what's with Ati's naming of the 9100?

[nemesismk2]

First ATI release the Radeon 9000 which was slower than the old Radeon 8500. After confusing everyone with calling it the 9000 even when it was slower than the old Radeon 8500 they then decide to release the Radeon 9100. That would be ok if the Radeon 9100 was faster than the Radeon 8500 but once again ATI screws up it's own naming system because the Radeon 9100 is slower than the Radeon 8500.

Picture the scene, person trades in his Radeon 8500 for the new Radeon 9100 thinking it will be faster and finds out it's slower than his old video card.

 

[PG]

I thought that the 9100 = old 8500.
How can it be slower? Maybe the new 9100 is clocked slower than the old 8500 though, I'm not sure.

.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: PG
I thought that the 9100 = old 8500.
How can it be slower? Maybe the new 9100 is clocked slower than the old 8500 though, I'm not sure.

.

Checkout the benchmarks!

The only time a Radeon 9100 is faster than a Radeon 8500 is when it's overclocked.

 

[PliotronX]

I was also under the impression that the 9100=8500. I even flashed my 8500 to the 9100 (but went back after discovering artifacts at anything above ~285MHz memory when it's running fine at 308MHz with the .7008 8500 BIOS) and saw improvements in some areas, losses in others, but nothing drastically different akin to the 9000. Shoulda went with the 9500 man

 

[Rand]

The R9100 is an R8500 with a driver hack to allow some level of running shader programs through video streams, as the R9000 is capable of doing.
It's also clocked at 250/250 and as such it's incrementally slower then the Retail R8500.

I'm unsure of whether it utilized improved VS pipes of the 9000, but I'm inclined to doubt it.... with the exception of a driver level adjustment to allow for smoe degree of FullStream support it seems to be nothing more then an R200 core under a new name.

As for it being misleading... I agree, it's a poor name.
Unfortunately poor and misleading naming seems to be the standard ever since the GF4 MX was released inferior to the GF3.

 

[Killrose]

I don't kknow why they just won't clock it at 275/275 and make it a clear choice as to where it stands in the product line. They must have a very successfull cores per silicon wafer, i.e. profit, to keep this thing alive. Though, I think the 8500/9100 is a super product, and certainly proved Ati could build good drivers that do increase perfrormance.

 

[Sunner]

I must say I was confused when I saw a 9100 for sale as well, I knew the 9000 was slower than the 8500 but figured maybe the 9100 was to the 8500 what the 7500 was to the original Radeon.

ATi naming is even worse than nVidia's these days, at least nVidia's cards can be distinguished by the "Ti" or "MX".

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Sunner
I must say I was confused when I saw a 9100 for sale as well, I knew the 9000 was slower than the 8500 but figured maybe the 9100 was to the 8500 what the 7500 was to the original Radeon. ATi naming is even worse than nVidia's these days, at least nVidia's cards can be distinguished by the "Ti" or "MX".

Yeah, but you know who started it. I'd have to say that naming it the 9100 does go against ATI's naming convention, but (even though I don't personally like it) it actually has some logic to it, because the card is faster than the 9000, and maybe a couple of newbies will be helped. On the other hand, one of my friends who actually knows a lot about computers got a Mac with a GeForce4mx card and he thought that it was a latest generation crippled GeForce4. There's really no sense to naming a part that is 2 generations old but slightly speeded up along the lines of your latest products, but then again I guess gamers see the "mx" and run far far away.

 

[Sunner]

Yeah, but it's sad that ATi had to first embrace it, then at that make it worse.

I liked the old naming, from the 7500 and 8500, where the first number what the DirectX version, followed by it's rank in the performance chain.

Of course that would pretty much make the 9000 a 8200 and the 9100 would become a 8400, which might not sound very good in the ears of some customers, sad nevertheless.

 

[chizow]

Hmm I seem to rememer ATI beginning the deceptive naming conventions with their:

Rage LT

RagePro

Radeon LE

etc.

I think most people consider LE to stand for "Limited Edition"; I guess it did live up to its namesake by having such a short shelf-life.

Chiz

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Also keep in mind that there are some new Radeon 9100 cards that are clocked 250/200. Those won't be as good as 250/230 9100's, which are not as good as 250/250 8500's, which are not as good as 275/275 8500's which are not as good as...

The whole ATI naming situation is even worse than nVidia releasing a slightly updated GF2 as a GF4 MX. It would be nice to see ATI step up on this one, simplify the naming scheme, release what a list of which cards outperform what other cards and MOST IMPORTANTLY hold their 3rd party vendors to some sort of standards. There's so much junk floating around from Sapphire that's got 4th-rate RAM that can't get close to the performance of the actual ATI cards. It's a joke that one 9100 can so dramatically outperform another 9100 while both might get smoked by an 8500. You need a graduate-level course in video cards just to be able to buy anything from ATI without risking getting an overpriced, underperforming piece of junk. Suddenly a GF4 Ti4200 is sounding better and better.

 

[DClark]

"LE" never stood for "Limited Edition", it stood for "Light Edition" because it was slower than the regular versions. That's hardly deceptive. In late 2000/early 2001, many people on this board and other boards were getting the Radeon LE because it was just a Radeon 32mb DDR de-clocked to 150/150, and could usually clear 190/190 with overclocking. The success of the Radeon LE was the reason ATi created the Radeon 8500LE.

As for 8500 vs. 9000, when ATi went to numbering its products then did create a bit of confusion. The R200 was the 8th generation of graphics card, so it was given the 8xxx numbering. The R100 and RV100 were the 7th generation, so they were given 7xxx numbers. The RV200 was based on the R100 but shrunk from .18 micron to .15 micron, so they numbered it into the 7th generation of cards.

The R300 was the 9th generation of ATi core so it was given 9xxx numbers, and the RV250 was the budget version in that 9th generation. While the RV250 more closely resembles the R200, I think the changes to it (Fullstream support, different number of texture units per pipeline) made it more than just a rebadged R200, so it was given the 9000 number.

With the introduction of the Radeon 9000 (which the Radeon 8500 generally outperformed), ATi discontinued the Radeon 8500 series because the RV250 core is much cheaper to make than the R200 core, and it didn't want the Radeon 8500 cutting in on Radeon 9000 sales. ATi's partners most likely requested that ATi re-introduce the R200 because it was a good seller for them, so ATi added Fullstream and gave it the 9100 number to show its speed in relation to the 9000.

And while we're at it, "VE" stands for "Value Edition". No deception there either.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

Originally posted by: PG
I thought that the 9100 = old 8500.
How can it be slower? Maybe the new 9100 is clocked slower than the old 8500 though, I'm not sure.

.

Checkout the benchmarks!

The only time a Radeon 9100 is faster than a Radeon 8500 is when it's overclocked.

LOL, you post to benchmarks in an article without being able to read the article? (which, BTW, indicates that the 8500 is clocked at 275MHz while the 9100 is clocked at 250MHz).

Now, I don't argue that this is misleading, but ATI's clock frequencies of the 8500, 8500LE, 8500LELE, and now 9100 have always been confusing because the "powered by ATI" manufacturers have and will sell cards clocked to whatever frequency they deem fit.

 

[majewski9]

Wow anyone else confused about ATI's naming convention?

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: chizow
Hmm I seem to rememer ATI beginning the deceptive naming conventions with their: Rage LT RagePro Radeon LE etc. I think most people consider LE to stand for "Limited Edition"; I guess it did live up to its namesake by having such a short shelf-life. Chiz

Yeah, actually you're right. I remember trying to buy a Radeon card last year and I was so confused that it wasn't even funny. There's OEM, there's LE, there's a regular version, and they all could have different clock speeds, different memory, one of them didn't even have DVI and it was a retail 8500LE! At least with Nvidia you could buy the card retail or from a reseller and pretty much get the same specs from wherever you buy it - all you had to know was to stay away from the MX cards if you had any expectation to run a 3D game on your machine.

 

[Eug]

OK, I had a Radeon LE flashed to plain Radeon DDR until I fried it testing a motherboard.

So I bought a Radeon 9100 Sapphire (PC Partner).

I got the 64 MB version, and it is clocked 250/230 apparently. The 128 MB version is clocked 250/200.

I don't know how overclockable the RAM is. Mine uses 3.5 ns EtronTech RAM. THe 128 MB version uses 4 ns RAM, but I don't remember the brand.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: merlocka

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

Originally posted by: PG
I thought that the 9100 = old 8500.
How can it be slower? Maybe the new 9100 is clocked slower than the old 8500 though, I'm not sure.

.

Checkout the benchmarks!

The only time a Radeon 9100 is faster than a Radeon 8500 is when it's overclocked.

LOL, you post to benchmarks in an article without being able to read the article? (which, BTW, indicates that the 8500 is clocked at 275MHz while the 9100 is clocked at 250MHz).

Now, I don't argue that this is misleading, but ATI's clock frequencies of the 8500, 8500LE, 8500LELE, and now 9100 have always been confusing because the "powered by ATI" manufacturers have and will sell cards clocked to whatever frequency they deem fit.

Ok maybe I should of mentioned that the article was in German but graphs don't need any translation and anyway there are online translators available for the text.