Looking Back At ATI Technologies

[erek]

"In 2010, after 25 years, the ATI brand was phased out. Replaced by its owner AMD. ATI was a survivor. They started off in Toronto. Far from Silicon Valley, but somehow thrived and started making graphics accelerators. They transitioned from 2D to 3D, competed head to head with market leader Nvidia, struck a deal with Nintendo, and survived the graphics card wars. What a journey! In this video, I want to take a look back at ATI."

 

[wolf]

I always loved that my gamecube had an ATi sticker on it , many great ATi cards over the years too, a few from memory;

Multiple Radeon 9200's
HIS 9800Pro IceQ 128MB - bloody legendary card
X850 pro AGP - last hurrah for my AGP system
2x 4870 in CF - jet takeoff noise intensifies
5870+5850 in CF - if I'm not mistaken, the last or one of the last ATi gens before they were sold as AMD branded Radeons?

Good times

 

[droopyRO]

X850 pro AGP - last hurrah for my AGP system

I only have one ATi card, a X850XT PE. Hope someday i get a full retro system build around it, and that the X850 still works , i have not used it in about 10 years.

 

[freeagent]

I used to use ATi up until AMD bought them. Many GG with them. I got sucked into the nvidia loop.

 

[P4-630]

Have had several ATi GPU's in the past, x300SE , x1300, 2 x1600, Powercolor x1950Pro (one of my favorites), HD3850, HD4870.

 

[regorwin56]

I know that ATI graphics cards are from 2012. In 2010, ATI has completed its name change to AMD. My first graphics card was ATI Radeon HD 5770.

ATI for Radeon HD 5000 is renamed AMD starting with Catalyst 13.6

 

[80251]

Like wolf I had an x850xt, a 9800 Pro (RIP, destroyed it putting on an aftermarket aircooler) but a single 4870 (which I believe was an AMD branded product).

 

[regorwin56]

I would call the HD2000-HD5000 the AMD-ATI era. At that time, the division of ATI was not fully merged into AMD.

I read a report in 2009 that the ATI division was fully merged into AMD in 2009, so some ATI divisions have not been fully merged into AMD before that

(2006-2009 ATi under AMD management)

 

[lexluthermiester]

I always loved that my gamecube had an ATi sticker on it

I'll second this!

X850 pro AGP - last hurrah for my AGP system

For me, it was the X1850Pro 512MB version.

 

[Flanker]

Had a HD6770 can't remember if it was AMD or ATI

 

[regorwin56]

Had a HD6770 can't remember if it was AMD or ATI

Radeon HD 6000 starts to change to AMD brand but HD6770 is a rebrand of HD 5770

 

[AusWolf]

My first graphics card was a 4 MB S3 Virge, but my second one was an ATi Radeon 9600 XT. Then I had an X800 XT which was my favourite card ever. I traded it for a GeForce 7800 GS which was utter shite. Good old times!

 

[Calenhad]

Here's a classic from my drawer of things. PCI connector for when everything else failed and computers still had them.

 

[AusWolf]

Here's a classic from my drawer of things. PCI connector for when everything else failed and computers still had them.

Beautiful! Is it a Radeon 9200 or 9250?

 

[The red spirit]

My first graphics card was a 4 MB S3 Virge, but my second one was an ATi Radeon 9600 XT. Then I had an X800 XT which was my favourite card ever. I traded it for a GeForce 7800 GS which was utter shite. Good old times!

lol I actually have X800 XT PE AGP right now. For all intents and purposes it was a bit dumb card, because it only supported shader model 2 and model 3 was already in use just months after its launch and yeah that card can't even launch those games. That's probably one of the fastest card to become obsolete ever, even the damn VooDoo lasted longer.

 

[bug]

HIS 9800Pro IceQ 128MB - bloody legendary card

I drooled a lot over that card, could never afford it. I had a modified version of the 8500 instead (9100 was it?).

 

[Calenhad]

Beautiful! Is it a Radeon 9200 or 9250?

Says Radeon 7000 on the label at the back. I have not dug any further than that
*edit*
I did some googling and Radeon 7000 is indeed the model (I was uncertain if it was the family number before). This one must have an AGP to PCI bridge on it, since that is a native AGP chip.

 

[_JP_]

ATi Radeon 9200 SE 128MB (Powercolor) (and SE did not meant "Special Edition" ) - Enabled me to play CMR2.0
ATi Radeon X1650 Pro AGP 512MB (Powercolor) - DiRT 2 was a thing
ATi Radeon HD5770 1GB (Sapphire) - Would hit 1GHz without flinching and played DiRT3 maxed at 1080p which for the time was bliss for me.

Never had the high-end ones but always were amazed by the cards and their prices despite what nVidia would release. Good times.

 

[AusWolf]

Says Radeon 7000 on the label at the back. I have not dug any further than that
*edit*
I did some googling and Radeon 7000 is indeed the model (I was uncertain if it was the family number before). This one must have an AGP to PCI bridge on it, since that is a native AGP chip.

Oh wow! I was only dreaming of having a Radeon 7000 when it was new.

 

[regorwin56]

Radeon 7000(? Radeon R100 2000 year

 

[P4-630]

And oh the just 50~60Mb drivers with basic OC features...
Simple but it just worked, for me at least.

 

[The red spirit]

I'm using ATi FirePro V8800 in my secondary machine currently to play older games, it's basically Radeon HD 5870 with 2GB vRAM instead of 1GB and with more 3D accurate drivers. And with older games it works very well. And for blower card, it's very civilized too as heatsink is big copper unit. It's still quite powerful at WCG. Unfortunately, for something like YT it's nearly useless. It can only decode h264 at 720p. It can do 1080p30 or 720p60 tops, 1080p60 is just unwatchable. There's no support for anything more, like VP9. And my specific model also has a big ass metal handle. The card itself with handle is really long and necessitates removal of HDD cage from Define D4. Temperature wise, it's also surprisingly civil. In furmark it tops out at mid 70s with ~30% fan speed, which is roughly 1700 rpm. It's rated at 208 watts, but it doesn't exhaust much heat and overall seem to suck less power than AMD claims. Despite all of its flaws, it's very amusing card to use.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Here's a classic from my drawer of things. PCI connector for when everything else failed and computers still had them.

I have that card, it's in my Power Mac G4 (PCI only) with a custom VBIOS flashed. Beast of a card, the 7000 is - the Radeon 9250 PCI was the next step up which got a lot more expensive for not much gain.

 

[The red spirit]

And oh the just 50~60Mb drivers with basic OC features...
Simple but it just worked, for me at least.

Now it's not really that different, you see, what you download now is actually a driver pack and it contains drivers for way more cards than your own. I actually accidentaly found out that when I switched RX 580 with RX 560 and forgot to get rid of drivers. It was perfectly detected and worked absolutely fine. I later found out that driver pack is basically just a big zip archive and you can get rid of other drivers if you really want that. nVidia drivers are basically the same, but you can even get rid of features modularly, don't need 3D vision, just delete that folder from archive. And drivers are nothing more than 4 files. I think one file was just basic catalog format file, other files were also surprisingly pedestrian too.

 

[regorwin56]

I'm using ATi FirePro V8800 in my secondary machine currently to play older games, it's basically Radeon HD 5870 with 2GB vRAM instead of 1GB and with more 3D accurate drivers. And with older games it works very well. And for blower card, it's very civilized too as heatsink is big copper unit. It's still quite powerful at WCG. Unfortunately, for something like YT it's nearly useless. It can only decode h264 at 720p. It can do 1080p30 or 720p60 tops, 1080p60 is just unwatchable. There's no support for anything more, like VP9. And my specific model also has a big ass metal handle. The card itself with handle is really long and necessitates removal of HDD cage from Define D4. Temperature wise, it's also surprisingly civil. In furmark it tops out at mid 70s with ~30% fan speed, which is roughly 1700 rpm. It's rated at 208 watts, but it doesn't exhaust much heat and overall seem to suck less power than AMD claims. Despite all of its flaws, it's very amusing card to use.

Your HD5870 can support H 264 1080P30FPS video decoding

But does not support H264 1080P 60FPS video?


I just want to know the HD5000's video decoding capability