The R300 GPU, introduced in August 2002 and developed by ATI Technologies, is its third generation of GPU used in Radeon graphics cards. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding R200 design. R300 was the first fully Direct3D 9-capable consumer graphics chip. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs.

The first graphics cards using the R300 to be released were the Radeon 9700. It was the first time that ATI marketed its GPU as a Visual Processing Unit (VPU). R300 and its derivatives would form the basis for ATI's consumer and professional product lines for over 3 years.

Radeon Feature Matrix

Radeon R200 (9xxx) series

AGP (9xxx series)

All models are manufactured with a 150 nm fabrication process All models include DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.4

ModelLaunchCode nameBus interfaceMemory (MiB)Core clock (MHz)Memory clock (MHz)Config core1FillrateMemoryMOperations/sMPixels/sMTexels/sMVertices/sBandwidth (GB/s)Bus typeBus width (bit)Radeon 9000Aug 1, 2002RV250 (iris)AGP 4x64, 1282005004:1:4:4800800800508DDR128Radeon 9000 ProAug 1, 2002RV250 (iris)AGP 4x64, 1282755504:1:4:411001100110068.758.8DDR128Radeon 91002003R200 (chaplin)AGP 4x / PCI64, 1282505004:2:8:41000100020001258.0DDR128Radeon 9200Apr 1, 2003RV280 (argus)AGP 8xPCI64, 128, 2562504004:1:4:410001000100062.56.4DDR128Radeon 9200 SEJuly 2003RV280 (argus)AGP 8xPCI64, 128, 2562003334:1:4:4800800800502.67DDR64Radeon 9250July 2004RV280 (argus)PCI, AGP 8x64, 128, 2562404004:1:4:4960960960606.4DDR128

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

IGP (9xxx series)

All models are manufactured with a 150 nm fabrication process All models include DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.4 Based on the Radeon 9200

ModelLaunchCode nameBus interfaceMemory (MiB)Core clock (MHz)Memory clock (MHz)Config core1FillrateMemoryMOperations/sMPixels/sMTexels/sMVertices/sBandwidth (GB/s)Bus typeBus width (bit)Radeon 90002003RC350FSB16-1283004004:1:2:260060060003.2 DDR64Radeon 9100 2003RS300 (superman)FSB16-1283004004:1:2:260060060006.4 DDR128Radeon 9100 ProMay 3, 2004RS350FSB16-1283004004:1:2:260060060006.4 DDR128

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

Radeon R300 series

AGP (9xxx series)

All models include DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0

ModelLaunchCode nameFab (nm)Bus interfaceMemory (MiB)Core clock (MHz)Memory clock (MHz)Config core1FillrateMemoryMOperations/sMPixels/sMTexels/sMVertices/sBandwidth (GB/s)Bus typeBus width (bit)Radeon 9500Oct. 24, 2002R300 (khan)150AGP 8x64, 1282755404:4:4:81100220011002758.64DDR128Radeon 9500 ProOct. 24, 2002R300 (khan)150AGP 8x1282755408:4:8:82200220022002758.64DDR128Radeon 95502004RV350 (shivah)130AGP 8x64, 128, 2562504004:2:4:41000100010001256.4DDR128Radeon 9550 SE2004RV350 (shivah)130AGP 8x64, 128, 2562504004:2:4:41000100010001253.2DDR64Radeon 96002003RV350 (shivah)130AGP 8x128, 2563254004:2:4:4130013001300162.56.4DDR128Radeon 9600 Pro2003RV350 (shivah)130AGP 8x128, 2564006004:2:4:41600160016002009.6DDR128Radeon 9600 SE2003RV350 (shivah)130AGP 8x64, 128, 2563254004:2:4:4130013001300162.53.2DDR64Radeon 9600 XTSept. 30, 2003RV360130AGP 8x128, 2565006004:2:4:42000200020002509.6DDR128Radeon 9700Oct. 24, 2002R300 (khan)150AGP 8x1282755408:4:8:822002200220027517.28DDR256Radeon 9700 ProJuly 18, 2002R300 (khan)150AGP 8x1283256208:4:8:826002600260032519.84DDR256Radeon 98002003R350150AGP 8x1283256208:4:8:826002600260032519.84DDR256Radeon 9800 XL2003R350150AGP 8x1283506208:4:8:828002800280035019.84DDR256Radeon 9800 Pro2003R350, R360150AGP 8x128, 256380680, 7008:4:8:830403040304038021.76, 22.40DDR, DDR2256Radeon 9800 SEPowercolor Radeon 9800SE 256 bit VersionN/AR350150AGP 8x128, 256325, 380540, 6804:4:4:81300, 15202600, 30401300, 1520325, 3808.64, 21.76DDR128, 2562Radeon 9800 XTSept 9, 2003R360150AGP 8x2564127308:4:8:832963296329641223.36DDR256

1 Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units 2 The 256-bit version of the 9800 SE when unlocked to 8-pixel pipelines with third party driver modifications should function close to a full 9800 Pro.Tech ARP - Radeon 9800 SE to Radeon 9800 Pro Mod Guide

Development

ATI had held the lead for a while with the Radeon 8500 but NVIDIA retook the performance crown with the launch of the GeForce 4 Ti line. A new high-end refresh part, the 8500XT (R250) was supposedly in the works, ready to compete against NVIDIA's high-end offerings, particularly the top line Ti 4600. Pre-release information listed a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the R250 chip. ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx when they took focus off their Rampage processor, abandoned it in favor of finishing off their next-generation R300 card. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The R300, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh.

The R3xx chip was designed by ATI's west coast team (formerly ArtX Inc.), and the first product to use it was the Radeon 9700 PRO (internal ATI code name: R300; internal ArtX codename: Khan), launched in August 2002. The architecture of R300 was quite different from its predecessor, Radeon 8500 (R200), in nearly every way. The core of 9700 PRO was manufactured on a 150 nm chip fabrication process, similar to the Radeon 8500. However, refined design and manufacturing techniques enabled a doubling of transistor count and a significant clock speed gain.

One major change with the manufacturing of the core was the use of the flip-chip packaging, a technology not used previously on video cards. Flip chip packaging allows far better cooling of the die by flipping it and exposing it directly to the cooling solution. ATI thus could achieve higher clock speeds. Radeon 9700 PRO was launched clocked at 325 MHz, ahead of the originally projected 300 MHz. With a transistor count of 110 million, it was the largest and most complex GPU of the time. A slower chip, the 9700, was launched a few months later, differing only by lower core and memory speeds. Despite that, the Radeon 9700 PRO was clocked significantly higher than the Matrox Parhelia 512, a card released but months before R300 and considered to be the pinnacle of graphics chip manufacturing (with 80 million transistors at 220 MHz), up until R300's arrival.

Architecture

The chip adopted an architecture consisting of 8 pixel pipelines, each with 1 texture mapping unit (an 8x1 design). While this differed from the older chips using 2 (or 3 for the original Radeon) texture units per pipeline, this did not mean R300 could not perform multi-texturing as efficiently as older chips. Its texture units could perform a new loopback operation which allowed them to sample up to 16 textures per geometry pass. The textures can be any combination of one, two, or three dimensions with bilinear, trilinear, or anisotropic filtering. This was part of the new DirectX 9 specification, along with more flexible floating-point-based Shader Model 2.0+ pixel shaders and vertex shaders. Equipped with 4 vertex shader units, R300 possessed over twice the geometry processing capability of the preceding Radeon 8500 and the GeForce4 Ti 4600, in addition to the greater feature-set offered compared to DirectX 8 shaders.

ATI demonstrated part of what was capable with pixel shader PS2.0 with their Rendering with Natural Light demo. The demo was a real-time implementation of noted 3D graphics researcher Paul Debevec's paper on the topic of high dynamic range rendering.Debevec, Paul. Rendering with Natural Light, Author's web page, 1998 A noteworthy limitation is that all R300-generation chips were designed for a maximum floating point precision of 96-bit, or FP24, instead of DirectX 9's maximum of 128-bit FP32. DirectX 9.0 specified FP24 as a minimum level for conforming to the specification for full precision. This trade-off in precision offered the best combination of transistor usage and image quality for the manufacturing process at the time. It did cause a usually visibly imperceptible loss of quality when doing heavy blending. ATI's Radeon chips did not go above FP24 until R520.

The R300 was the first board to truly take advantage of a 256-bit memory bus. Matrox had released their Parhelia 512 several months earlier, but this board did not show great gains with its 256-bit bus. ATI, however, had not only doubled their bus to 256-bit, but also integrated an advanced crossbar memory controller, somewhat similar to NVIDIA's memory technology. Utilizing four individual load-balanced 64-bit memory controllers, ATI's memory implementation was quite capable of achieving high bandwidth efficiency by maintaining adequate granularity of memory transactions and thus working around memory latency limitations. "R300" was also given the latest refinement of ATI's innovative HyperZ memory bandwidth and fillrate saving technology, HyperZ III. The demands of the 8x1 architecture required more bandwidth than the 128-bit bus designs of the previous generation due to having double the texture and pixel fillrate.

Radeon 9700 introduced ATI's multi-sample gamma-corrected anti-aliasing scheme. The chip offered sparse-sampling in modes including 2×, 4×, and 6×. Multi-sampling offered vastly superior performance over the supersampling method on older Radeons, and superior image quality compared to NVIDIA's offerings at the time. Anti-aliasing was, for the first time, a fully usable option even in the newest and most demanding titles of the day. The R300 also offered advanced anisotropic filtering which incurred a much smaller performance hit than the anisotropic solution of the GeForce4 and other competitors' cards, while offering significantly improved quality over Radeon 8500's anisotropic filtering implementation which was highly angle dependent.

On March 14, 2008, AMD released the 3D Register Reference for R3xx.Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Radeon R3xx 3D Register Reference Guide , X.org website, March 14, 2008.

Performance Radeon 9700's advanced architecture was very efficient and, of course, more powerful compared to its older peers of 2002. Under normal conditions it beats the GeForce4 Ti 4600, the previous top-end card, by 15–20%. However, when anti-aliasing (AA) and/or anisotropic filtering (AF) were enabled it would beat the Ti 4600 by anywhere from 40–100%. At the time, this was quite astonishing, and resulted in the widespread acceptance of AA and AF as critical, truly usable features., By Punit Lodaya, Jan 14 2005, Techtree.com India

Besides advanced architecture, reviewers also took note of ATI's change in strategy. The 9700 would be the second of ATI's chips (after the 8500) to be shipped to third-party manufacturers instead of ATI producing all of its graphics cards, though ATI would still produce cards off of its highest-end chips. This freed up engineering resources that were channeled towards driver improvements, and the 9700 performed phenomenally well at launch because of this. id Software technical director John Carmack had the Radeon 9700 run the E3 Doom 3 demonstration.IGN Advertisement

The performance and quality increases offered by the R300 GPU is considered to be one of the greatest in the history of 3D graphics, alongside the achievements GeForce 256 and Voodoo Graphics. Furthermore, NVIDIA's response in the form of the GeForce FX 5800 was both late to market and somewhat unimpressive, especially when pixel shading was used. R300 would become one of the GPUs with the longest useful lifetime in history, allowing playable performance in new games at least 3 years after its launch.Weinand, Lars. VGA Charts VII: AGP Update Summer 2005 , Tom's Hardware, July 5, 2005.

Further releases