Side-port memory as local frame buffer is only available on selected IGP models, not all IGP models have this feature.
Product confusions
When Radeon HD 2900 was first released, there was much confusion as to whether or not the product included dedicated video processor hardware, due in part to statements that it supported the software program AVIVO HD. Many reviewers and subsequent readers/consumers interpreted this as meaning the HD 2900 incorporated the same UVD hardware as found in the HD 2400 and HD 2600 series, despite some sites noting this difference at launch time, weeks before the issue first gained traction as a result of a TechReport article. This confusion and subsequent discussions prompted AMD to make a formal statement designed to clarify exactly what UVD was available in which models. The HD 2900 XT video playback capabilities are similar to those of the previous X1000 cardsRadeon 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,...
with AVIVO
AVIVO
ATI Avivo is a set of hardware and low level software features present on the ATI Radeon R520 family of GPUs and all later ATI Radeon products. ATI Avivo was designed to offload video decoding, encoding, and post-processing from a computer's CPU to a compatible GPU...
capabilities.
It should be noted that several products, branded the Mobility Radeon X2000 series, are in fact based on the older 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,...
architecture and spotting the support of DirectX 9.0c only and do not have UVD on die.
See also
- Video cardVideo cardA video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
- Graphics processing unitGraphics processing unitA 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...
- GeForce 8 seriesGeForce 8 SeriesThe GeForce 8 Series, is the eighth generation of NVIDIA's GeForce line of graphics processing units. The third major GPU architecture developed at NVIDIA, the GeForce 8 represents the company's first unified shader architecture.-Naming:...
- FireStream 9170AMD FireStreamThe AMD FireStream is a stream processor produced by Advanced Micro Devices to utilize the stream processing/GPGPU concept for heavy floating-point computations to target various industries, such as the High Performance Computing , scientific, and financial sectors...
, the GPGPU version of Radeon HD 3870 graphics card