Video Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Review :: Advanced Features

VISUAL PROCESSING UNIT (VPU)

The RADEON. 9700 PRO visual processing unit (VPU) is supposed to be the foundation of visual processing for at least a generation or two. Featuring a fully programmable floating-point pipeline, floating point precision is needed to run the physics equations in the VPU.

This gives the VPU the raw performance to allow real-time effects to become more effective. The VPU can produce, in real-time, imagery that previously could only previously have been viewed after off-line rendering. Now there is a single device that integrates graphics, video and image all in one solution.

AGP 8X

The RADEON. 9700 PRO visual processing unit supports is one of the first cards to take advantage of the new AGP 8X standard. 8X AGP technology is a factor that allows large volumes of texture and vertex data to be transferred faster from system memory to the VPU chip. The AGP bus is the link that provides the crucial high-bandwidth link between the graphics card and the rest of your system, It carries a variety of different types of data bandwidth, including 3D models, textures, shade effects, drawing commands, and yes steaming video.

AGP 1X - 0.25 GB/sec
AGP 2X - 0.5 GB/sec
AGP 4X - 1.0 GB/sec
AGP 8X - 2.0 GB/sec

HYPER Z. III

HYPER Z. III is the third generation of ATI's, bandwidth enhancing HYPER Z technology, which plays a pivotal role in allowing the RADEON 9700 PRO to reach unprecedented levels of rendering performance. Incorporating the improvements of all three components of HYPER Z technology including Hierarchical Z, Early Z, Z Compression, and Fast Z Clear.

This becomes increasingly more apparent as you increase the resolution of the card and HYPER Z could effectively be called an overdrive unit as the more you need bandwidth the better it performs. This is one of the major factors that makes the RADEON 9700 pull ahead of its rival cards when running games and tests at 1280X1024 and higher. The goal of HYPER Z. technology is to reduce the memory bandwidth consumed by the Z-Buffer, thereby increasing performance at higher resolutions.

VERTEX PROCESSING ENGINE

Every 3D scene is composed of interlocking groups of triangles that make up all of the visible surfaces. By performing mathematical operations on the vertices at the corners of each triangle, the vertex-processing engine can place, orient, animate, color, and light every object and surface that needs to be drawn.

Featuring a highly optimized triangle setup engine, the RADEON. 9700 PRO is the first chip capable of processing one vertex and one triangle per clock cycle. This the most powerful vertex-processing engine ever designed, incorporating four parallel vertex shader pipelines equivalent to cinema quality graphics.

FULL SCENE ANTI-ALIASING (FSAA)

Full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) is a visual sampling technique that creates more detailed and realistic looking images. This technique is achieved by removing the jagged effect you see on the edges of some computer-generated images. This makes the images appear cleaner and with better defined edges. High quality anti-aliased graphics are achieved with sub-pixel edge detection and color compression for greatly improved performance with better overall visual quality. The RADEON 9700 is capable of working in either 2x/4x/6x AA mode.

SMARTSHADER 2.0

SMARTSHADER 2.0, ATI's second generation of programmable vertex and pixel shader technology is designed to be much more powerful and flexible than the first generation shader technology. Being the first to fully support Microsoft's Direct X 9.0 and the latest OpenGL functionality, SMARTSHADER 2.0 gives game developers the freedom to create more complicated and realistic visual effects than ever before. SMARTSHADER 2.0 adds the ability to accelerate the very latest 2.0 Vertex and 2.0 Pixel Shaders that are incorporated into a growing list of 3D game titles.

SMOOTHVISION 2.0

SMOOTHVISION. 2.0 adds additional versatility on ATI's original SMOOTHVISION technology, which was the first to provide programmable anti-aliasing modes and high performance anisotropic filtering. This new version introduced in the RADEON. 9700 PRO VPU provides massive improvements in anti-aliasing performance, while simultaneously producing superior image quality.

It also provides a new high quality anisotropic filtering technique to provide the sharpest and clearest textures available without sacrificing frame rates. SMOOTHVISION. 2.0 works with any 3D application (Direct3D and OpenGL). It can be controlled either through the Display Properties Control Panel in Windows operating systems or through individual application.

Above you can see the SMOOTHVISION 2.0 anisotropic filtering (quality mode) in action. The surface is on a steep angle and the texture consists of the letters of the alphabet. Note how it becomes easier to make out fine details as the level of anisotropic filtering is increased.

VIDEOSHADER

With the 9700 ATI introduces VIDEOSHADER, a new technology that combines the power of a programmable pixel shader technology that combined with video unlocks a wide array of applications that were never practical before. One example of an application for VIDEOSHADER technology is streaming video de-blocking.

Most streaming Internet video exhibits blocky compression artifacts, which are especially noticeable on low bandwidth connections. The RADEON. 9700 PRO can automatically filter out these artifacts, providing smoother, clearer video images. Programmable pixel shaders can be used to enhance the quality of TV and DVD playback as well. This technology also presents interesting new possibilities for video editing. Image filtering effects such as blurring, embossing, and outlining can be applied to video streams in real time.

FULLSTREAM

FULLSTREAM is aimed at being the industry leading video processing technology. FULLSTREAM is an ATI invented hardware accelerated filtering method that improves the performance and visual quality of Internet streaming video playback. When traditional block based videos (e.g. MPEG) are encoded and delivered with insufficient bandwidth, they suffer from inherent blocky artifacts.

To remove this blocky look during playback, FULLSTREAM intelligently detects the edges of these visible blocks and smoothes them over using a sophisticated multi-tap filtering technique. FULLSTREAM technology improves both subjective and objective qualities of Internet video playback. The result is smoother higher quality video content and a more enjoyable viewing experience.