This ATi Radeon 256 is 11 weeks newer then my ATi Rage 6. Week 22 of 2000 is around 29 May to 4 June. Back then people already knew the successor of the Rage 128 Pro would be Radeon 256 because ATi claimed some Radeon-domain names. See '5 april 2000' in the text of this ATi Rage6. The board looks almost identical to my ATi Rage 6 sample. This one was DVI instead of TV-out, some caps and chips are different.

Also note that this board has some resoldered transistors. You can see it near the DVI and 'feature connector'. Picture 4 shows it quite clear.

The board has the ATi Radeon logo on the backside of the PCB but a Rage6 decal on both the fan and BIOS chip. The older Rage6-sample doesn't have any Radeon names on it.

A sticker has been attached on the back of the board. It says the following:

SAMPLE ONLY-
NOT FOR QUALIFICATION
P/N 102-75001-00 Rev. 02
ISR# 989 - 025
Date: 06/02/00
Made in Canada
ASIC TYPE: RADEON
ASIC P/N: 215R6WASA12

With pencil someone wrote this onto the sticker (as far as I can read):

O.K.
D619660I16
0020SST
B1040

The Catalyst 6.2 driver for Windows '98 detects this card as an ATi Radeon 7200.
> Read more

Almost identical to this Radeon 256 sample. Besides the fact that this one doesn't have resoldered transistors and the bolts are actually screwed into the D-SUB and DVI connector I can't think of any difference .

The sticker on the back, which is almost identical too, says:

SAMPLE ONLY-
NOT FOR QUALIFICATION
P/N 102-75001-00 Rev. 02
ISR# 989 - 019
Date: 06/02/00
Made in Canada
ASIC TYPE: RADEON
ASIC P/N: 215R6WASA12

With pencil someone wrote this onto the sticker (as far as I can read):

D619660I19
0020SST
B1040

The Catalyst 6.2 driver for Windows '98 detects this card as an ATi Radeon 7200. This is correct as the official name of this card would be Radeon 7200. I've called it Radeon 256 because back then 'the world' thought it would be Radeon 256 (and didn't knew better). The first Radeon (with R100 chip) has an interesting history regarding names. You can read about it here: thandor.net - object - Rage 6. > Read more

This engineering has SG RAM modules and lacks the DVI port. It also lacks some capacitors but that might be related to the RAM used. The SG RAM might be less demanding. Compare the PCB with the SDR-SDRAM version and see it has quite much similarities. My newer ATi Radeon 256 samples with SDR-SDRAM still have the same PCB design but the SG RAM versions are different and optimized for SG RAM. The SG RAM PCB looks much cleaner.

This board has the ATi Radeon logo on the cooling. It's older brother; with PCB date 0022 which is three weeks earlier, has an ATi Rage 128 Pro sticker.

The sticker on the back says the following:

SAMPLE ONLY-
NOT FOR QUALIFICATION
P/N 102-70505-00 Rev. 02
ISR# 1129 - 0018
Date: 07/10/00
Made in Canada
ASIC TYPE: RADEON
ASUC P/N: 215R6WASA13

With pencil someone wrote (as far as I can read):

DA234.01
0026SST

A note on the name of this card: I've given it the name ATi Radeon 32MB DDR instead of ATi Radeon 7200. Today it would be called 7200 but back in the old days it was a Radeon 32MB DDR. Because some of the hardware here is 'historical' I prefer to give it the name as it was back then. A good example is the ATi Rage 6 which has exact the same graphics chip as this Radeon. Hence the Rage 6 was actually a Radeon . > Read more

This is the ATi Radeon 32MB DDR (later renamed to Radeon 7200) as it could be found in the shelves. The PCB has empty spots for TV (ViVo) functions which could be found on the more expensive boards. > Read more

'Elite' is what the BIOS string says, and sure it is! This R100 is almost the same as some other R100 samples I have except that it has 5NS RAM chips. This means the RAM can be clocked to 200MHz instead of the usual 166MHz. To give it some more rendering muscle ATi also boosted the GPU to 183MHz. You can see that this card is faster than the ATi Radeon 256 64MB which has 166MHz/166MHz clocks. Only the Radeon 256 32MB is often a tad faster because it has a 200MHz/166MHz configuration. As DDR-SGRAM has slightly faster (better) timings than DDR-SDRAM the 32MB version with SGRAM does it's job pretty well.

Except for having higher clocked RAM the card looks almost the same as the other R100 cards so not much to write about this time. Though there is the usual sticker on the back which says the following:

SAMPLE ONLY-
NOT FOR QUALIFICATION
P/N 102-70707-00 Rev. 02
ISR# 1430 - 0028
Date: 10/19/00
Made in Canada
ASIC TYPE: RADEON
ASIC P/N: 215R6EBGA21

With pencil someone wrote:

G6-154.1.W1

> Read more

A production version of the Radeon R100. It has 32MB SGRAM and lacks Video In/Video Out functions. It's practically the same as this Radeon 32MB DDR.

> Read more

ATi wanted the Radeon R100 (Radeon 7200) to be low-profile too and this sample is the living proof. It has a standard DVI port and SGRAM. The SGRAM versions tend to have fewer parts on the PCB like capacitors and SMD's which makes it more attractive to use SGRAM. SGRAM is even slightly faster but this will only be visible in benchmarks.

Note that the GPU of this sample is clocked at 200MHz instead of 166MHz while the RAM just stays at the normal 166MHz. Because of the higher clocks the card performs a tad better (see benchmarks). The Radeon 64MB DDR 'Elite' with DDR SDRAM chips runs at 183MHz core and 200MHz RAM. According to Quake3 in 32b the Radeon doesn't suffer from a lack of memory bandwidth but rather a lack of raw processing power. > Read more

Passive cooling and just 166MHz. Those are the ingredients of the Radeon 32MB DDR low-profile sample. Besides that it's the same as this Radeon.

An ATi Radeon 7000 low-profile sample. This card does not have a regular DVI connector. The connector has four pins extra and requires a special cable which supports up to two monitors (dual-head on one output). Because I didn't have the cable I was unable to test this card.

The sticker on the back says the following:

SAMPLE ONLY
P/N 102-76203-00 Rev. 04
ISR# 1687 -0009 Date: 03/23/01
Eng. Mod. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Made in Canada - NOT FOR RESALE
ASIC TYPE: RADEON
ASIC P/N: 215R6EBGA22H

> Read more

An ATi Radeon 7000 low-profile sample. This card does not have a regular DVI connector. The connector has four pins extra and requires a special cable which supports up to two monitors (dual-head on one output). Because I didn't have the cable I was unable to test this card.
> Read more

A non-qualification sample like this Radeon 7000. Also equipped with a special DVI-like (but with four pins extra) connector for dual screen setups. Because I don't have the cable I'm not able to test the cards output. Though I was able to extract the BIOS using a PCI card for display.

The sticker on the back says:

NON - QUALIFICATION SAMPLE
Made in Canada - NOT FOR RESALE Date:03/01/02
P/N 102-81107-00 Rev. 01 ISR# 2709-0006
Asic Type RADEON VE Asic P/N 215R6LAFA12E
Eng. Mod. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

With pen someone wrote:

F44176.1

> Read more

Same as this and this Radeon 7000. Equipped with a special DVI-like (but with four pins extra) connector for dual screen setups. Because I don't have the cable I'm not able to test the cards output. Though I was able to extract the BIOS using a PCI card for display.

The sticker on the back says:

NON - QUALIFICATION SAMPLE
Made in Canada - NOT FOR RESALE Date:03/01/02
P/N 102-81107-00 Rev. 01 ISR# 2709-0006
Asic Type RADEON VE Asic P/N 215R6LAFA12E
Eng. Mod. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

With pen someone wrote:

F44176.1

> Read more

A production ATi Radeon 7500. This card is based upon the budget (value) RV200 chipset. It doesn't perform like a beast, especially not in that time-frame but as trade-off it is low power. > Read more

The Radeon 64MB DDR has been produced until summer of 2001 and after the release of the Radeon 8500 the cards were renamed to Radeon 7200. Because this card is dated 14th week of 2001 I named it Radeon 7200 DDR as well. I have similar cards (Engineering samples; i.e. Rage 6, Radeon 256, Radeon 32MB DDR) with different names but technical they are pretty much identical.

The reason ATi named this card 7200 is to position it under the 8500. After all the 8500 is faster. In my case I used the name that was known/valid at the release of the card. > Read more

ATi's low-end 9000-series (9000 through 9250) are based on the old R200-chip that was used in the 8500. In general the 9100 was ATi's answer to the GeForce 4 MX but in reality the old 8500, with the same chip, is a tad faster! > Read more

The GeForce FX didn't work out as hoped to be and the new chip from ATi was rocking! This card is based on the R350 chip, or in other words 'the powerful 9800 Pro'. The 256MB version wasn't sold much (who needed 256MB of graphics memory in 2003 or 2004?) but the 128MB version was sold in large quantities. Both the 9700 Pro and 9800 Pro got ATi back into play as most powerful graphics card in the world.

Why did this all happen? nVidia launched the GeForce FX too late and it was quite a warm chip (at least the high-end versions were) for it's time. ATi did exactly the opposite. Performance-wise it all comes down to vertex- and pixelshaders and DirectX 9. To make it short: the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra had a good fill-rate but it's shader-performance was terrible. The products from ATi had a normal fill-rate and a normal (but compared to the 5800 Ultra it was very good) performance with shaders. Except for games like Quake 3 (it doesn't use shaders and fill-rate means something in these games) the Radeon was screaming.

The only downsize on this card is that the cooling is quite minimal. If it had a larger heatsink/fan solution it could run more quiet and reliable. When it's new it's not such a problem but after a while of operation the dust comes in which causes trouble. Unfortunatly a lot of graphic cards suffer from minimal cooling after dust has formed in the heatsink. > Read more

Based on the RV350-core which is the value version of the R350. Generally this card is 50% of the 9800 Pro and it was a good midrange performer. The 9500 Pro is more advanced (chip-wise, it's a 9700 chip) and more expensive to build and thus less favorable for ATi. > Read more

This Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition from ASUS comes with a very large retail box. It even includes a webcam!

I bought this card second-hand from someone who bought it (pre-ordered) when it was new. The box has a price tag indicating it costs 535 euro!

In terms of quality and performance this is a good card. It's small and efficient, yet faster than the GeForce 6800 Ultra. Some games seem to run blazingly fast like Quake III on low resolution. Perhaps it needs less CPU cycles (as Quake III is heavily CPU-limited on these 'new' cards) than the 6800 Ultra. However, most interesting is Crysis in which the X800XT PE is factor 3 to 12 faster than a 6800GT! > Read more