HIS Excalibur ATI RADEON 7500LE

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.

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.