The
info we received this morning allows us to state that the upcoming ATI’s
solution currently known as R200 is already sampling. The info we got from
the Korean BrainBox
site includes some pics of the RADEON 2 card samples and R200 architecture
chart:
As
you can see on the photo, RADEON 2 design resembles a bit to that of the
regular RADEON DDR cards. The piece you can see is equipped with 64MB DDR
SDRAM by ESMT with 4ns access time (8 64Mbit chips).
It means
that the memory on RADEON 2 cards may be clocked for 500MHz. Although it
is also quite possible that ATI will not set the memory working frequency
to its maximum, so that it is a little bit under 500MHz. The absence of
heatsinks on the memory modules proves this point as well. However, according
to the R200 details we managed to collect before, the new chip will work
at 250MHz, which does correspond to 500MHz memory frequency. Bearing in
mind this fact as well as ATI’s passion for synchronous chip and memory
clocking, we dare suppose that the memory frequency can remain at 500MHz.
The architecture chart is also of great interest.
You
can see a couple of curious things if you take a closer look at it.
First of all, we should point out the dual-channel 128bit memory interface.
We believe that it doesn’t at all imply that the memory bus will be 256bit
wide. The memory chips on the card are arranges as 4M x 16, i.e. the memory
bus can be only 128bit wide (since there are 8 chips on the card). In other
words, ATI can boast some tricky memory access technology, maybe something
like a cross-bar controller used in GeForce3. Moreover, there will be a
HyperZ II technology aimed at unloading the memory bus. We expect ATI to
have improved it compared to the ordinary HyperZ used in regular RADEON
cards.
3D engine part shows that there are 4 rendering pipelines in the chip, just
as we have expected before. Each pipeline has 2 TMUs. The chart shows clearly
that R200 is DirectX 8.1 compliant due to Charisma Engine II and Pixel Tapestry
II technologies including programmable vertex and pixel shaders. Besides,
R200 3D Engine will also include a well-known N-Patch engine.
Flexible
Display Engine shown on the chart allows connecting all sorts of DVI and
CRT monitors and well as TV. The same thing can be seen on the photos: the
card is equipped with D-sub, DVI-Out and TV-Out. The card photographed also
features ATI Rage Theater chip, i.e. some RADEON 2 cards will also have
a Video-In. besides, we should also say that the Display Engine allows connecting
an optional external DAC. In other words, dual-monitor support can be implemented
on R200 based cards, unlike GeForce3, which can’t boast any dual-monitor
support.
All in all, we would like to say that RADEON 2 specs look really competitive
and if ATI manages to stick to the schedule and launches its newcomer in
the fall, as it has been initially planned, NVIDIA’s reputation as the supplier
of fastest graphics accelerators can get fly-blown. In fact, the info coming
from NVIDIA’s insiders proves that the company is quite concerned about
R200 launching. So, they are trying to think of some other high-performance
solutions faster than GeForce3. Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised if
the launching of ATI R200 will be followed by the announcement of a GeForce3
Ultra card, which the company used to be very uncertain about.
