ATI has been at the forefront of the push towards higher graphics standards, being the first video card company to use DirectX 8.1 graphics with the Radeon 8500, the first to DirectX 9.0 with the Radeon 9700 Pro and the first to DirectX 10.1 graphics with the Radeon HD3xxx series of cards released late last year. ATI launched three chips with the HD3xxx series launch, the 3870, the 3650 and the 3450 series.
Diamond Multimedia has been a name synonymous with discrete graphics cards since the early 1990s with the launch of the 3dfx Voodoo series card, the Monster 3D. Diamond went out of business in 2000 shortly after the acquisition of S3 but has come back building ATI based cards with a vengeance. Today’s card on the hot plate is the Diamond HD3650 1GB video card.
