HIS Excalibur ATI RADEON 7500LE

HIS Excalibur ATI RADEON 7500LE
Manufactured by: HIS Provided By : AKA Technology
Price : ~AU$200
Reviewed by:
Date : May 09th 2002

Introduction

It didn't dawn on me until I started writing this review that, we here at Technoyard haven't had much opportunity in reviewing stuff from ATI. It's kind of weird only reviewing NVIDIA products. I have been an ardent fan of ATI from the time I owned one of their Rage 128 All in wonder cards. ATI just seemed to offer everything currently highly sort after in the market at fraction of the cost of its competition; namely NVIDIA. Currently the only competitors in the graphics industry are ATI and NVIDIA, and as such the competition if very fierce. While NVIDIA relies on pure brute force, ATI has adopted a strategy of more optimized algorithms to generate high performance.

These optimizations have allowed ATI graphics cards to perform almost equivalent and sometimes faster than NVIDIA based GPU's. The best part is that ATI cards are considerably cheaper to its competition as well. Similar to OEM manufactures of NVIDIA GPUs we recently came across Hightech Information Systems (HIS) in Hong Kong who produces quality OEM ATI graphics cards. AKA Technology here in Australia are their distributor and thanks to them, today we bring to you the HIS ATI Radeon 7500 LE card.

In addition to its really cheap price, one of the main highlights of this card is that it also includes a Analog Monitor-15-PIN VGA connector, a S-Video TV Out and a Digital Flat Panel - DVI-I connector as well. Before we go onto more detail on the card, lets take a look at the specs of the card.

Auriga ATI RADEON^TM 7500/7500LE

Powered by the revolutionary RADEON™ 7500 CPU (RV200)
High-performance 3D graphics featuring ATI's CHARISMA™ ENGINE, PIXEL TAPESTRY™ and HYPER Z™ technology
Supports DirectX 8.0 and OpenGL
Features DVI interface with integrated TMDS for resolutions up to 1600 x 1200
Industry-leading DVD video playback
Supports 3D resolutions (32-bit color) up to 2048 x 1536
AGP universal bus (for AGP 2X/4X systems)
Memory type, Memory and Core Clock of 7500LE: SDR SDRAM, 166MHz Memory Clock & 250MHz Core Clock.

FEATURES HIGHLIGHT

Featuring CHARISMA ENGIN™ for cutting edge character animation features
PIXEL TAPESTRY™ supports advanced multi-texturing and new 3D effects with eye-popping photorealistic impact and smooth frame rates
Dual Independent Display Support
DVI-ready for the digital flat panel revolution
Supports up to 230MHz DDR memory
HYPER Z™ technology to boost effective memory bandwidth by more than 20% (8.8 GB/sec)

SPECIFICATIONS

Graphics Comtroller ATI RADEON™ 7500 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
270MHz core clock

Bus Interface AGP 4X / 2X

Memory Configurations 64MB DDR SDRAM memory with 230MHz memory clock

Monitor Support Analog Monitor-15-PIN VGA connector
TV Out - S-VIDEO
Digital Flat Panel - DVI-I

Display Support BIOS compatible with VESA for super VGA
DDC 1 / 2B / 2B+ monitor support
VESA Display Power Management Support

Operating System Supports WINDOWS 98 SE
WINDOWS ME
WINDOWS 2000
WINDOWS XP

System Requirements PENTIUM?/III/II/CELERON, AMD K6? ATHLON OR COMPATIBLE with AGP 2X or AGP 2X/4X slot
64MB of system memory
INSTALLATION SOFTWARE REQUIRES CD-ROM DRIVE

Some of the features listed here may be new to some readers, so I have taken a few extracts from the ATI website.

Charisma Engine:

The Charisma Engine takes 3D characters and environments to the next level of realism. It can perform complex transformation, clipping, and lighting calculations faster than any CPU or 3D graphics chip on the market. It also adds innovative and useful new features such as 4-matrix vertex skinning and keyframe interpolation that give game developers more freedom and flexibility than ever before.

HYDRAVISION™:

This is ATI's solution to dual monitor support.

Multi-monitor Management Software enables you to tailor your desktop to the way you work, so you can manage increased amounts of information and improve your productivity. Your productivity is increased thanks to two aspects HYDRAVISION™:
1. Breadth - increase your desktop work space by using up to two monitors
2. Depth - create multiple layers of desktop workspace with Multi-Desk

HyperZ™ Technology :

ATI have adopted a very neat way to solve the problem of limited memory bandwidth. With HyperZ Technology enabled it gives these cards upto a 20% increase in memory bandwidth, and thus increasing the memory transfer rate from 7.4GB/s to 8.8GB/sec. Now isn't that cool or what?

PIXEL TAPESTRY™ architecture:

ATI's next-generation graphics products will utilize the most advanced and flexible texturing system available. Pixel Tapestry is the first and only graphics architecture to include three independent texture units in each rendering pipeline. This unique architecture opens up a whole range of new possibilities for making 3D surfaces look more realistic and detailed than ever before.

I'm sure most corporate users will be very interested in the fact that this card also comes equipped with a DVI-connector, so all you need to do is hook that LCD monitor on to the card and instantly you have turned your desktop into a very efficient office.

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