25 Years Of Graphics History: A Farewell To ATI, In Pictures
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1985: The Founding
We want to commemorate the 10 years anniversary of the Radeon series with this little excursion into the past. We also want to pay our respects to ATI, whose name, following the acquisition by AMD and the launch of the Radeon HD 6000-series, is finally being removed from the market. After a quarter-century of ups and downs, hailed by fans and mocked by opponents, the end of the ATI brand marks the end of a company that has decisively influenced the history of graphics cards.
We would like to look back, once again, and mark the passage of years with ATI’s most important products. Of course, we can hardly imagine all of the company's products, so we're focusing on the desktop boards.
Let's begin in 1987...
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I guess it makes the whole fusion thing a little less confusing for those not in the know.
I like the retrospect. Brings back a lot of fond memories.
Ha brings back a few memory's i still have a ATI 9600 in my part stash, and my 4890s still perform grate in CF. But will miss having a ATI logo
my only ati card: 5850
my list of ati cards
7200 se
9600 pro
x800 xl
2x hd 2900xt
hd 4850
none of them failed
not a fanboy... just a fan of quality products
...i'll still mumble ati before reading radeon...
Time and tide wait for no man... Stronger survives
8mb Rage2
64mb 7200
128mb 9600
1gb 5850 (couple nvidia in between)
And HD5970 strill reign supreme as the macho alfa. HD6990, pronto.
Farewell ATI while you've been owned by AMD for sometime now it was always nice to at-least see the name. I'm a lucky one that can remember those earliest products. Sleep well old friend.
Interesting how ATI's probably biggest success against nVidia wasn't even mentioned - Radeon 9700 Pro. That card completely obliterated its GeForce FX 5800 competitor and was superior even to the GeForce FX 5900 successor! At least its 9800 Pro successor is there...
Good retrospective, but why no mention of the 9700 pro? That card helped start the GPU wars with Nvidia when it crushed the Geforce 4, it was the first to support DirectX 9, and it was the first card to require additional beyond the slot itself, something of which we now take for granted.
Good retrospective, but why no mention of the 9700 pro? That card helped start the GPU wars with Nvidia when it crushed the Geforce 4, it was the first to support DirectX 9, and it was the first card to require additional power beyond the slot itself, something of which we now take for granted.
9500 PRO - replaced a Creative Annihilator GeForce 2MX...
X800XT All-In-Wonder
X1950 PRO
HD 3870
HD 4870
HD 6870
ATI graphics CARDS me to is used. But feel ATI graphics CARDS or good.
"Of course, as we recently saw, the Radeon HD 6900-series cards followed up by making AMD's architecture more efficient. And the Radeon HD 6990 should be here soon to demonstrate what a dual-GPU version of the Cayman family can do."
Until then, the 5970 will still be the fastest graphics card on the planet!
How could you omit the original All-in-Wonder, the all-in-wonder pro, and the ATI graphics ultra pro EISA?
althrough I've only just got a ati card(3 months old) and have had no problems with the card compared to Nvidia cards I've had in the past T.T it's been performing (above &) beyond what I thought the little guy could do, not to mention it's giving my ( 3ghz triple-core) cpu a run for it's money !O.o! (meaning it's close to having my cpu be the bottleneck). anyway... Good bye ATI, I shall miss thee
First discrete card from ATI (and still using): HD4830. It sucks. Resolution problem. Driver issues.
Maybe AMD should have renamed itself ATI, and drop the AMD moniker instead. The Radeons have never been better, but AMD's CPU lineup is in many ways two generations behind Intel. If Bulldozer doesn't make some big waves soon, the AMD name might be MUD. Since their new Atom competitor's strongest feature is it's onboard graphics, it might well have made more sense to brand them with ATI. Just a thought from someone who was really into AMD with their Phenom/Athlon II introduction, and now feels like I'm using a slingshot compared to Sandy Bridge. While nVidia and ATI both had their respective issues, both have achieved a sort of parity in terms of performance and price, especially in the midrange. The same can't really be said of AMD's cpu portfolio. Maybe they've got the funk hidden away, waiting to unleash it on the world like the next super virus. Or maybe they don't have a clue. Only time will tell, but right now time is telling me Bulldozer can't come soon enough. AMD, if I'm wrong, feel free to tell me.
Had a 9500pro hacked to 9700 levels (128bit of course) It was better than the 9600pro that followed. Also the 850 bested the 6800 not the FX5800/5900 series. Those cards were beat by the 9700Pro and the 9800Pro. Still liked the Nvidia cards better due to driver issues with the ATI's I had.