by Anton Shilov
09/01/2002 | 01:33 PM
From the Rage128 times ATI Technologies’ policy regarding frequencies their graphics cards worked at was strange and sometimes even dishonest to customers. The company used to sell a product without telling its clock-speed. As a result, the users were able to get either fast or slow graphics card for the same price. With the introduction of the RADEON GPU in 2000 the company clocked their higher-end RADEON 64MB VIVO devices at 183/183MHz for core/memory, while all the other solutions worked at 166/166MHz. There also was RADEON LE clocked at 148MHz and with HyperZ technology disabled. In 2001 ATI revealed their RADEON 8500 graphics chip with 275MHz speed and announced RADEON 8500LE (Lite Edition) with the speeds starting from 183MHz and reaching 250MHz. ATI itself sold the higher-speed versions, while its AIB partners sold whatever they wanted, continuing this obscure ATI’s policy. Now that ATI has RADEON 9000, RADEON 9000 PRO, RADEON 9700, RADEON 9700 PRO and also plans to unveil a cheaper version of their latest VPU – RADEON 9500, a lot of us wonder about the clock-speeds of the actual cards that can be found on the market.
3Dchipset.com claims that all RADEON 9700 PRO branded graphics cards either OEM or retail from ATI and its closest partners, including Guillemot, Sapphire, Connect3D and Blisware, will function at 325/620MHz for core/memory. The RADEON 9700 (both OEM and retail) cards will feature 300/600MHz clock-speeds accordingly. <%BANNER[article]%>
At least now it seems that ATI has changed their mind regarding the working frequencies of their new products. We still do not know if the majority of the newly announced graphics solutions will be PRO or ordinary versions, but this time we can expect the products of the same brand to be of the same speed.