An Overview Of The Cards
Architecture
The Radeon 9000, like the Radeon 7500 and 9700, is a highly integrated chip that has two 400 MHz RAMDACs as well as complete circuitry necessary for TV-out. With the Radeon 8500, ATI integrated an addition Rage Theater chip, which reduces production costs and enables a simpler board design. ATI equips the reference card with two display outputs: a normal VGA-out and an additional DVI-I port, which allows you to connect a standard CRT monitor using an adapter (included).
According to ATI, an active cooler is not needed for either the fast 9000 PRO version or the standard version, and thus follows the trend of the "low-noise PC". However the real reason for this, once again, is due to cost considerations. A simple cooling unit is still much cheaper than a fan. Various ATI board partners, such as Hercules, PowerColor and Gigabyte, will certainly provide a cooling fan with their boards when they arrive on the market, at least with the PRO versions. Retail cards that come from ATI itself will only be available on the North American market.
DualView / Hydravision
The dual-display function from the Radeon 8500 has not changed. This allows for various possible combinations with a CRT monitor or TV-out. The maximum possible resolution of the TV-out is 1024x768. Hydravision is responsible for managing the desktop when in dual-display mode.
