ATi unleashes new Radeons

The Radeon 9700 (not Pro, amateur perhaps?), Radeon 9500 Pro, and Radeon 9500 broaden ATI's product line and strategically places it on the lists of good little boys and girls everywhere.

All of these cards build on ATI's commitment to AGP 8x and DirectX 9. The Radeon 9500 Pro VPU (Visual Processing Unit) has a 275 MHz clock, along with 128 MB of DDR SDRAM running at 550 MHz (275 DDR). The eight parallel rendering pipelines and four parallel geometry engines of the Radeon 9700 Pro are retained, but the 256-bit DDR memory interface has been swapped out for a 128-bit DDR memory interface.

All of the Radeon 9700 Pro's SMARTSHADER 2.0 programmable pixel and vertex shader features have been retained, as well as their high precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support, OpenGL support, SMOOTHVISION 2.0, 2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes, HYPER Z III, TRUFORM 2.0, VIDEOSHADER, and FULLSTREAM video.

ATI is very well known for its multimedia capability. We expect an All-In-Wonder Radeon 9500 Pro in the new year as well. ATI's MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion, all-format DTV/HDTV decoding, YPrPb component output, dual integrated display controllers, dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs, and integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant) should serve them well. Note the integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution.

The Radeon 9500 will only be available exclusively through ATI's add-in-board partners. We reported earlier that ATI has left Asia to its partners, who compete based more on cost rather than performance. It offers many of the same features of the Radeon 9500 Pro, albeit with only four rendering pipelines and 64 MB of DDR memory.

The third new product, the Radeon 9700, will also be available exclusively through ATI's add-in-board partners. It features eight rendering pipelines, AGP 4X/8X compatibility, 256-bit memory architecture, 128MB DDR SDRAM, and clock speeds of 275/550.

The Radeon 9500 Pro will begin shipping within 30 days, most likely around Comdex when the Geforce 5 from Nvidia will be launched. Although the NV30 is expected to be 30% to 50% faster than the Radeon 9700 Pro, there will only be several thousand units available for purchase. Many will be sold for well over $1000 USD to rabid Nvidiots, leaving few scraps for ordinary folk.

The Radeon 9500 Pro will launch with a suggested retail price of $199 USD after manufacturer's rebate. The Radeon 9500 has an SRP of $179 USD and the Radeon 9700 has an SRP of $299 USD. You should see the non-Pro products in a matter of days because both are shipping now to add-in-board partners. These include FIC, Gigabyte, Hercules, Connect 3D, CP Technologies, Hightech, Sapphire, Wistron, and Yuan.

Products designed and built by ATI offer their manufacturer's warranty, access to their Customer Service Team, as well as "Feature-rich, frequently updated, ATI designed CATALYSTT software". Products made by add-in-board partners are independently supported.

Note that the Radeon 9500 PRO requires a connection to the PC's internal power supply for operation. A 300-Watt power supply or greater is recommended to ensure normal system operation where a number of other internal devices are installed. Also, only Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Me have driver support. µ