This card is based on the Radeon 7000 (215R6LAFA12E) chip that later became known as the Radeon VE. This particular card has been manufactured in the 15th week of 2004 and was sold as budget card.

Remember that the Radeon 7000 is based on the R100-chip which initially became known as Rage 6 in early 2000. That's 4 years before this card . Sometimes it's interesting to see that technology can 'survive' that long and are still used in PC despite that the technology is more or less obsolete. > 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

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 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

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

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

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

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

'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

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

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

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 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

I found this card a while ago and thought it would be a good addition to my collection. And sure it is!

The official name of *this* card is ATi Rage 6 which doesn't sound to speedy and spectacular. Back then the ATi Rage 128 (Pro / Fury MAXX) was not the best graphics solution out there and why would the Rage 6 be better? Well, the Rage 6 was actually not a 'Rage'-family but a new iteration of ATi graphic cards. The Rage 6 turned out to be the ATi Radeon R100!

Let's dive into history first instead of talking about the new features compared to the Rage 128.

13 March 2000
Someone saw a working ATi Rage 6 board. Not much details were given at the time but the words 'performance, impressive and running at 50~75% of the planned speed' were set free. They said the board was still fresh and wasn't older then one week! This could be right because the PCB was made in the 9th week of 2000 which is somewhere between end Februari, begin March.

31 March 2000
According to a sticker on the back of the PCB my card is from (or released for testers) 31 march 2000. It's also a revision 6 board and it clearly states 'SAMPLE ONLY- NOT FOR QUALIFICATION'. Also note the CE and FC markings on the PCB are crossed and thus not valid. In this timeframe the card was still known as Rage 6. The PCB date is 11th of 2000 which is somewhere around 11 to 18 March. RAM dates back to 9th week and some parts, like the ATi Rage Theater chip are from 1999.

5 April 2000
ATi claims some domain names. This includes names like radeon128.com, radeoniimaxx.com, radeonpro.com, radeon256.com, radeonsma.com, radeonii.com and radeon256maxx.com.

In this timeframe ATi already decided to name their new board 'Radeon'. By looking at the chosen names ATi also kept options open for Radeon II and Radeon MAXX (dual-GPU) boards. Also note 'Radeon 256' which would be the name of this Rage 6 board. Later on ATi changed the name to 'Radeon' so it would not be the same as GeForce 256 as the Radeon was not meant to compete the GeForce 256 but to surpass it.

Summer 2000
The Radeon with SDR-SDRAM memory was added to compete with the GeForce2 MX. The SDR version is slower and left the market more quickly.

2000; after release of Radeon 8500
The original Radeon name was renamed to Radeon 7200. In the beginning the 7200 was used for the 64MB SDR card which lived short, the 32MB DDR versions remained unchanged. After the cards were discontinued the Radeon 7200 was the name for all R100 boards regardless of their memory configuration.

The old Radeon 32 DDR and Radeon 64 DDR were produced until summer 2001. After then the Radeon 7500 (RV200; 150nm chip with few tweaks) was used.

This card has a sticker on the back with the following text:

SAMPLE ONLY-
NOT FOR QUALIFICATION
P/N 102-70702-00 Rev. 06
ISR# 855 - 030
Date: 03/31/00
Made in Canada
ASIC TYPE: RAGE 6
ASIC P/N: 215R6WASA11

With pencil someone written the following on it, too:

061464.8
0012AA
B1058

Not sure what it means, though. Perhaps something like a BIOS version?

Look at the second picture and see there is a rework on the EM97BF chip . Final note: this card did not work in my AGP4x i815 system. It didn't boot up at all. However it runs great in an i440BX-based motherboard with only AGP2x. I checked the card using this method and it turned out to be an AGP4x Universal part. In the i440BX I noticed the fan stopped working sometimes. > Read more