V-Tuner
by Anna Filatova
01/07/2002 | 07:43 PM
Well, the thing we all waited for so impatiently has finally happened: Gigabyte Company today announced officially several graphics cards based on ATI chips, which specs have been on their corporate web-site for some time already. Moreover, we now know the name of the entire graphics cards family from Gigabyte on ATI chips: it will be called MAYA.
We have already told you some details about the solutions based on RADEON 7500LE, RADEON 7000 and Rage 128 Pro (see this news story). However, today we got a bit more info on the fourth graphics card from MAYA family based on the fastest RADEON 8500 chip. For your convenience, we composed a table with all the MAYA solutions and their features. Please, take a look:
| AP64D-H | AR64S-H | AV64S-T | AG32S-T | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chip | RADEON 8500 | RADEON 7500LE | RADEON 7000 | Rage 128 Pro |
| Chip frequency, MHz | 275 | 230 | 150 | 120 |
| Memory frequency, MHz | 275 | 183 | 150 | 120 |
| Memory size, MB | 64 | 64 | 64 | 32 |
| Memory bus width, bit | 128 | 128 | 64 | 64 |
| HydraVision support | + | + | + | - |
| D-Sub | + | + | + | + |
| TV-Out | + | + | + | - |
| DVI | + | + | - | - |
| Hardware monitoring | + | + | - | - |
| Overclocking utility | + | + | + | + |
| Accompanying games | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 |
Note that AP64D-H card on RADEON 8500 is a fully-fledged RADEON 8500 working at 275MHz core and memory frequency. In other words, Gigabyte has become the third manufacturer besides ATI and PowerColor, to produce a 275MHz RADEON 8500 instead of the slower RADEON 8500LE.
Also we would like to point out that Gigabyte made a few changes to the ATI’s reference design. As a result RADEON 8500 as well as RADEON 7500LE based graphics cards from Gigabyte will boast some hardware monitoring features. So, there will be a special V-Tuner utility shipped together with the cards, which will show the chip temperature, 3 voltages, fan rotation speed, and will allow overclocking the chip and the memory of the card.
In order to ensure stable and reliable performance at higher working frequencies, Gigabyte will provide its MAYA cards with an improved cooling system comprising chip and memory heatsinks.
