Launched in October 2005, this series brought a number of enhancements including the floating point render target technology necessary for HDR rendering with anti-aliasing. Shader Model 2b, the specification ATI and Microsoft defined with this generation, offered somewhat more shader program flexibility.ĪTI's DirectX 9.0c series of graphics cards, with complete shader Model 3.0 support. While heavily based upon the previous generation, this line included extensions to the Shader Model 2 feature-set. Using 110-nm and 130-nm manufacturing technologies under the X300 and X600 names, respectively, the RV370 and RV380 graphics processors were used extensively by consumer PC manufacturers. Models using the new PCI Express interface were introduced in 2004. A budget line of RV350 products was based on this refreshed design with some elements disabled or removed. It incorporated fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders.Ībout a year later, the architecture was revised to allow for higher frequencies, more efficient memory access, and several other improvements in the R350 family. The R300 was the first GPU to fully support Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 technology upon its release in 2001. Graphics processor generations Generations timeline Manufacturers of the Radeon cards-some of whom also make motherboards-include ASRock, Asus, Biostar, Club 3D, Diamond, Force3D, Gainward, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, VisionTek, and XFX. Instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell the Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Radeon Graphics card brands ĪMD does not distribute Radeon cards directly to consumers (though some exceptions can be found ). On 11 September 2015, AMD's GPU business was split into a separate unit known as Radeon Technologies Group, with Raja Koduri as Senior Vice President and chief architect. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding. The brand was previously only known as 'ATI Radeon' until August 2010, when it was renamed to increase AMD's brand awareness on a global scale. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on certain models in the Radeon products line: Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine and TrueAudio. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire (for multi-GPU) or Hybrid Graphics. Three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family, the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line. 3.2 Free and open-source graphics device driver 'Radeon'.3.1 AMD's proprietary graphics device driver 'Radeon Software' (Formerly Catalyst).

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