Lets Users Combine Onboard and Discrete Graphics
Its archrival Nvidia has built a healthy business making motherboard chipsets for AMD systems, and ATI Technologies Inc. is moving to do the same for Intel desktops. The graphics giant has introduced the Radeon 9100 Pro IGP, a high-performance platform with integrated DirectX 8.1 and programmable-pixel-shader graphics for Pentium 4 and Celeron processors.
In addition to its own graphics engine — supporting up to 2,048 by 1,536 resolution in 32-bit color, with anisotropic texture filtering, full-screen antialiasing, hardware MPEG-2 decoding, and ATI’s FullStream video deblocking — the Radeon 9100 Pro IGP includes an AGP 3.0 interface with SurroundView, which lets users combine integrated and discrete graphics for immersive multimonitor viewing.
The chipset supports Intel’s present and future 800MHz-bus Hyper-Threading CPUs, Serial ATA, RAID, 3Com Ethernet, up to eight USB 2.0 ports, and a dual-channel DDR400 memory controller. Entry-level system builders can opt for a more economical Radeon 9000 Pro IGP with a single memory channel. ATI’s platform customers include Gigabyte, MSI, Shuttle, FIC, and Soyo.