The following is a list that contains general information about GPUs and video cards made by AMD , including those made by ATI Technologies before 2006, based on official specifications in table-form.
101-537: Radeon ( / ˈ r eɪ d i ɒ n / ) is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units , random-access memory , RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD . The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies , which was acquired by AMD in 2006 for US$ 5.4 billion. Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line. Four different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished,
202-491: A personal computer graphics display processor as a single large-scale integration (LSI) integrated circuit chip. This enabled the design of low-cost, high-performance video graphics cards such as those from Number Nine Visual Technology . It became the best-known GPU until the mid-1980s. It was the first fully integrated VLSI (very large-scale integration) metal–oxide–semiconductor ( NMOS ) graphics display processor for PCs, supported up to 1024×1024 resolution , and laid
303-562: A vector processor ), running compute kernels . This turns the massive computational power of a modern graphics accelerator's shader pipeline into general-purpose computing power. In certain applications requiring massive vector operations, this can yield several orders of magnitude higher performance than a conventional CPU. The two largest discrete (see " Dedicated graphics processing unit " above) GPU designers, AMD and Nvidia , are pursuing this approach with an array of applications. Both Nvidia and AMD teamed with Stanford University to create
404-583: A GPU-based client for the Folding@home distributed computing project for protein folding calculations. In certain circumstances, the GPU calculates forty times faster than the CPUs traditionally used by such applications. GPGPUs can be used for many types of embarrassingly parallel tasks including ray tracing . They are generally suited to high-throughput computations that exhibit data-parallelism to exploit
505-507: A Vérité V2200 core to create a graphics card with a full T&L engine years before Nvidia's GeForce 256 ; This card, designed to reduce the load placed upon the system's CPU, never made it to market. NVIDIA RIVA 128 was one of the first consumer-facing GPU integrated 3D processing unit and 2D processing unit on a chip. OpenGL was introduced in the early '90s by SGI as a professional graphics API, with proprietary hardware support for 3D rasterization. In 1994 Microsoft acquired Softimage ,
606-549: A bolstered with many more stream processors, with improvements to power consumption and GDDR5 support for the high-end RV770 and RV740(HD4770) chips. It arrived in late June 2008. The HD 4850 and HD 4870 have 800 stream processors and GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory, respectively. The 4890 was a refresh of 4870 with the same amount of stream processors yet higher clock rates due to refinements. The 4870x2 has 1600 stream processors and GDDR5 memory on an effective 512-bit memory bus with 230.4 Gbit/s video memory bandwidth available. The series
707-469: A concern—except to invoke the pixel shader). Nvidia's CUDA platform, first introduced in 2007, was the earliest widely adopted programming model for GPU computing. OpenCL is an open standard defined by the Khronos Group that allows for the development of code for both GPUs and CPUs with an emphasis on portability. OpenCL solutions are supported by Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ARM, and according to
808-560: A development machine for Capcom 's CP System arcade board. Fujitsu's FM Towns computer, released in 1989, had support for a 16,777,216 color palette. In 1988, the first dedicated polygonal 3D graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the Namco System 21 and Taito Air System. IBM introduced its proprietary Video Graphics Array (VGA) display standard in 1987, with a maximum resolution of 640×480 pixels. In November 1988, NEC Home Electronics announced its creation of
909-657: A highly customizable function block and did not really "run" a program. Many of these disparities between vertex and pixel shading were not addressed until the Unified Shader Model . In October 2002, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon 9700 (also known as R300), the world's first Direct3D 9.0 accelerator, pixel and vertex shaders could implement looping and lengthy floating point math, and were quickly becoming as flexible as CPUs, yet orders of magnitude faster for image-array operations. Pixel shading
1010-1073: A new version of their graphics driver following the formation of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) to provide extensive software support for their graphics cards. This driver, labelled Radeon Software Crimson Edition, overhauls the UI with Qt , resulting in better responsiveness from a design and system perspective. It includes a new interface featuring a game manager, clocking tools, and sections for different technologies. Unofficial modifications such as Omega drivers and DNA drivers were available. These drivers typically consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry variables altered and are advertised as offering superior performance or image quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such, are not guaranteed to function correctly. Some of them also provide modified system files for hardware enthusiasts to run specific graphics cards outside of their specifications. Radeon Software
1111-466: A number of brand names. In 2009, Intel , Nvidia , and AMD / ATI were the market share leaders, with 49.4%, 27.8%, and 20.6% market share respectively. In addition, Matrox produces GPUs. Modern smartphones use mostly Adreno GPUs from Qualcomm , PowerVR GPUs from Imagination Technologies , and Mali GPUs from ARM . Modern GPUs have traditionally used most of their transistors to do calculations related to 3D computer graphics . In addition to
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#17327652166121212-551: A number of enhancements including the floating point render target technology necessary for HDR rendering with anti-aliasing . ATI's first series of GPUs to replace the old fixed-pipeline and implement unified shader model . Subsequent revisions tuned the design for higher performance and energy efficiency, resulting in the ATI Mobility Radeon HD series for mobile computers. Based on the R600 architecture. Mostly
1313-463: A prefix of R (e.g., R300 or R600 ) while slight modifications are indicated by the RV prefix (e.g., RV370 or RV635 ). The first derivative architecture, RV200 , did not follow the scheme used by later parts. The Radeon, first introduced in 2000, was ATI's first graphics processor to be fully DirectX 7 compliant. R100 brought with it large gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through
1414-615: A report in 2011 by Evans Data, OpenCL had become the second most popular HPC tool. In 2010, Nvidia partnered with Audi to power their cars' dashboards, using the Tegra GPU to provide increased functionality to cars' navigation and entertainment systems. Advances in GPU technology in cars helped advance self-driving technology . AMD's Radeon HD 6000 series cards were released in 2010, and in 2011 AMD released its 6000M Series discrete GPUs for mobile devices. The Kepler line of graphics cards by Nvidia were released in 2012 and were used in
1515-537: A series of embedded GPUs targeted toward medical, entertainment, and display devices. In August 2011, AMD expanded the Radeon name to include random access memory modules under the AMD Memory line. The initial releases included 3 types of 2GiB DDR3 SDRAM modules: Entertainment (1333 MHz, CL9 9-9), UltraPro Gaming (1600 MHz, CL11 11-11) and Enterprise (specs to be determined). On May 8, 2013, AMD announced
1616-411: A single physical pool of RAM, allowing more efficient transfer of data. Hybrid GPUs compete with integrated graphics in the low-end desktop and notebook markets. The most common implementations of this are ATI's HyperMemory and Nvidia's TurboCache . Hybrid graphics cards are somewhat more expensive than integrated graphics, but much less expensive than dedicated graphics cards. They share memory with
1717-522: A specific use, real-time 3D graphics, or other mass calculations: Dedicated graphics processing units uses RAM that is dedicated to the GPU rather than relying on the computer’s main system memory. This RAM is usually specially selected for the expected serial workload of the graphics card (see GDDR ). Sometimes systems with dedicated discrete GPUs were called "DIS" systems as opposed to "UMA" systems (see next section). Dedicated GPUs are not necessarily removable, nor does it necessarily interface with
1818-603: A variety of imitators: by 1995, all major PC graphics chip makers had added 2D acceleration support to their chips. Fixed-function Windows accelerators surpassed expensive general-purpose graphics coprocessors in Windows performance, and such coprocessors faded from the PC market. Throughout the 1990s, 2D GUI acceleration evolved. As manufacturing capabilities improved, so did the level of integration of graphics chips. Additional application programming interfaces (APIs) arrived for
1919-538: A variety of tasks, such as Microsoft's WinG graphics library for Windows 3.x , and their later DirectDraw interface for hardware acceleration of 2D games in Windows 95 and later. In the early- and mid-1990s, real-time 3D graphics became increasingly common in arcade, computer, and console games, which led to increasing public demand for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. Early examples of mass-market 3D graphics hardware can be found in arcade system boards such as
2020-478: Is being developed for Microsoft Windows and Linux . As of January 2019, other operating systems are not officially supported. This may be different for the Radeon Pro brand, which is based on identical hardware but features OpenGL-certified graphics device drivers. ATI previously offered driver updates for their retail and integrated Macintosh video cards and chipsets. ATI stopped support for Mac OS 9 after
2121-712: Is commonly referred to as "GPU accelerated video decoding", "GPU assisted video decoding", "GPU hardware accelerated video decoding", or "GPU hardware assisted video decoding". Recent graphics cards decode high-definition video on the card, offloading the central processing unit. The most common APIs for GPU accelerated video decoding are DxVA for Microsoft Windows operating systems and VDPAU , VAAPI , XvMC , and XvBA for Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. All except XvMC are capable of decoding videos encoded with MPEG-1 , MPEG-2 , MPEG-4 ASP (MPEG-4 Part 2) , MPEG-4 AVC (H.264 / DivX 6), VC-1 , WMV3 / WMV9 , Xvid / OpenDivX (DivX 4), and DivX 5 codecs , while XvMC
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#17327652166122222-512: Is implemented. The clock frequencies listed here refer to the officially announced clock specifications. The sideport is a dedicated memory bus. It is preferably used for a frame buffer . PCIe 256 Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5
2323-719: Is implemented. The clock frequencies listed here refer to the officially announced clock specifications. The sideport is a dedicated memory bus. It preferably used for frame buffer . GPU A graphics processing unit ( GPU ) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics , being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards , mobile phones , personal computers , workstations , and game consoles . After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure . Other non-graphical uses include
2424-607: Is mainly based on AMD's GCN architecture, with the lower end, OEM cards still using VLIW5. The majority of desktop products use GCN 1, while the R9 290x/290 & R7 260X/260 use GCN 2, and with only the R9 285 using the new GCN 3 . GPUs codenamed "Caribbean Islands" were introduced with the AMD Radeon RX 300 series, released in 2015. This series was the first to solely use GCN based models, ranging from GCN 1st to GCN 3rd Gen, including
2525-736: Is not available. Technologies such as Scan-Line Interleave by 3dfx, SLI and NVLink by Nvidia and CrossFire by AMD allow multiple GPUs to draw images simultaneously for a single screen, increasing the processing power available for graphics. These technologies, however, are increasingly uncommon; most games do not fully use multiple GPUs, as most users cannot afford them. Multiple GPUs are still used on supercomputers (like in Summit ), on workstations to accelerate video (processing multiple videos at once) and 3D rendering, for VFX , GPGPU workloads and for simulations, and in AI to expedite training, as
2626-757: Is often used for bump mapping , which adds texture to make an object look shiny, dull, rough, or even round or extruded. With the introduction of the Nvidia GeForce 8 series and new generic stream processing units, GPUs became more generalized computing devices. Parallel GPUs are making computational inroads against the CPU, and a subfield of research, dubbed GPU computing or GPGPU for general purpose computing on GPU , has found applications in fields as diverse as machine learning , oil exploration , scientific image processing , linear algebra , statistics , 3D reconstruction , and stock options pricing. GPGPU
2727-518: Is only capable of decoding MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. There are several dedicated hardware video decoding and encoding solutions . Video decoding processes that can be accelerated by modern GPU hardware are: These operations also have applications in video editing, encoding, and transcoding. An earlier GPU may support one or more 2D graphics API for 2D acceleration, such as GDI and DirectDraw . A GPU can support one or more 3D graphics API, such as DirectX , Metal , OpenGL , OpenGL ES , Vulkan . In
2828-448: Is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory. The TDP is reference design TDP values from AMD. Different non-reference board designs from vendors may lead to slight variations in actual TDP. All models feature UVD2 and PowerPlay . Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units The clock frequencies may vary in different usage scenarios, as ATI PowerPlay technology
2929-687: Is the Super FX chip, a RISC -based on-cartridge graphics chip used in some SNES games, notably Doom and Star Fox . Some systems used DSPs to accelerate transformations. Fujitsu , which worked on the Sega Model 2 arcade system, began working on integrating T&L into a single LSI solution for use in home computers in 1995; the Fujitsu Pinolite, the first 3D geometry processor for personal computers, released in 1997. The first hardware T&L GPU on home video game consoles
3030-611: Is the 6600XT release date, the RX 6600 launched on 13 October 2021), and a Radeon RX 6500(XT), launched on 19 January 2022. Some generations vary from their predecessors predominantly due to architectural improvements, while others were adapted primarily to new manufacturing processes with fewer functional changes. The table below summarizes the APIs supported in each Radeon generation (including pre-Radeon ATI GPUs). Also see AMD FireStream and AMD FirePro branded products. The following table shows
3131-457: Is the case with Nvidia's lineup of DGX workstations and servers, Tesla GPUs, and Intel's Ponte Vecchio GPUs. Integrated graphics processing units (IGPU), integrated graphics , shared graphics solutions , integrated graphics processors (IGP), or unified memory architectures (UMA) use a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than dedicated graphics memory. IGPs can be integrated onto a motherboard as part of its northbridge chipset, or on
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3232-609: The GeForce 256 as "the world's first GPU". It was presented as a "single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping , and rendering engines". Rival ATI Technologies coined the term " visual processing unit " or VPU with the release of the Radeon 9700 in 2002. The AMD Alveo MA35D features dual VPU’s, each using the 5 nm process in 2023. In personal computers, there are two main forms of GPUs. Each has many synonyms: Most GPUs are designed for
3333-517: The Intel Core line and with contemporary Pentiums and Celerons. This resulted in a large nominal market share, as the majority of computers with an Intel CPU also featured this embedded graphics processor. These generally lagged behind discrete processors in performance. Intel re-entered the discrete GPU market in 2022 with its Arc series, which competed with the then-current GeForce 30 series and Radeon 6000 series cards at competitive prices. In
3434-465: The PowerVR and the 3dfx Voodoo . However, as manufacturing technology continued to progress, video, 2D GUI acceleration, and 3D functionality were all integrated into one chip. Rendition 's Verite chipsets were among the first to do this well. In 1997, Rendition collaborated with Hercules and Fujitsu on a "Thriller Conspiracy" project which combined a Fujitsu FXG-1 Pinolite geometry processor with
3535-565: The RDNA 2 architecture , it was stated to succeed the first-gen RDNA micro-architecture and was initially scheduled for a release in Q4 2020. RDNA 2 was confirmed as the graphics microarchitecture featured in the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles from Microsoft , and PlayStation 5 from Sony , with proprietary tweaks and different GPU configurations in each systems' implementation. AMD unveiled
3636-510: The Radeon RX 6000 series , its next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards at an online event on 28 October 2020. The lineup consists of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6800 and 6800 XT launched on 18 November 2020, with the RX 6900 XT being released on 8 December 2020. Further variants including a Radeon RX 6700 (XT) series based on Navi 22, launched on 18 March 2021, a Radeon RX 6600(XT) series based on Navi 23, launched on 11 August 2021 (that
3737-522: The Sega Model 1 , Namco System 22 , and Sega Model 2 , and the fifth-generation video game consoles such as the Saturn , PlayStation , and Nintendo 64 . Arcade systems such as the Sega Model 2 and SGI Onyx -based Namco Magic Edge Hornet Simulator in 1993 were capable of hardware T&L ( transform, clipping, and lighting ) years before appearing in consumer graphics cards. Another early example
3838-616: The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) to develop and promote a Super VGA (SVGA) computer display standard as a successor to VGA. Super VGA enabled graphics display resolutions up to 800×600 pixels , a 36% increase. In 1991, S3 Graphics introduced the S3 86C911 , which its designers named after the Porsche 911 as an indication of the performance increase it promised. The 86C911 spawned
3939-499: The fixed-pipeline family, the unified shader model -families of TeraScale , Graphics Core Next , and RDNA . ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm , HyperMemory , HyperZ , XGP , Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire (for multi-GPU) or Hybrid Graphics . A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on certain models in the Radeon products line: Unified Video Decoder , Video Coding Engine and TrueAudio . The brand
4040-412: The motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI Express (PCIe) or Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP). They can usually be replaced or upgraded with relative ease, assuming the motherboard is capable of supporting the upgrade. A few graphics cards still use Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots, but their bandwidth is so limited that they are generally used only when a PCIe or AGP slot
4141-465: The rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems . Recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations that are supported by CPUs , oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing , and very high-precision color spaces . Several factors of GPU construction affect
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4242-483: The 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for graphics processor unit and described a programmable processing unit working independently from the CPU that was responsible for graphics manipulation and output. In 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for graphics processing unit ) in reference to the PlayStation console's Toshiba -designed Sony GPU . The term was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed
4343-598: The 2020s, GPUs have been increasingly used for calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems, such as training of neural networks on enormous datasets that are needed for large language models . Specialized processing cores on some modern workstation's GPUs are dedicated for deep learning since they have significant FLOPS performance increases, using 4×4 matrix multiplication and division, resulting in hardware performance up to 128 TFLOPS in some applications. These tensor cores are expected to appear in consumer cards, as well. Many companies have produced GPUs under
4444-422: The 3D hardware, today's GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with a VGA compatibility mode). Newer cards such as AMD/ATI HD5000–HD7000 lack dedicated 2D acceleration; it is emulated by 3D hardware. GPUs were initially used to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons. Later, units were added to accelerate geometric calculations such as
4545-459: The 5870 and 5850 models. ATI released beta drivers that introduced full OpenGL 4.0 support on all variants of this series in March 2010. This is the first series to be marketed solely under the "AMD" brand. It features a 3rd generation 40 nm design, rebalancing the existing architecture with redesigned shaders to give it better performance. It was released first on 22 October 2010, in the form of
4646-513: The 6850 and 6870. 3D output is enabled with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 outputs. "Southern Islands" was the first series to feature the new compute microarchitecture known as "Graphics Core Next"(GCN). GCN was used among the higher end cards, while the VLIW5 architecture utilized in the previous generation was used in the lower end, OEM products. However, the Radeon HD 7790 uses GCN 2 , and
4747-713: The 9800 SE when unlocked to 8-pixel pipelines with third party driver modifications should function close to a full 9800 Pro. 4 64 Pixel shaders : Vertex Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units 12.8 system Pixel shaders : Vertex Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units 9.6 GDDR3 128 Pixel shaders : Vertex Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Note that ATI X1000 series cards (e.g. X1900) do not have Vertex Texture Fetch, hence they do not fully comply with
4848-698: The CPU for relatively slow system RAM, as it has minimal or no dedicated video memory. IGPs use system memory with bandwidth up to a current maximum of 128 GB/s, whereas a discrete graphics card may have a bandwidth of more than 1000 GB/s between its VRAM and GPU core. This memory bus bandwidth can limit the performance of the GPU, though multi-channel memory can mitigate this deficiency. Older integrated graphics chipsets lacked hardware transform and lighting , but newer ones include it. On systems with "Unified Memory Architecture" (UMA), including modern AMD processors with integrated graphics, modern Intel processors with integrated graphics, Apple processors,
4949-785: The GCN 3-based Fiji-architecture models named Fury X, Fury, Nano and the Radeon Pro Duo. GPUs codenamed "Arctic Islands" were first introduced with the Radeon RX 400 series in June 2016 with the announcement of the RX 480 . These cards were the first to use the new Polaris chips which implements GCN 4th Gen on the 14 nm fab process. The RX 500 series released in April 2017 also uses Polaris chips. On 27 May 2019, at COMPUTEX 2019, AMD announced
5050-520: The Linux kernel developers, by 3rd party programming enthusiasts and by AMD employees. It is composed out of five parts: The free and open-source driver supports many of the features available in Radeon-branded cards and APUs, such as multi-monitor or hybrid graphics. The free and open-source drivers are primarily developed on Linux and for Linux. Being entirely free and open-source software,
5151-487: The Nvidia's 600 and 700 series cards. A feature in this GPU microarchitecture included GPU boost, a technology that adjusts the clock-speed of a video card to increase or decrease it according to its power draw. The Kepler microarchitecture was manufactured on the 28 nm process . The PS4 and Xbox One were released in 2013; they both use GPUs based on AMD's Radeon HD 7850 and 7790 . Nvidia's Kepler line of GPUs
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#17327652166125252-568: The PC world, notable failed attempts for low-cost 3D graphics chips included the S3 ViRGE , ATI Rage , and Matrox Mystique . These chips were essentially previous-generation 2D accelerators with 3D features bolted on. Many were pin-compatible with the earlier-generation chips for ease of implementation and minimal cost. Initially, 3D graphics were possible only with discrete boards dedicated to accelerating 3D functions (and lacking 2D graphical user interface (GUI) acceleration entirely) such as
5353-573: The PS5 and Xbox Series (among others), the CPU cores and the GPU block share the same pool of RAM and memory address space. This allows the system to dynamically allocate memory between the CPU cores and the GPU block based on memory needs (without needing a large static split of the RAM) and thanks to zero copy transfers, removes the need for either copying data over a bus (computing) between physically separate RAM pools or copying between separate address spaces on
5454-508: The R9 290X or better at the time of their release. Cards based on the Pascal microarchitecture were released in 2016. The GeForce 10 series of cards are of this generation of graphics cards. They are made using the 16 nm manufacturing process which improves upon previous microarchitectures. Nvidia released one non-consumer card under the new Volta architecture, the Titan V. Changes from
5555-535: The RTX 20 series GPUs that added ray-tracing cores to GPUs, improving their performance on lighting effects. Polaris 11 and Polaris 10 GPUs from AMD are fabricated by a 14 nm process. Their release resulted in a substantial increase in the performance per watt of AMD video cards. AMD also released the Vega GPU series for the high end market as a competitor to Nvidia's high end Pascal cards, also featuring HBM2 like
5656-644: The RV370 and RV380 graphics processors were used extensively by consumer PC manufacturers. While heavily based upon the previous generation, this line included extensions to the Shader Model 2 feature-set. Shader Model 2b, the specification ATI and Microsoft defined with this generation, offered somewhat more shader program flexibility. ATI's DirectX 9.0c series of graphics cards, with complete shader Model 3.0 support. Launched in October 2005, this series brought
5757-462: The RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6700 XT, which is based on Navi 22, was launched in early 2021. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S were released in 2020; they both use GPUs based on the RDNA 2 microarchitecture with incremental improvements and different GPU configurations in each system's implementation. Intel first entered the GPU market in the late 1990s, but produced lackluster 3D accelerators compared to
5858-600: The Radeon R200 cards, making the last officially supported card the Radeon 9250. The Radeon R100 cards up to the Radeon 7200 can still be used with even older classic Mac OS versions such as System 7 , although not all features are taken advantage of by the older operating system. Ever since ATI's acquisition by AMD, ATI no longer supplies or supports drivers for classic Mac OS nor macOS . macOS drivers can be downloaded from Apple's support website, while classic Mac OS drivers can be obtained from 3rd party websites that host
5959-572: The Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Manufacturers of the Radeon cards—some of whom also make motherboards—include ASRock , Asus , Biostar , Club 3D , Diamond , Force3D , Gainward , Gigabyte , HIS , MSI , PowerColor , Sapphire , VisionTek , and XFX . Early generations were identified with a number and major/minor alphabetic prefix. Later generations were assigned code names. New or heavily redesigned architectures have
6060-552: The Titan V. In 2019, AMD released the successor to their Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture/instruction set. Dubbed RDNA, the first product featuring it was the Radeon RX 5000 series of video cards. The company announced that the successor to the RDNA microarchitecture would be incremental (aka a refresh). AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 6000 series , its RDNA 2 graphics cards with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The product series, launched in late 2020, consisted of
6161-493: The Titan XP, Pascal's high-end card, include an increase in the number of CUDA cores, the addition of tensor cores, and HBM2 . Tensor cores are designed for deep learning, while high-bandwidth memory is on-die, stacked, lower-clocked memory that offers an extremely wide memory bus. To emphasize that the Titan V is not a gaming card, Nvidia removed the "GeForce GTX" suffix it adds to consumer gaming cards. In 2018, Nvidia launched
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#17327652166126262-487: The VS 3.0 model. Instead, they offer a feature called "Render to Vertex Buffer (R2VB)" that provides functionality that is an alternative Vertex Texture Fetch. Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units The clock frequencies may vary in different usage scenarios, as AMD PowerPlay technology
6363-456: The actual display rate. Most GPUs made since 1995 support the YUV color space and hardware overlays , important for digital video playback, and many GPUs made since 2000 also support MPEG primitives such as motion compensation and iDCT . This hardware-accelerated video decoding, in which portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing are offloaded to the GPU hardware,
6464-609: The basis of the Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture ("TIGA") Windows accelerator cards. In 1987, the IBM 8514 graphics system was released. It was one of the first video cards for IBM PC compatibles to implement fixed-function 2D primitives in electronic hardware . Sharp 's X68000 , released in 1987, used a custom graphics chipset with a 65,536 color palette and hardware support for sprites, scrolling, and multiple playfields. It served as
6565-612: The books: " Game of X " v.1 and v.2 by Russel Demaria, " Renegades of the Empire " by Mike Drummond, " Opening the Xbox " by Dean Takahashi and " Masters of Doom " by David Kushner. The Nvidia GeForce 256 (also known as NV10) was the first consumer-level card with hardware-accelerated T&L; While the OpenGL API provided software support for texture mapping and lighting the first 3D hardware acceleration for these features arrived with
6666-579: The competition at the time. Rather than attempting to compete with the high-end manufacturers Nvidia and ATI/AMD, they began integrating Intel Graphics Technology GPUs into motherboard chipsets, beginning with the Intel 810 for the Pentium III, and later into CPUs. They began with the Intel Atom 'Pineview' laptop processor in 2009, continuing in 2010 with desktop processors in the first generation of
6767-541: The dominant CGI movie production tool used for early CGI movie hits like Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Titanic. With that deal came a strategic relationship with SGI and a commercial license of SGI's OpenGL libraries enabling Microsoft to port the API to the Windows NT OS but not to the upcoming release of Windows '95. Although it was little known at the time, SGI had contracted with Microsoft to transition from Unix to
6868-517: The first Direct3D accelerated consumer GPU's . Nvidia was first to produce a chip capable of programmable shading : the GeForce 3 . Each pixel could now be processed by a short program that could include additional image textures as inputs, and each geometric vertex could likewise be processed by a short program before it was projected onto the screen. Used in the Xbox console, this chip competed with
6969-479: The first Direct3D GPU's. Nvidia, quickly pivoted from a failed deal with Sega in 1996 to aggressively embracing support for Direct3D. In this era Microsoft merged their internal Direct3D and OpenGL teams and worked closely with SGI to unify driver standards for both industrial and consumer 3D graphics hardware accelerators. Microsoft ran annual events for 3D chip makers called "Meltdowns" to test their 3D hardware and drivers to work both with Direct3D and OpenGL. It
7070-481: The first major CMOS graphics processor for personal computers. The ARTC could display up to 4K resolution when in monochrome mode. It was used in a number of graphics cards and terminals during the late 1980s. In 1985, the Amiga was released with a custom graphics chip including a blitter for bitmap manipulation, line drawing, and area fill. It also included a coprocessor with its own simple instruction set, that
7171-413: The first time. It's performance relative to competitors was widely perceived as weak, and subsequent revisions of this generation were cancelled in order to focus on development of the next generation. The R300 was the first GPU to fully support Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 technology upon its release in 2001. It incorporated fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders. About a year later, the architecture
7272-496: The forthcoming Windows '95 consumer OS, in '95 Microsoft announced the acquisition of UK based Rendermorphics Ltd and the Direct3D driver model for the acceleration of consumer 3D graphics. The Direct3D driver model shipped with DirectX 2.0 in 1996. It included standards and specifications for 3D chip makers to compete to support 3D texture, lighting and Z-buffering. ATI, which was later to be acquired by AMD, began development on
7373-441: The forthcoming Windows NT OS , the deal which was signed in 1995 was not announced publicly until 1998. In the intervening period, Microsoft worked closely with SGI to port OpenGL to Windows NT. In that era OpenGL had no standard driver model for competing hardware accelerators to compete on the basis of support for higher level 3D texturing and lighting functionality. In 1994 Microsoft announced DirectX 1.0 and support for gaming in
7474-483: The foundations for the emerging PC graphics market. It was used in a number of graphics cards and was licensed for clones such as the Intel 82720, the first of Intel's graphics processing units . The Williams Electronics arcade games Robotron 2084 , Joust , Sinistar , and Bubbles , all released in 1982, contain custom blitter chips for operating on 16-color bitmaps. In 1984, Hitachi released ARTC HD63484,
7575-878: The free and open-source drivers can be ported to any existing operating system. Whether they have been, and to what extent depends entirely on the man-power available. Available support shall be referenced here. FreeBSD adopted DRI, and since Mesa 3D is not programmed for Linux, it should have identical support. MorphOS supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200 and R300 chipsets. AmigaOS 4 supports Radeon R100 , R200 , R300 , R520 (X1000 series), R700 (HD 4000 series), HD 5000 (Evergreen) series, HD 6000 (Northern Islands) series and HD 7000 (Southern Islands) series. The RadeonHD AmigaOS 4 driver has been developed by Hans de Ruiter funded and owned by A-EON Technology Ltd. The older R100 and R200 "ATIRadeon" driver for AmigaOS, originally developed Forefront Technologies has been acquired by A-EON Technology Ltd in 2015. In
7676-1230: The graphics and compute APIs support across ATI/AMD GPU microarchitectures. Note that a branding series might include older generation chips. 1.3 (GCN 4) Pixel pipelines : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units OpenGL 1.0 (Generic 2D) is provided through software implementations. Pixel pipelines : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units First number indicates cards with 32 MB of memory. Second number indicates cards with 64 MB of memory. First number indicates OEM cards. Second number indicates Retail cards. Pixel pipelines : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units 250 250 4.0 64 Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units Pixel shaders : Vertex shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units 17.28 256 350 (256 MB) 256 22.40 GDDR2 380 340 1520 1520 1520 380 256 21.76 256 Pixel shaders : Vertex Shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units The 256-bit version of
7777-450: The graphics and compute APIs support across ATI/AMD GPU microarchitectures. Note that this table include microarchitectures used in ATI products prior to Radeon, and a branding series might include older generation chips. 1.3 (GCN 4) The following table shows features of AMD / ATI 's GPUs (see also: List of AMD graphics processing units ). @165 HZ On 24 November 2015, AMD released
7878-581: The motherboard in a standard fashion. The term "dedicated" refers to the fact that graphics cards have RAM that is dedicated to the card's use, not to the fact that most dedicated GPUs are removable. Dedicated GPUs for portable computers are most commonly interfaced through a non-standard and often proprietary slot due to size and weight constraints. Such ports may still be considered PCIe or AGP in terms of their logical host interface, even if they are not physically interchangeable with their counterparts. Graphics cards with dedicated GPUs typically interface with
7979-481: The new HyperZ technology. The RV200 was a die-shrink of the former R100 with some core logic tweaks for clockspeed, introduced in 2002. The only release in this generation was the Radeon 7500, which introduced little in the way of new features but offered substantial performance improvements over its predecessors. ATI's second generation Radeon included a sophisticated pixel shader architecture. This chipset implemented Microsoft's pixel shader 1.4 specification for
8080-478: The new ' RDNA ' graphics micro-architecture, which is to succeed the Graphics Core Next micro-architecture. This is the basis for the Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards, the first to be built under the codename 'Navi'. These cards feature GDDR6 SGRAM and support for PCI Express 4.0 . On 5 March 2020, AMD publicly announced its plan to release a "refresh" of the RDNA micro-architecture. Dubbed as
8181-410: The number of core on-silicon processor units within the GPU chip that perform the core calculations, typically working in parallel with other SM/CUs on the GPU. GPU performance is typically measured in floating point operations per second ( FLOPS ); GPUs in the 2010s and 2020s typically deliver performance measured in teraflops (TFLOPS). This is an estimated performance measure, as other factors can affect
8282-445: The older drivers for users to download. ATI used to provide a preference panel for use in macOS called ATI Displays which can be used both with retail and OEM versions of its cards. Though it gives more control over advanced features of the graphics chipset, ATI Displays has limited functionality compared to Catalyst for Windows or Linux. The free and open-source for Direct Rendering Infrastructure has been under constant development by
8383-519: The one in the PlayStation 2 , which used a custom vector unit for hardware accelerated vertex processing (commonly referred to as VU0/VU1). The earliest incarnations of shader execution engines used in Xbox were not general purpose and could not execute arbitrary pixel code. Vertices and pixels were processed by different units which had their own resources, with pixel shaders having tighter constraints (because they execute at higher frequencies than vertices). Pixel shading engines were actually more akin to
8484-547: The past ATI provided hardware and technical documentation to the Haiku Project to produce drivers with full 2D and video in/out support on older Radeon chipsets (up to R500) for Haiku . A new Radeon HD driver was developed with the unofficial and indirect guidance of AMD open source engineers and currently exists in recent Haiku versions. The new Radeon HD driver supports native mode setting on R600 through Southern Islands GPU's. AMD (and its predecessor ATI) have released
8585-410: The performance of the card for real-time rendering, such as the size of the connector pathways in the semiconductor device fabrication , the clock signal frequency, and the number and size of various on-chip memory caches . Performance is also affected by the number of streaming multiprocessors (SM) for NVidia GPUs, or compute units (CU) for AMD GPUs, or Xe cores for Intel discrete GPUs, which describe
8686-527: The release of Radeon RG2133 Gamer Series Memory. List of AMD graphics processing units The headers in the table listed below describe the following: Due to conventions changing over time, some numerical definitions such as core config, core clock, performance and memory should not be compared one-to-one across generations. The following tables are for reference use only, and do not reflect actual performance. The following table shows features of AMD / ATI 's GPUs . @165 HZ The following table shows
8787-482: The same die (integrated circuit) with the CPU (like AMD APU or Intel HD Graphics ). On certain motherboards, AMD's IGPs can use dedicated sideport memory: a separate fixed block of high performance memory that is dedicated for use by the GPU. As of early 2007 computers with integrated graphics account for about 90% of all PC shipments. They are less costly to implement than dedicated graphics processing, but tend to be less capable. Historically, integrated processing
8888-415: The scan lines map to specific bitmapped or character modes and where the memory is stored (so there did not need to be a contiguous frame buffer). 6502 machine code subroutines could be triggered on scan lines by setting a bit on a display list instruction. ANTIC also supported smooth vertical and horizontal scrolling independent of the CPU. The NEC μPD7220 was the first implementation of
8989-486: The system and have a small dedicated memory cache, to make up for the high latency of the system RAM. Technologies within PCI Express make this possible. While these solutions are sometimes advertised as having as much as 768 MB of RAM, this refers to how much can be shared with the system memory. It is common to use a general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) as a modified form of stream processor (or
9090-728: The training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining . Arcade system boards have used specialized graphics circuits since the 1970s. In early video game hardware, RAM for frame buffers was expensive, so video chips composited data together as the display was being scanned out on the monitor. A specialized barrel shifter circuit helped the CPU animate the framebuffer graphics for various 1970s arcade video games from Midway and Taito , such as Gun Fight (1975), Sea Wolf (1976), and Space Invaders (1978). The Namco Galaxian arcade system in 1979 used specialized graphics hardware that supported RGB color , multi-colored sprites, and tilemap backgrounds. The Galaxian hardware
9191-471: Was capable of manipulating graphics hardware registers in sync with the video beam (e.g. for per-scanline palette switches, sprite multiplexing, and hardware windowing), or driving the blitter. In 1986, Texas Instruments released the TMS34010 , the first fully programmable graphics processor. It could run general-purpose code, but it had a graphics-oriented instruction set. During 1990–1992, this chip became
9292-504: Was considered unfit for 3D games or graphically intensive programs but could run less intensive programs such as Adobe Flash. Examples of such IGPs would be offerings from SiS and VIA circa 2004. However, modern integrated graphics processors such as AMD Accelerated Processing Unit and Intel Graphics Technology (HD, UHD, Iris, Iris Pro, Iris Plus, and Xe-LP ) can handle 2D graphics or low-stress 3D graphics. Since GPU computations are memory-intensive, integrated processing may compete with
9393-517: Was during this period of strong Microsoft influence over 3D standards that 3D accelerator cards moved beyond being simple rasterizers to become more powerful general purpose processors as support for hardware accelerated texture mapping, lighting, Z-buffering and compute created the modern GPU. During this period the same Microsoft team responsible for Direct3D and OpenGL driver standardization introduced their own Microsoft 3D chip design called Talisman . Details of this era are documented extensively in
9494-569: Was followed by the Maxwell line, manufactured on the same process. Nvidia's 28 nm chips were manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan using the 28 nm process. Compared to the 40 nm technology from the past, this manufacturing process allowed a 20 percent boost in performance while drawing less power. Virtual reality headsets have high system requirements; manufacturers recommended the GTX 970 and
9595-548: Was launched on 23 September 2009. It featured a 40 nm fabrication process for the entire product line (only the HD4770 (RV740) was built on this process previously), with more stream cores and compatibility with the next major version of the DirectX API, DirectX 11 , which launched on 22 October 2009 along with Microsoft Windows 7 . The Rxxx/RVxxx codename scheme was scrapped entirely. The initial launch consisted of only
9696-679: Was previously only known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to increase AMD's brand awareness on a global scale. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding. On 11 September 2015, AMD's GPU business was split into a separate unit known as Radeon Technologies Group, with Raja Koduri as Senior Vice President and chief architect. AMD does not distribute Radeon cards directly to consumers (though some exceptions can be found). Instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell
9797-502: Was revised to allow for higher frequencies, more efficient memory access, and several other improvements in the R350 family. A budget line of RV350 products was based on this refreshed design with some elements disabled or removed. Models using the new PCI Express interface were introduced in 2004. Using 110-nm and 130-nm manufacturing technologies under the X300 and X600 names, respectively,
9898-498: Was the Nintendo 64 's Reality Coprocessor , released in 1996. In 1997, Mitsubishi released the 3Dpro/2MP , a GPU capable of transformation and lighting, for workstations and Windows NT desktops; ATi used it for its FireGL 4000 graphics card , released in 1997. The term "GPU" was coined by Sony in reference to the 32-bit Sony GPU (designed by Toshiba ) in the PlayStation video game console, released in 1994. In
9999-464: Was the first product in the series to be released by AMD on 9 January 2012. The "Sea Islands" were OEM rebadges of the 7000 series, with only three products, code named Oland, available for general retail. The series, just like the "Southern Islands", used a mixture of VLIW5 models and GCN models for its desktop products. "Volcanic Islands" GPUs were introduced with the AMD Radeon RX 200 series, and were first released in late 2013. The Radeon RX 200 line
10100-426: Was the precursor to what is now called a compute shader (e.g. CUDA, OpenCL, DirectCompute) and actually abused the hardware to a degree by treating the data passed to algorithms as texture maps and executing algorithms by drawing a triangle or quad with an appropriate pixel shader. This entails some overheads since units like the scan converter are involved where they are not needed (nor are triangle manipulations even
10201-484: Was widely used during the golden age of arcade video games , by game companies such as Namco , Centuri , Gremlin , Irem , Konami , Midway, Nichibutsu , Sega , and Taito. The Atari 2600 in 1977 used a video shifter called the Television Interface Adaptor . Atari 8-bit computers (1979) had ANTIC , a video processor which interpreted instructions describing a " display list "—the way
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