ATI Technologies RADEON 8500 MAC EDITION User manual

RADEON™8500 MAC EDITION
User’s Guide
Version 1.0 - February 2002
P/N: 137-40315-10
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.

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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.

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Introduction
The RADEON 8500 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 monitors, TVs and video
devices is included. Your new graphics accelerator provides:
• Flexible dual-display support enabling many combinations
utilizing the VGA, DVI-I, and TV 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
• DVI-I support for digital flat panels
• TV-Out support via S-Video connector
The ATI Config Menu (available only for Mac OS 9.2.1), is
located on the Apple menu bar. This provides instant access to
Help, the ATI Displays control panel, and all of RADEON 8500
MAC EDITION features.
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What You'll Need
The RADEON 8500 MAC EDITION runs with the following
minimum system requirements:
• Any Power Macintosh computer with an AGP expansion
slot
• Mac OS 9.2.1 or Mac OS X version 10.1 or higher
• OpenGL 1.2.2 (required for 3D graphics)
• Apple multi-frequency monitor, VGA-style monitor (see
note below),DVI-I style digital flat panel, or TV
• 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 10.1
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.
Apple branded digital flat panels with an ADC connector must
use a third party adapter.
Apple analog monitors without a VGA connector must use a
the supplied adapter to connect to the RADEON 8500 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

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Related Documentation
The README file summarizes the latest product revisions.
Click the README icon on the installation disk to open this
file.
The RADEON 8500 MAC EDITION comes with ATI Guide
for Mac OS 9, which provides on-line help for making the best
use of your card’s features. There are two methods of accessing
the ATI Guide. From the Mac OS menu bar under the ATI icon
choose ATI Guide. From the ATI Displays control panel, you
can access the ATI Guide by clicking on the Apple Guide
icon. RADEON Help can be found in the Apple Help menu.
Help is available in Mac OS X 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.

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Multimedia Features
Your RADEON 8500 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 a digital flat panel
• Output your Mac’s display to your TV
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.
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Viewing 3D Graphics
RADEON 8500 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 8500 MAC EDITION brings new
and exciting graphics technologies to the Macintosh platform:
TRUFORM™is a rendering technology that pre-processes 3D
artwork being fed into the graphics accelerator by converting it
from flat triangle data into curved surface data, allowing much
more highly detailed and realistically lit images with virtually
no performance loss.
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.
HYPER Z™II makes Z-buffer bandwidth usage more efficient by
decreasing the amount of information sent to the frame buffer.

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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.
These features make it possible to quickly render 3D graphics,
produce atmospheric effects, calculate light and color shading,
and determine which objects are in the foreground and which
are in the background.
RADEON 8500 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 to see how memory on your RADEON 8500 MAC
EDITION is allocated when displaying 3D graphics. This allows
you to optimize 3D performance.
The 3D Memory Monitor is only supported in Mac OS 9.
NOTE

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ATI Displays Control Panel For Mac OS 9
The ATI Displays control panel provides access to the advanced
features that RADEON 8500 MAC EDITION has to offer. To
open the ATI Displays control panel, choose Control Panels
from the Apple menu, then choose ATI Displays, or choose ATI
Displays from the ATI Config Menu from the menu bar.
For detailed instructions on how to set up and use these features,
please refer to the ATI Guide/ATI Help, which can be accessed
through the ATI Displays control panel.
Status Area
Look in the Status Area to determine your current monitor,
screen resolution, and color depth. To change display settings
use the Monitors feature to open the Monitors control panel.
You can also change the monitor depth and resolutions at any
time using the Apple control strip, if installed.