Radeon R100 series

The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Rage design. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R100" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.

ATI Radeon 7000 series

Radeon 7500 LE card (Creative Labs Branded)
Release date	April 1, 2000; 24 years ago (April 1, 2000)
Codename	Rage 6C
Architecture	Radeon R100
Transistors	30M 180 nm (R100) 30M 180 nm (RV100)
Cards
Entry-level	7000, VE, LE
Mid-range	7200 DDR, 7200 SDR
High-end	VIVO, VIVO SE 7500 LE
Enthusiast	7500
API support
DirectX	Direct3D 7.0
OpenGL	OpenGL 1.3 (T&L)[1][2]
History
Predecessor	Rage series
Successor	Radeon 8000 series
Support status
Unsupported

Radeon R100-based chipsets

CPU supported	Mobile Athlon XP (320M IGP) Mobile Duron (320M IGP) Pentium 4-M and mobile Pentium 4 (340M IGP, 7000 IGP)
Socket supported	Socket A, Socket 563 (AMD) Socket 478 (Intel)
Desktop / mobile chipsets
Performance segment	7000 IGP
Mainstream segment	320 IGP, 320M IGP 340 IGP, 340M IGP
Value segment	320 IGP, 320M IGP (AMD) 340 IGP, 340M IGP (Intel)
Miscellaneous
Release date(s)	March 13, 2002 (300/300M IGP) March 13, 2003 (7000 IGP)
Successor	Radeon R200 series

Development

Architecture

The first-generation Radeon GPU was launched in 2000, and was initially code-named Rage 6 (later R100), as the successor to ATI's aging Rage 128 Pro which was unable to compete with the GeForce 256. The card also had been described as Radeon 256 in the months leading up to its launch, possibly to draw comparisons with the competing Nvidia card, although the moniker was dropped with the launch of the final product.

The R100 was built on a 180 nm semiconductor manufacturing process from TSMC.^[3] Like the GeForce, the Radeon R100 featured a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine to perform geometry calculations, freeing up the host computer's CPU. In 3D rendering the processor can write 2 pixels to the framebuffer and sample 3 texture maps per pixel per clock. This is commonly referred to as a 2×3 configuration, or a dual-pipeline design with 3 TMUs per pipe. As for Radeon's competitors, the GeForce 256 is 4×1, GeForce2 GTS is 4×2 and 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 is a 2×1+2×1 SLI design. Unfortunately, the third texture unit did not get much use in games during the card's lifetime because software was not frequently performing more than dual texturing.

In terms of rendering, its "Pixel Tapestry" architecture allowed for Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) and Dot Product (Dot3) Bump Mapping support, offering the most complete Bump Mapping support at the time along with the older Emboss method.^[4] Radeon also introduced a new memory bandwidth optimization and overdraw reduction technology called HyperZ. It basically improves the overall efficiency of the 3D rendering processes. Consisting of 3 different functions, it allows the Radeon to perform very competitively compared to competing designs with higher fillrates and bandwidth on paper.

ATI produced a real-time demo for their new card, to showcase its new features. The Radeon's Ark demo presents a science-fiction environment with heavy use of features such as multiple texture layers for image effects and detail. Among the effects are environment-mapped bump mapping, detail textures, glass reflections, mirrors, realistic water simulation, light maps, texture compression, planar reflective surfaces, and portal-based visibility.^[5]

In terms of performance, Radeon scores lower than the GeForce2 in most benchmarks, even with HyperZ activated. The performance difference was especially noticeable in 16-bit color, where both the GeForce2 GTS and Voodoo 5 5500 were far ahead. However, the Radeon could close the gap and occasionally outperform its fastest competitor, the GeForce2 GTS, in 32-bit color.

Aside from the new 3D hardware, Radeon also introduced per-pixel video-deinterlacing to ATI's HDTV-capable MPEG-2 engine.

R100's pixel shaders

R100-based GPUs have forward-looking programmable shading capability in their pipelines; however, the chips are not flexible enough to support the Microsoft Direct3D specification for Pixel Shader 1.1. A forum post by an ATI engineer in 2001 clarified this:

...prior to the final release of DirectX 8.0, Microsoft decided that it was better to expose the RADEON's and GeForce{2}'s extended multitexture capabilities via the extensions to SetTextureStageState() instead of via the pixel shader interface. There are various practical technical reasons for this. Much of the same math that can be done with pixel shaders can be done via SetTextureStageState(), especially with the enhancements to SetTextureStageState() in DirectX 8.0. At the end of the day, this means that DirectX 8.0 exposes 99% of what the RADEON can do in its pixel pipe without adding the complexity of a "0.5" pixel shader interface.

Additionally, you have to understand that the phrase "shader" is an incredibly ambiguous graphics term. Basically, we hardware manufacturers started using the word "shader" a lot once we were able to do per-pixel dot products (i.e. the RADEON / GF generation of chips). Even earlier than that, "ATI_shader_op" was our multitexture OpenGL extension on Rage 128 (which was replaced by the multivendor EXT_texture_env_combine extension). Quake III has ".shader" files it uses to describe how materials are lit. These are just a few examples of the use of the word shader in the game industry (nevermind the movie production industry which uses many different types of shaders, including those used by Pixar's RenderMan).

With the final release of DirectX 8.0, the term "shader" has become more crystallized in that it is actually used in the interface that developers use to write their programs rather than just general "industry lingo." In DirectX 8.0, there are two versions of pixel shaders: 1.0 and 1.1. (Future releases of DirectX will have 2.0 shaders, 3.0 shaders and so on.) Because of what I stated earlier, RADEON doesn't support either of the pixel shader versions in DirectX 8.0. Some of you have tweaked the registry and gotten the driver to export a 1.0 pixel shader version number to 3DMark2001. This causes 3DMark2001 to think it can run certain tests. Surely, we shouldn't crash when you do this, but you are forcing the (leaked and/or unsupported) driver down a path it isn't intended to ever go. The chip doesn't support 1.0 or 1.1 pixel shaders, therefore you won't see correct rendering even if we don't crash. The fact that that registry key exists indicates that we did some experiments in the driver, not that we are half way done implementing pixel shaders on RADEON. DirectX 8.0's 1.0 and 1.1 pixel shaders are not supported by RADEON and never will be. The silicon just can't do what is required to support 1.0 or 1.1 shaders. This is also true of GeForce and GeForce2.

Implementations

Radeon DDR box (R100)

Die shot of the R100

Radeon 7500 (RV200)

Radeon RV100 DDR

Die shot of the RV100

R100

The first versions of the Radeon (R100) were the Radeon DDR, available in Spring 2000 with 32 MB or 64 MB configurations; the 64 MB card had a slightly faster clock speed and added VIVO (video-in video-out) capability. The core speed was 183Mhz and the 5.5 ns DDR SDRAM memory clock speed was 183 MHz DDR (366 MHz effective). The R100 introduced HyperZ, an early culling technology (maybe inspired by the Tile Rendering present in St Microelectronics PowerVR chips) that became the way to go in graphic evolution and generation by generation rendering optimization, and can be considerend the first non tile rendering-based (and so DX7 compatible) card to use a Z-Buffer optimization. These cards were produced until mid-2001, when they were essentially replaced by the Radeon 7500 (RV200).

A slower and short-lived Radeon SDR (with 32 MB SDRAM memory) was added in mid-2000 to compete with the GeForce2 MX.

Also in 2000, an OEM-only Radeon LE 32MB DDR arrived. Compared to the regular Radeon DDR from ATI, the LE is produced by Athlon Micro from Radeon GPUs that did not meet spec and originally intended for the Asian OEM market. The card runs at a lower 143 MHz clock rate for both RAM and GPU, and its Hyper Z functionality has been disabled. Despite these handicaps, the Radeon LE was competitive with other contemporaries such as the GeForce 2 MX and Radeon SDR. Unlike its rivals, however, the LE has considerable performance potential, as is possible to enable HyperZ through a system registry alteration, plus there is considerable overclocking room. Later drivers do not differentiate the Radeon LE from other Radeon R100 cards and the HyperZ hardware is enabled by default, though there may be visual anomalies on cards with HyperZ hardware that is defective.^[6]

In 2001, a short-lived Radeon R100 with 64 MB SDR was released as the Radeon 7200. After this and all older R100 Radeon cards were discontinued, the R100 series was subsequently known as the Radeon 7200, in keeping with ATI's new naming scheme.

RV100

A budget variant of the R100 hardware was created and called the Radeon VE, later known as the Radeon 7000 in 2001 when ATI re-branded its products.

RV100 has only one pixel-pipeline, no hardware T&L, a 64-bit memory bus, and no HyperZ. But it did add HydraVision dual-monitor support and integrated a second RAMDAC into the core (for Hydravision).

From the 3D performance standpoint, the Radeon VE did not fare well against the GeForce2 MX of the same era, though its multi-display support was clearly superior to the GeForce2 MX, however. The Matrox G450 has the best dual-display support out of the GPUs but the slowest 3D performance.

RV100 was the basis for the Mobility Radeon notebook solution.

RV200

The Radeon 7500 (RV200) is basically a die-shrink of the R100 in a new 150 nm manufacturing process. The increased density and various tweaks to the architecture allowed the GPU to function at higher clock speeds. It also allowed the card to operate with asynchronous clock operation, whereas the original R100 was always clocked synchronously with the RAM. It was ATI's first Direct3D 7-compliant GPU to include dual-monitor support (Hydravision).^[7]

The Radeon 7500 launched in the second half of 2001 alongside the Radeon 8500 (R200). It used an accelerated graphics port (AGP) 4x interface. Around the time that the Radeon 8500 and 7500 were announced, rival Nvidia released its GeForce 3 Ti500 and Ti200, the 8500 and Ti500 are direct competitors but the 7500 and Ti200 are not.

The desktop Radeon 7500 board frequently came clocked at 290 MHz core and 230 MHz RAM. It competed with the GeForce2 Ti and later on, the GeForce4 MX440.

Radeon Feature Matrix

The following table shows features of AMD/ATI's GPUs (see also: List of AMD graphics processing units).

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Name of GPU series	Wonder	Mach	3D Rage	Rage Pro	Rage 128	R100	R200	R300	R400	R500	R600	RV670	R700	Evergreen	Northern Islands		Southern Islands	Sea Islands	Volcanic Islands	Arctic Islands/Polaris	Vega	Navi 1x	Navi 2x	Navi 3x
Released	1986	1991	Apr 1996	Mar 1997	Aug 1998	Apr 2000	Aug 2001	Sep 2002	May 2004	Oct 2005	May 2007	Nov 2007	Jun 2008	Sep 2009	Oct 2010	Dec 2010	Jan 2012	Sep 2013	Jun 2015	Jun 2016, Apr 2017, Aug 2019	Jun 2017, Feb 2019	Jul 2019	Nov 2020	Dec 2022
Marketing Name	Wonder	Mach	3D Rage	Rage Pro	Rage 128	Radeon 7000	Radeon 8000	Radeon 9000	Radeon X700/X800	Radeon X1000	Radeon HD 2000	Radeon HD 3000	Radeon HD 4000	Radeon HD 5000	Radeon HD 6000		Radeon HD 7000	Radeon 200	Radeon 300	Radeon 400/500/600	Radeon RX Vega, Radeon VII	Radeon RX 5000	Radeon RX 6000	Radeon RX 7000
AMD support
Kind	2D		3D
Instruction set architecture	Not publicly known										TeraScale instruction set						GCN instruction set					RDNA instruction set
Microarchitecture											TeraScale 1 (VLIW)			TeraScale 2 (VLIW5)	TeraScale 2 (VLIW5) up to 68xx	TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) in 69xx [8][9]	GCN 1st gen	GCN 2nd gen	GCN 3rd gen	GCN 4th gen	GCN 5th gen	RDNA	RDNA 2	RDNA 3
Type	Fixed pipeline[lower-alpha 1]						Programmable pixel & vertex pipelines				Unified shader model
Direct3D	—		5.0	6.0		7.0	8.1	9.0 11 (9_2)	9.0b 11 (9_2)	9.0c 11 (9_3)	10.0 11 (10_0)	10.1 11 (10_1)		11 (11_0)			11 (11_1) 12 (11_1)	11 (12_0) 12 (12_0)			11 (12_1) 12 (12_1)		11 (12_1) 12 (12_2)
Shader model	—						1.4	2.0+	2.0b	3.0	4.0	4.1		5.0			5.1	5.1 6.5			6.7
OpenGL	—			1.1	1.2	1.3		2.1[lower-alpha 2][10]			3.3			4.5[11][12][13][lower-alpha 3]			4.6
Vulkan	—															1.1	1.3
OpenCL	—										Close to Metal		1.1 (not supported by Mesa)	1.2+ (on Linux: 1.1+ (no Image support on clover, with by rustiCL) with Mesa, 1.2+ on GCN 1.Gen)				2.0+ (Adrenalin driver on Win7+) (on Linux ROCM, Mesa 1.2+ (no Image support in clover, but in rustiCL with Mesa, 2.0+ and 3.0 with AMD drivers or AMD ROCm), 5th gen: 2.2 win 10+ and Linux RocM 5.0+				2.2+ and 3.0 windows 8.1+ and Linux ROCM 5.0+ (Mesa rustiCL 1.2+ and 3.0 (2.1+ and 2.2+ wip))[14][15][16]
HSA / ROCm	—																					?
Video decoding ASIC	—										Avivo/UVD	UVD+	UVD 2	UVD 2.2	UVD 3		UVD 4	UVD 4.2	UVD 5.0 or 6.0	UVD 6.3	UVD 7 [17][lower-alpha 4]	VCN 2.0 [17][lower-alpha 4]	VCN 3.0 [18]	VCN 4.0
Video encoding ASIC	—																VCE 1.0	VCE 2.0	VCE 3.0 or 3.1	VCE 3.4	VCE 4.0 [17][lower-alpha 4]
Fluid Motion [lower-alpha 5]																								?
Power saving	?										PowerPlay				PowerTune	PowerTune & ZeroCore Power					?
TrueAudio	—																	Via dedicated DSP		Via shaders
FreeSync	—																	1 2
HDCP[lower-alpha 6]	—										?							1.4		2.2		2.3 [19]
PlayReady[lower-alpha 6]	—																			3.0		3.0
Supported displays[lower-alpha 7]						1–2	2							2–6								?
Max. resolution	?													2–6 × 2560×1600			2–6 × 4096×2160 @ 30 Hz			2–6 × 5120×2880 @ 60 Hz	3 × 7680×4320 @ 60 Hz [20]	7680×4320 @ 60 Hz PowerColor		7680x4320 @165 HZ
/drm/radeon[lower-alpha 8]																			—
/drm/amdgpu[lower-alpha 8]	—																	Optional [21]

1. The Radeon 100 Series has programmable pixel shaders, but do not fully comply with DirectX 8 or Pixel Shader 1.0. See article on R100's pixel shaders.
2. R300, R400 and R500 based cards do not fully comply with OpenGL 2+ as the hardware does not support all types of non-power of two (NPOT) textures.
3. OpenGL 4+ compliance requires supporting FP64 shaders and these are emulated on some TeraScale chips using 32-bit hardware.
4. The UVD and VCE were replaced by the Video Core Next (VCN) ASIC in the Raven Ridge APU implementation of Vega.
5. Video processing for video frame rate interpolation technique. In Windows it works as a DirectShow filter in your player. In Linux, there is no support on the part of drivers and / or community.
6. To play protected video content, it also requires card, operating system, driver, and application support. A compatible HDCP display is also needed for this. HDCP is mandatory for the output of certain audio formats, placing additional constraints on the multimedia setup.
7. More displays may be supported with native DisplayPort connections, or splitting the maximum resolution between multiple monitors with active converters.
8. DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a component of the Linux kernel. AMDgpu is the Linux kernel module. Support in this table refers to the most current version.

Models

Main article: Comparison of ATI Graphics Processing Units

• The R100 cards were originally launched without any numbering as Radeon SDR, DDR, LE and VE; these products were later "rebranded" to their names within the numbered naming scheme, when the Radeon 8000 series was introduced.

Model	Launch	Code name	Fab (nm)	Bus interface	Core clock (MHz)	Memory clock (MHz)	Core config1	Fillrate				Memory				Performance (FLOPS)	TDP (Watts)
								MOperations/s	MPixels/s	MTexels/s	MVertices/s	Size (MiB)	Bandwidth (GB/s)	Bus type	Bus width (bit)
Radeon VE / Radeon 7000	February 19, 2001	RV100 (piglet)	180	AGP 4x, PCI	150/166/183	150/166/183	1:0:3:1	183 (max)	336 (max)	549 (max)	0	32, 64	2.688 (max)	DDR	64	?	10
Radeon LE / Radeon 7100 (OEM)	April 6, 2001[22]	Rage 6 / R100		AGP 4x	150	150	2:1:6:2	296	296	888	37.5	32	4.736		128	?	11
Radeon SDR / Radeon 7200 (SDR)	June 1, 2000			AGP 4x, PCI	166	166		333	333	996	41.5		2.656	SDR		?	14
Radeon DDR / Radeon 7200 (DDR)	April 1, 2000			AGP 4x	166/183A	166/183A		333/366A	333/366A	966/1098A	41.5/45.75A	32, 64	5.312/5.856A	DDR		?	13
Radeon DDR / Radeon 7200 VIVO	2001			AGP 4x, PCI	166/183B	166/183B		333/366B	333/366B	966/1098B	41.5/45.75B	64	5.312/5.856B			?	17
Radeon DDR / Radeon 7500 VIVO "SE"					200	200		400	400	1200	50.0		6.400			?	20
Radeon 7500 LE		RV200 (morpheus)	150		250	175		500	500	1500	62.5	32, 64	5.600		64 128	?	21
Radeon 7500	August 14, 2001	RV200 (morpheus)			290	230		580	580	1740	72.5	32, 64, 128[23]	7.360		128	?	23

¹ Pixel pipelines : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units

^A First number indicates cards with 32 MB of memory. Second number indicates cards with 64 MB of memory.
^B First number indicates OEM cards. Second number indicates Retail cards.

IGP (3xx series)

• All models are manufactured with a 180 nm fabrication process
• Based on the Radeon VE

Model	Launch	Code name	Bus interface	Core clock (MHz)	Memory clock (MHz)	Core config1	Fillrate				Memory
							MOperations/s	MPixels/s	MTexels/s	MVertices/s	Size (MiB)	Bandwidth (GB/s)	Bus type	Bus width (bit)
Radeon 320	May 2002	A3	FSB	160	200, 266	1:0:3:1	160	160	480	0	?	1.6, 2.128	DDR	64
Radeon 330	2002	RS200L (wilma)		150			150	150	450
Radeon 340		RS200 (wilma)		183			183	183	549

¹ Pixel pipelines : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units

Mobility Radeon series

These GPUs are either integrated into the mainboard or occupy a Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM).

Model	Launch	Model number	Code name	Fab (nm)	Bus interface	Core clock (MHz)	Memory clock (MHz)	Core config1	Fillrate		Memory				API compliance (version)		Notes
									Pixel (GP/s)	Texture (GT/s)	Size (MB)	Bandwidth (GB/s)	Bus type	Bus width (bit)	Direct3D	OpenGL
Mobility Radeon 7000	Feb 2001	M6	RV100	180	AGP 4×	144 167	144 183	0:1:3:1	0.167	0.5	8 16 32	1.464 2.928	SDR DDR	32 64	7	1.3
Mobility Radeon 7500	Dec 2001	M7	RV200	150		280	200	1:2:6:2	0.56	1.68	32 64	3.2 6.4	DDR	64 128	7		PowerPlay II, DX7 T&L

¹ Vertex shaders : Pixel shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units.

Competing chipsets

• NVIDIA GeForce 256 and GeForce2
• PowerVR Series 3
• 3dfx Voodoo 5
• S3 Savage 2000

See also

• Comparison of ATI Chipsets
• List of AMD graphics processing units

References

1. "Mesamatrix". mesamatrix.net. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
2. "RadeonFeature". X.Org Foundation. Retrieved 2018-04-20.
3. "ATI R100 GPU Specs". TechPowerUp. 2024-07-18. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
4. "Pixel Tapestry Architecture - ATI Radeon 256 Preview".
5. "Alex Vlachos - Computer Graphics".
6. "ATI Radeon LE 32MB DDR".
7. "OC3D Forums".
8. "AMD Radeon HD 6900 (AMD Cayman) series graphics cards". HWlab. hw-lab.com. December 19, 2010. Archived from the original on August 23, 2022. Retrieved August 23, 2022. New VLIW4 architecture of stream processors allowed to save area of each SIMD by 10%, while performing the same compared to previous VLIW5 architecture
9. "GPU Specs Database". TechPowerUp. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
10. "NPOT Texture (OpenGL Wiki)". Khronos Group. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
11. "AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta". AMD. Retrieved 2018-04-20.
12. "Mesamatrix". mesamatrix.net. Retrieved 2018-04-22.
13. "RadeonFeature". X.Org Foundation. Retrieved 2018-04-20.
14. "AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
15. "AMD Launches The Radeon PRO W7500/W7600 RDNA3 GPUs". Phoronix. 3 August 2023. Retrieved 4 September 2023.
16. "AMD Radeon Pro 5600M Grafikkarte". TopCPU.net (in German). Retrieved 4 September 2023.
17. Killian, Zak (March 22, 2017). "AMD publishes patches for Vega support on Linux". Tech Report. Retrieved March 23, 2017.
18. Larabel, Michael (September 15, 2020). "AMD Radeon Navi 2 / VCN 3.0 Supports AV1 Video Decoding". Phoronix. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
19. Edmonds, Rich (February 4, 2022). "ASUS Dual RX 6600 GPU review: Rock-solid 1080p gaming with impressive thermals". Windows Central. Retrieved November 1, 2022.
20. "Radeon's next-generation Vega architecture" (PDF). Radeon Technologies Group (AMD). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2018. Retrieved June 13, 2017.
21. "AMDGPU". Retrieved December 29, 2023.
22. Wasson, Manveer. "Weekly CPU & Video Card Price Guide: April 2001 1st Edition". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved August 30, 2024.
23. Diablotek V7500-P128 Specifications

• "ATI Radeon 256 Preview" by Anand Lal Shimpi, AnandTech.com, April 25, 2000, retrieved January 17, 2006
• "ATI Radeon 32MB SDR" by Anand Lal Shimpi, AnandTech.com, October 13, 2000, retrieved January 17, 2006
• "ATI Radeon 64MB DDR" by Matthew Witheiler, AnandTech.com, July 17, 2000, retrieved January 17, 2006
• "Beyond3D 3D Tables" Beyond3D.com, retrieved January 17, 2006
• Vlachos, Alex. Radeon's Ark demo, 2000.

External links

• techPowerUp! GPU Database