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RADEON 7500

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Highly integrated

The Christmas season. If you’ve ever lived in Germany, you know what it’s like here now. In the past, only the last weeks of November would usher in the time of holiday decorations, festivity, and (best of all) Christmas candies. Now, summer is barely past and already we’ve begun to see the first chocolate Santas and "pre-Christmas specials", in supermarkets and department stores alike. It seems this trend is spreading to video cards as well. New releases, usually reserved for the holiday season (a.k.a the infamous "Q4" on roadmaps), are beginning unusually early this year. The first one out the gate is a card by ATi, the new RADEON 7500, which is aimed squarely at the mainstream market.

Its chances for success aren’t bad at all, judging from the card’s specs and feature list. The revamped and tuned RADEON core is now manufactured on a 0,15µ process, allowing the integration of TV-Out and a second RAMDAC as well as a major increase in clockspeed to an astounding 290MHz! On top of that, the card will ship with 64MB 128Bit DDR-SDRAM consisting of 4ns chips. Speedwise, the memory takes its cue from the GF2 Ultra and the GF3 and will run at 460MHz. The real clincher, however, is the price. ATi is planning to introduce this card at a comparatively low DM 399.- or $199 (official ATI recommended sale prices), which amounts to a declaration of war against the current market leader NVIDIA.

While ATi’s "little" 7500 definitely won’t be able to threaten NVIDIA’s heavyweight GeForce 3, that’s not its mission anyway. That’s a job for the upcoming 8500, which will bring SmartShader technology to the fray. This relegates the 7500 to another feature and performance class, as the new nomenclature already indicates. The 7 in the name denotes the DirectX generation the card is from. Thus, 7xxx=DirectX7. The following number denotes the performance level. The new system is meant to put an end to the confusion caused by the different retail and OEM versions of the original RADEON, which differed in memory and core clockspeeds. Should a slower OEM version be released, it would most likely be named 7400 or something like that to make it easily identifiable and prevent mix-ups. Which bings us to another important point: The 7500 / RV200 core is not the eagerly anticipated new RADEON version with SmartShader, Truform and Smoothvision technologies!

The RADEON 7500’s RV200 chip is basically a die-shrunk RADEON (1) on a 0.15µ process with an additional RAMDAC and the TV-Out functions of the Rage Theater chips. It lacks both Vertex and Pixel Shaders, though. I’ll spare you the remaining list of 3D features, as they are identical to those of the original RADEON. (More information here)

The 7500 is nonetheless an innovative card. It is the first dual display card with adequate 3D gaming performance. Those whose computers are workstations as well as gaming rigs will certainly appreciate the comforts and advantages of having a second display. Programming and video/picture editing are perfect applications for such an environment. Until now, if you chose a dual display card, you were always forced to compromise. On the one side we had the acceptable 3D performance on an MX400, but with sub-standard image quality on the second display above 1024x768. On the other were the excellent dual display features of a RADEON VE or a Matrox G450/550, paired with mediocre 3D performance above 800x600-16. This is where the RADEON 7500 fits in. It is the first card that can offer the best of both worlds. The second RAMDAC runs at 350MHz, guaranteeing a crisp image even at high resolutions. Connection options are identical to those of the RADEON VE (so check out our RADEON VE Review).

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