ATI's new RADEON(TM) PC boards deliver the fastest high-quality performance for the power
gamer
- Patented Hyper-Z(TM) technology delivers fastest ultra-high resolution,
true color performance in the industry
- Advanced 3D game features and hardware Transform and Lighting engine
for incredibly realistic characters and environments
- Three RADEON board versions introduced:
- 64 MB of ultra-fast DDR memory and video capture and video out
support for the power gaming enthusiast
- 32 MB of DDR for high performance gaming
- 32MB of SDRAM delivers RADEON power under $200
TORONTO, July 17 /CNW/ - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT)
announced today the most powerful and feature packed graphics board ever
designed, the RADEON graphics board. Using its patented Hyper-Z technology and
its three texture units per rendering pipeline, the RADEON board delivers the
ultimate 32-bit gaming experience and blazing fast frame rates at ultra-high
resolutions in games such as Quake III Arena(TM) and Unreal Tournament(TM).
RADEON boards feature the fastest hardware geometry T&L engine and a
quantum step forward in 3D architecture with the most Direct X(R) 8 and
OpenGL(R) features. The RADEON Charisma Engine(TM) and Pixel Tapestry(TM)
architecture enable the most realistic characters and environments ever
created, as demonstrated in upcoming games such as Obi-Wan(TM) by Lucas Arts,
Dungeon Siege(TM) by Microsoft and Giants(TM) by Interplay.
More performance - for ultra high resolution, true color gaming
RADEON boards are optimized for ultra-high resolution true color game
play. This is accomplished through such unique features as:
- patented Hyper-Z technology which decreases the amount of information
sent to the frame buffer alleviating the memory bandwidth problems that
bottleneck other architectures
- 3 Texture Units - The only card on the market to support 3 texture
units, RADEON will speed through games such as Microsoft's Halo(TM)
since it can render multiple textures in a single pass
Playing at high resolutions and in true color is optimal for all game
play. First person shooter games such as Quake III Arena(TM) and MDK2(TM) will
benefit from the speed and improved background detail of RADEON. Fans of
strategy games such as Homeworld Cataclysm(TM) will be able to view and manage
their ships more effectively while Flight Simulator 2001(TM) pilots will be
able to better judge their flight patterns and distance targets with the
increased field of view and improved visual quality.
More realistic characters and detailed environments
ATI's RADEON is the only card to offer the Charisma Engine with advanced
features such as 4 Matrix Skinning and Key Frame interpolation. The 4 Matrix
Skinning in RADEON allows characters that in the past seemed blocky and
robotic to jump to life with fluid, realistic movements.
"Dungeon Siege's animation system has been designed from the ground up to
take advantage of advanced hardware acceleration", said Mike Biddlecombe,
senior engineer at Gas Powered Games, "and now with the 4 Matrix Skinning of
RADEON we can achieve faster framerates and smoother animation, resulting in
characters that move with realism never seen before."
RADEON brings game environments to life with the most advanced 3D engine
ever developed. ATI is the only card to support advanced features such as 3D
texture support for new volumetric effects and support for all forms bump
mapping effects (Emboss, Dot product 3 and Environmental Bump Mapping).
The most complete DirectX 8 and Open GL feature support
DirectX is the Microsoft interface that allows games to communicate with
the graphics hardware. DirectX 8 is the latest version of DirectX that will be
available later this year. ATI offers the most complete DirectX 8 feature
implementation available today with support for programmable pixel shaders,
tweening and skinning, all forms of bump mapping and 3D textures.
The best video support for DVD and HDTV
RADEON boards advance ATI's leadership in digital video with more new
features, including on-chip Motion Compensation and IDCT MPEG acceleration
together with adaptive de-interlacing. The ability to decode all the HDTV
formats without loading the CPU, and directly driving both analog and DVI
digital high definition displays without the need for external hardware, make
RADEON the world's best platform for PC-based HDTV and DVD.
"The MPEG acceleration in the RADEON is very impressive in that it will
let the PC platform decode an HDTV signal while at the same time doing MPEG
picture in picture," stated Dave Marsh, technical evangelist, TV and video,
Microsoft. "Couple this with the dramatically improved video de-interlacing
and the well implemented multi-tap scaling, and the PC becomes an even better
solution for all aspects of TV and video entertainment."
Pricing and Availability
The RADEON board with 32MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory is shipping
now with a street price of $279. The RADEON board with 64 MB of DDR memory for
the power gamer with video capture and TV out support is shipping in August
with a street price of $399. A third RADEON product with 32MB of SDRAM memory,
delivering the best price/performance of any board in its class, will ship in
September with a street price of $199.
Corporate Profile
ATI Technologies Inc., the world's largest supplier of 3D graphics and
multimedia technology, designs, manufactures and markets innovative and award-
winning multimedia solutions and graphics components for the personal
computer, set-top box and consumer electronics and e-appliance markets. An ISO
9002 company, ATI is the world's leading supplier of video and 2D/3D graphics
accelerators to OEM and retail customers. Founded in l985, ATI employs more
than 1,800 people at headquarters in Thornhill, Ontario, and in offices in the
United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Barbados,
Malaysia, Japan and Hong Kong. ATI is a public company whose shares trade on
the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
For other ATI news releases visit our web site at ati.com
Copyright 2000 ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. ATI, RADEON,
Charisma Engine, Pixel Tapestry, Hyper-Z are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All company and/or product names are
trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers.
Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change
without notice.
Top developers are supporting RADEON
"The performance of Quake III Arena will benefit using RADEON's hardware
geometry transform, clipping and lighting engine," said Graeme Devine, Quake
III Arena designer at Id Software. "Graphics vendors such as ATI are removing
the barriers for developers to create detailed characters and life-like
environments and we will be incorporating RADEON's new features in upcoming
titles."
"The Hardware Transform and Lighting engine of the RADEON is really going
to kick ass," said Tim Sweeny from Epic. "RADEON's T&L will allow us to
deliver up to 4 X more polygons. Having huge amount of polygons no longer
limits us to confined indoor scenes. We can now draw incredible outdoor scenes
with huge amount of terrain, trees, castles."
"It's always the way, we give our artists the benefit of hardware
transform and lighting, so that they can push loads of polygons on to the
screen, but they just aren't satisfied", said John Heap, Group Technical
Director at Rage. "Now they need more multi-texturing, and not just 2 way
either, to create more realistic effects! Enter the RADEON, the 3 way single
pass multi-texturing with no hit to performance solution. The added realism,
and stunning effects we are now creating, (with no hit on performance, so my
programmers are happy), are enriching the visuals of all of our forthcoming PC
products."
"Dungeon Siege's animation system has been designed from the ground up to
take advantage of advanced hardware acceleration", said Mike Biddlecombe,
senior engineer at Gas Powered Games, "and now with RADEON's 4 Matrix Skinning
we can achieve faster framerates and smoother animation, resulting in
characters that move with realism never seen before."
"Our new ShadowCaster game engine will be able to take full advantage of
the new features and performance that RADEON can offer us providing a new
level of realism for our game titles," said Jez San, Managing Director of
Argonaut Games. "Features such as Cube Mapping, Dot Product and Environmental
Bump Mapping combined with use of dynamic shadows and lighting will make for
the most realistic environments produced in games today." |
