ATI Technologies 9550 - X Radeon 256MB Agp User manual

RADEON™9000 PRO MAC
EDITION
User’s Guide
P/N: 137-40360-00
Copyright © 2002, ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved.
ATI and all ATI product and product feature names are trademarks and/or
registered trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and/or
product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective
owners. Features, performance and specifications are subject to change without
notice. Product may not be exactly as shown in the diagrams.
Reproduction of this manual, or parts thereof, in any form, without the express
written permission of ATI Technologies Inc. is strictly prohibited.

ii
Disclaimer
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this
document, ATI Technologies Inc. assumes no liability with
respect to the operation or use of ATI hardware, software or
other products and documentation described herein, for any act
or omission of ATI concerning such products or this
documentation, for any interruption of service, loss or
interruption of business, loss of anticipatory profits, or for
punitive, incidental or consequential damages in connection
with the furnishing, performance, or use of the ATI hardware,
software, or other products and documentation provided herein.
ATI Technologies Inc. reserves the right to make changes
without further notice to a product or system described herein to
improve reliability, function or design. With respect to ATI
products which this document relates, ATI disclaims all express
or implied warranties regarding such products, including but not
limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for
a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

iii
Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What You'll Need......................................................................................... 2
Related Documentation............................................................................... 3
Multimedia Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Viewing 3D Graphics................................................................................... 5
ATI Displays Control Panel........................................................................ 7
3D Memory Monitor ................................................................................... 9
Using the 3D Memory Monitor.............................................................. 9
Display.................................................................................................. 10
Textures ................................................................................................ 10
Buffers .................................................................................................. 10
DVD............................................................................................................. 10
ATI Displays Preferences.......................................................................... 11
ATI HELP .................................................................................................. 11
Using QuickTime Playback ...................................................................... 12
Using Digital Flat Panel (DVI-I)............................................................... 13
Video Mode Table...................................................................................... 15
Supported 2D Modes............................................................................ 15
Digital Flat Panel.................................................................................. 16
Specifications.............................................................................................. 17
System Requirements ........................................................................... 17
Operating System ................................................................................. 17
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

1
Introduction
The RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION represents the next
generation in 3D and video acceleration for your Power
Macintosh computer. It includes 64MB of DDR memory for
fast 32-bit true color 3D graphics. Flexible dual-display support
for multiple combinations of CRT and Digital Flat Panel
monitors. Your new graphics accelerator provides:
• Flexible dual-display support enabling many combinations
utilizing the ADC (Apple Display Connector), VGA (using
a third party adapter), and DVI-I connectors.
• OpenGL®and QuickDraw 3D accelerator providing
superior 3D rendering performance and advanced imaging
and filtering techniques.
• QuickTime playback accelerator for full screen, full
motion, TV quality video.

2
What You'll Need
The RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION runs with the
following minimum system requirements:
• Any Power Macintosh computer with an AGP expansion
slot.
• Mac OS 9.2.1 or higher or Mac OS X version 10.1.3 or
higher.
• OpenGL 1.2.2 (required for some 3D graphics).
• Apple multi-frequency monitor, VGA-style monitor (see
note below),DVI-I style digital flat panel or Apple ADC
style digital flat panel.
• QuickTime 5.0 (earlier versions are NOT supported) or
higher.
• Minimum 64MB of system memory required for Mac OS
9.2.1.
• Minimum 128MB of system memory required for
Mac OS X version 10.x.
OpenGL 1.2.2 or higher is required to obtain full 3D graphics
functionality in Mac OS 9.2.1 applications. OpenGL 1.2.2 is
only available from Apple as part of Mac OS 9.2.1. or 9.2.2.
VGA monitors require a DVI-I-to-VGA adapter (included) to
connect to the RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION graphics
accelerator.
Future references to Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X in this manual
are intended to be generic and inclusive of their respective
versions of the Macintosh operating systems.
NOTE
NOTE
NOTE

3
Related Documentation
The README file summarizes the latest product revisions.
Click the README icon on the installation disk to open this
file.
Help is available in both Mac OS X and OS 9 by simply
clicking on the button in the ATI Displays control panel or
through the Apple Help Center. You can browse through the
Help or search for a specific topic.

4
Multimedia Features
Your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION turns your Mac
computer into a 3D and 2D graphics powerhouse. You can use
your new graphics accelerator card to do the following:
• Enjoy true-color 32-bit 2D or 3D graphics up to
2048x1536.
• Watch full screen, full motion, TV-quality video using
QuickTime playback acceleration.
• Output your Mac’s display to digital flat panels.
The following information describes these new features in more
detail and suggests ways you can optimize your machine to get
the most out of your new card.

5
Viewing 3D Graphics
RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION’s 3D Acceleration
features supports the following advanced 3D graphics
capabilities:
• OpenGL Support.
• QuickDraw 3D RAVE Support.
• Twin Cache Architecture.
• Single Pass Multi-texturing.
• Triangle Setup Engine.
• Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering.
• Line Anti-aliasing.
• Specular Highlights.
• Perspectively Correct Texture Mapping.
• Mip-Mapping.
• Z-buffering and Double-buffering.
• Spherical, Dual-Paraboloid, 3D Texturing and Cubic
environment mapping.
In addition, the RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION brings
new and exciting graphics technologies to the Macintosh
platform:
SMOOTHVISION™is an anti-aliasing solution that raises the
bar for image quality using programmable multi-sampling
methods to post-process graphics before they are displayed.
SMARTSHADER™(supported in Mac OS X only) is a new
technology which revolutionizes the graphics pipeline by
making both the geometry processing and pixel processing
stages more programmable than ever before. Developers can
easily create amazing new graphics effects while maintaining a
high level of performance.

6
HYPER Z™II makes Z-buffer bandwidth usage more efficient
by decreasing the amount of information sent to the frame
buffer.
CHARISMA ENGINE™II is a transform and lighting
technology which controls changing shapes and lighting while
maintaining fast 3D game performance.
PIXEL TAPESTRY™II uses six independent texture units per
rendering pipeline giving highly realistic and detailed 3D
graphics.
VIDEO IMMERSION™II incorporates MPEG-2 decoding,
adaptive de-interlacing, and frame rate conversion.
RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION only displays 3D
graphics in thousands and millions of colors. When you use 256
colors, there are too few colors to display complex 3D textures,
so 3D acceleration is not supported.
You can use the 3D Memory Monitor in the ATI Displays
control panel, in Mac OS 9 only, to see how memory on your
RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION is allocated when
displaying 3D graphics. This allows you to optimize 3D
performance.

7
ATI Displays Control Panel
The ATI Displays control panel provides access to the advanced
features that RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION has to offer.
To open the ATI Displays control panel using Mac OS X:
1 Click the Hard Disk icon.
2ClickApplications folder.
3ClickUtilities folder.
4ClickATI Utilities folder.
5 Double-click ATI Displays.
For detailed instructions on how to set up and use these features,
please refer to ATI Help, which can be accessed through the ATI
Displays control panel.
To open the ATI Displays control panel using Mac OS 9:
1ClickApple Menu.
2ClickControl Panels.
3ClickATI Displays.
or
1ClickATI Config Menu in the menu bar.
2ClickATI Displays.
ATI Displays for Mac OS 9

8
The Display Info dialog presents the current settings of your
monitor.
The Profile dialog presents information on the specific
RADEON graphics card and video driver installed in your
computer. Even if the ATI Displays cannot identify your ATI
product it will still provide display configuration, driver version
and other related information. A warning dialog will display if
no ATI product is installed in your computer.
The Support dialog provides an internet link to the ATI
Technologies’ website.

9
3D Memory Monitor
The 3D Memory Monitor, available in Mac OS 9 only, shows
how available memory in the accelerator card is allocated when
displaying 3D graphics.
Using the 3D Memory Monitor
When you open 3D graphics on your Mac OS computer, run the
3D Memory Monitor to see how your RADEON 9000 PRO
MAC EDITION has allocated 3D memory.
To open the 3D Memory Monitor
1 Choose Control Panels from the Apple Menu, or
choose ATI Displays from the ATI Config Menu and
skip to step 3.
2 Select ATI Displays.
3Click3D Memory icon.
The 3D Memory Monitor shows you how the video memory on
your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION is allocated
between display, textures, and buffers.

10
Display
The Screen bar indicates the amount of graphics memory is
allocated to the display’s resolution and color depth. The
Desktop Pattern bar indicates the amount of memory used by
your desktop pattern.
To reduce the memory allocated to Display memory:
• change the color depth from millions to thousands.
• decrease your screen resolution.
Textures
The Textu re bar indicates the number and size of texture maps
loaded by 3D applications to add realism to 3D models and
environments. The Bitmap bar indicates the memory allocated
to non-3D elements like 2D graphics. To reduce the memory
allocated to Texture memory, reduce the amount of textures in
your 3D graphics.
Buffers
The Back Buffer bar and the Z-buffer bar are directly related
to the size of the 3D window.
To reduce the memory allocated to Buffer memory:
• reduce the size of the display window containing
3D graphics.
• reduce the number of the display windows containing 3D
graphics.
DVD
Adaptive de-interlacing smooths moving images captured from
an interlaced source and may improve the quality of DVD
movies.

11
ATI Displays Preferences
From the ATI Displays drop down menu in Mac OS X only, you
can set the Preferences for the ATI Displays control panel. Here
you can configure how the ATI Displays control panel starts and
exits.
ATI HELP
ATI HELP is an additional source of information when you are
using the ATI Displays control panel. To access the ATI HELP,
click on the icon on the ATI Displays control panel.
Select a topic from the main ATI HELP window to get detailed
instructions for a specific task.

12
Using QuickTime Playback
The RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION’s QuickTime
playback acceleration allows you to stretch even the smallest
movies to full screen size without compromising frame rate or
image quality. RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION’s
hardware scaler maintains the original quality of your
QuickTime movie when scaling to a larger size – even full
screen.
When the monitor is set to display in grayscale (Mac OS 9
only), QuickTime movies are not accelerated, nor are they
converted to color. When playing movies in thousands or
millions of colors, the ATI card utilizes the 3D engine’s
capabilities to scale and accelerate playback. When scaling
video, the RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION uses special
hardware techniques (bilinear filtering) to enhance the video
quality instead of just repeating pixels.
To use RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION’s playback
acceleration, you must have QuickTime version 5.0 or higher
installed on your computer.
NOTE

13
Using Digital Flat Panel (DVI-I)
RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION’s DVI-I support feature
allows you to output your computer’s display to your DVI-I
digital flat panel, providing you with:
• Crisper, clearer images.
• A true flat screen.
• Virtually no eye strain from prolonged viewing.
Using RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION DVI-I
Connector
Your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION includes support
for DVI-I. You can use this feature to connect your RADEON
9000 PRO MAC EDITION to a digital flat panel display.
To output your computer’s display to a DVI-I digital flat
panel:
1 Ensure your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION is
installed correctly.
2 Looking at the back of your Mac, locate your RADEON
9000 PRO MAC EDITION.
3 Attach one end of your DVI-I cable to the DVI-I
connector on your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC
EDITION and the other end to the DVI-I connector on
your DVI-I flat panel.

14
4 Turn on your DVI-I flat panel and your Mac.
The DVI-I connector is hot swappable. You no longer need
to shut down your computer before attaching a digital flat
panel.
ADC Connector
DVI-I monitor
port
ADC monitor
port
DVI-I Connector
NOTE

15
Specifications
Video Mode Table
The video mode table below lists the color depth capabilities for
the supported resolutions on your RADEON 9000 PRO MAC
EDITION.
Please consult your monitor’s specifications to determine which
resolutions are available with your display.
Supported 2D Modes
The minimum refresh rate for the above modes is 60Hz.
Display
Resolution
Maximum
Refresh Hz
640 x 480 200
720 x 480 200
800 x 600 200
832 x 624 75
1024 x 768 200
1152 x 864 200
1152 x 870 75
1280 x 960 200
1280 x 1024 150
1600 x 900 150
1600 x 1024 150
1600 x 1200 120
1792 x 1344 75
1856 x 1392 75
1920 x 1080 120
1920 x 1200 100
1920 x 1440 90
2048 x 1152 100
2048 x 1280 100
2048 x 1536 85

16
Digital Flat Panel
Possible resolution and refresh rate
Maximum digital transmission frequency of the RADEON 9000
PRO MAC EDITION is a function of the receiver type in the
attached flat panel display. With some TMDS receivers the
frequency can be lower than the maximum 165MHz capability.
For more information please refer to the specifications of your
Digital Flat Panel display.
The RADEON 9000 PRO MAC EDITION has been used
successfully, without modification, set as high as 3840 x 2400
resolution at 15Hz on Digital Flat Panels that support this
resolution.
TMDS
Frequency Resolution Freq Hz
165MHz 1920 x 1200 60
140MHz 1600 x 1200 60
140MHz 1600 x 1024 60
125Mhz 1280 x 1024 60
NOTE

17
Specifications
System Requirements
• Power Macintosh computer with an AGP expansion slot.
Operating System
• Mac OS 9.2.1 or higher or Mac OS X version 10.1.3 or
higher.
• QuickTime version 5.0 or higher.
• Apple OpenGL 1.2.2 or higher.
Graphics Controller
• ATI RADEON 9000 PRO — graphics and multimedia
accelerator chip.
Video Display Buffer
• 64MB memory.
• 256-bit memory interface.
Bus
• AGP 2X and 4X.
Sync Signals
• Separate horizontal and vertical sync at TTL levels.
• Composite sync at TTL levels.
Video Memory Address
• Supports 64MB relocatable memory aperture.
Display Connector
• DVI-I connector.
ADC Connector.
VGA Monitors are supported using a DVI-I-to-VGA video
adapter.)
Video Interrupt
• PCI interrupt request enabled; interrupt is auto-configured
by system.