ATi Radeon R300 Series

The R300 GPU, introduced in August 2002 and developed by ATI Technologies, is its third generation of GPU used in Radeon graphics cards. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding R200 design. R300 was the first fully Direct3D 9-capable consumer graphics chip. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs.

The first graphics cards using the R300 to be released were the Radeon 9700. It was the first time that ATI marketed its GPU as a Visual Processing Unit (VPU). R300 and its derivatives would form the basis for ATI's consumer and professional product lines for over 3 years.

The integrated graphics processor based upon R300 is the Xpress 200.

Development

ATI had held the lead for a while with the Radeon 8500 but NVIDIA retook the performance crown with the launch of the GeForce 4 Ti line. A new high-end refresh part, the 8500XT (R250) was supposedly in the works, ready to compete against NVIDIA's high-end offerings, particularly the top line Ti 4600. Pre-release information listed a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the R250 chip. ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx when they took focus off their Rampage processor, abandoned it in favor of finishing off their next-generation R300 card. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The R300, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh.

Radeon HD 7000 Series

The Radeon HD 7000 Series, based on "Southern Islands", is further products series in the family of Radeon GPUs developed by AMD. AMD builds Southern Islands series graphics chips based on the 28 nm manufacturing process at TSMC. The primary competitor of Southern Islands, Nvidia's GeForce 600 Series (also manufactured at TSMC), also shipped during Q1 2012, largely due to the immaturity of the 28 nm process.

Architecture

This article is about all products under the Radeon HD 7000 Series brand. Graphics Core Next was introduced with the Radeon HD 7000 Series.

Multi-monitor support

The AMD Eyefinity-branded on-die display controllers were introduced in September 2009 in the Radeon HD 5000 Series and have been present in all products since.

(131696) 2001 XT254

(131696) 2001 XT₂₅₄, provisionally known as 2001 XT254, is a Kuiper belt object (KBO) that has a 3:7 resonance with Neptune.

It will come to perihelion in January 2016.

Assuming a generic TNO albedo of 0.09, it is about 146 km in diameter.

Resonance

Simulations by Emel’yanenko and Kiseleva in 2007 show that (131696) 2001 XT₂₅₄ is librating in a 3:7 resonance with Neptune. This libration can be stable for less than 100 million to billions of years.

It has been observed 22 times over 4 oppositions.

See also

(95625) 2002 GX32 has a similar resonant behavior.

References

External links