RV370, Reference Board Examination
ATI RV370
RV370 is a 110nm DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2.0 part in 75 million transistors. 2 VS2.0-capable vertex units feed a rasteriser that creates output fragments for four PS2.0 pixel units. Each FP24 (internal precision) pixel unit has a vec3 ALU pair and a scaler ALU pair, along with a bilinear texture sampler. Output pixel fragments feed into four ROP units, each able to do two Z subsamples per cycle with three loops through. Programmable grids for the Z samples result in 6x multisample antialiasing (MSAA) using sparse sampled grids.
Made at TSMC and clocked at 350MHz, the RV370 powers both of ATI's current X300 SE HyperMemory parts. It's PCI Express natively and on the surface it's the consumate low-end DX9.0 performer.
Reference Board Examination
Passive cooling is the order of the day with the teeny weeny X300 SE HyperMemory. You can see two Samsung K4D263238G GDDR SDRAM devices, each 4x32M and rated to 350MHz (GC2A variant), poking out from underneath the right edge of the passive GPU heatsink. The half-height board is suitable for low-profile computer systems and small-form-factor chassis'.
The rear of the card is predictably bare. You don't need much power circuitry for a chip the size of RV370, with only two DRAM devices. Analogue VGA and S-Video output are the only connectivity options. It's been pointed out to me that a majority, not minority, of X300 SE HyperMemory boards sport a DVI port. GeForce 6200 TurboCache boards usually sport DVI and VGA ports, as well as S-Video out.
Awwww, isn't it cute? All red and ickle and small and awwwwwwwwww! Is performance as sweet?
Shoot me now.
