Radeon 8500/8500 LE/9100 ATI's first R200-based card was the
Radeon 8500, launched in October 2001. In December 2001, ATI launched the
Radeon 8500 LE (re-released later as the
Radeon 9100), an identical chip with a lower clock speed and slower memory. Whereas the full 8500 was clocked at 275 MHz core and 275 MHz RAM, the 8500LE was clocked more conservatively at 250 MHz for the core and 200 or 250 MHz for the RAM. Both video cards were first released in 64
MB DDR SDRAM configurations; the later 128 MB Radeon 8500 boards received a small performance boost resulting from a memory
interleave mode. In November 2001 was the release of the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 DV, with 64 MB and a slower clock speed like the 8500 LE. In 2002, three 128 MB cards were rolled out, the Radeon 8500, 8500 LE, and the
All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 128 MB which was clocked at full 8500 speeds but had fewer video-related features than the AIW 8500 DV. ATI claimed that the lower clock speed for the 8500DV was due to the
FireWire interface.
Radeon 8500 XT (canceled) An updated chip, the
Radeon 8500 XT (R250) was planned for a mid-2002 release, to compete against the
GeForce4 Ti line, particularly the top line Ti4600 (which retailed for an MSRP of $350–399 USD). Prerelease information touted a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the "R250" chip. A Radeon 8500 running at 300 MHz clock speeds would have hardly defeated the GeForce4 Ti4600, let alone a newer card from NVIDIA. At best it could have been a better performing mid-range solution than the lower-complexity Radeon 9000 (RV250, see below), but it would also have cost more to produce and would have been poorly suited to the Radeon 9000's dual laptop/desktop roles due to die size and power draw. Notably, overclockers found that Radeon 8500 and Radeon 9000 could not reliably overclock to 300 MHz without additional voltage, so undoubtedly R250 would have had similar issues because of its greater complexity and equivalent manufacturing technology, and this would have resulted in poor chip yields, and thus, higher costs. ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to
3dfx when they took focus off their "Rampage" processor, abandoned the R250 refresh in favor of finishing off their next-generation
DirectX 9.0 card which was released as the Radeon 9700. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The new Radeon 9700 flagship, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh, and it easily took the performance crown from the Ti4600.
Radeon 9000 The
Radeon 9000 (RV250) was launched alongside the
Radeon 9700. This chip was a significant redesign of Radeon 8500 (R200) to reduce production cost and power consumption, as its low power usage made it suitable for mobile applications. Among hardware removed is one of the two
texture units, the "TruForm" function, Hierarchical-Z, the DirectX 7 TCL unit and one of the two vertex shaders. In games, the Radeon 9000 performs similarly to the
GeForce4 MX 440 (NV17). Its main advantage over the MX 440 was that it had a full
DirectX 8.1 vertex and pixel shader implementation. The 9000 succeeded the
Radeon 7500 (RV200) in the mainstream market segment, with the latter being moved to the budget segment. While the 9000 was not quite as fast as the 8500LE (R200) or the Nvidia GeForce3 Ti200 (NV20), the 8500LE and Ti200 were to be discontinued, though the 8500LE was reintroduced in late 2002 as the 9100 due to strong market demand.
Radeon 9200 A later revision of the 9000 was the
Radeon 9200 (RV280) released April 16, 2003, which aside from supporting
AGP 8X, was identical. There was also a cheaper version, the
9200SE, which had a 20% lower clock speed and only had a 64-bit
memory bus. Another board, called the
Radeon 9250 was launched in July 2004, being simply a slightly lower-clocked RV280. ==Laptop versions==