RADEON™ 9800 PRO MAC EDITION User’s Guide P/N: 137-40566-10 Copyright © 2003, 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.
Disclaimer While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this document, ATI Technologies Inc.
Table of Contents Disclaimer.............................................................................i Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 What You'll Need......................................................................................... 2 Related Documentation............................................................................... 3 Multimedia Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Viewing 3D Graphics.................
Introduction The RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION represents the next generation in 3D and video acceleration for your Power Macintosh® computer. It includes 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 VGA, and DVI connectors for analog and digital displays.
What You'll Need The RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION runs with the following minimum system requirements: • Any Power Macintosh® computer with an AGP 4x/2x expansion slot. • Mac OS X version 10.2.5 or higher. • VGA-style monitor (see note below), DVI style digital flat panel, Apple® ADC style digital flat panel (using a third party powered adapter) or Apple® multi-frequency monitor. • QuickTime® 6 or higher. • Minimum 128MB of system memory required for Mac OS X version 10.x.
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 by 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.
Multimedia Features Your RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION turns your Mac computer into a 3D and 2D graphics powerhouse. You can use your new graphics accelerator card to: • Enjoy true-color 32-bit 2D or 3D graphics up to 2048 x 1536. • Watch full screen, full motion, DVD quality video using the Apple® DVD Player or QuickTime® playback acceleration. • Output your Mac’s display to digital flat panels and digital projectors. • Output your Mac’s display to a TV.
Viewing 3D Graphics RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION’s 3D Acceleration features supports the following advanced 3D graphics capabilities: • 8 Pipeline architecture. • 256 bit memory interface. • 4 parallel vertex pipelines. • 128 bit floating point shader pipelines. • 350 million triangles per second transform rate. • Single Pass multi-texturing for up to 16 textures. • Full Scene Antialiasing (gamma corrected, up to 6x, SuperSampling or Multi-Sampling).
ATI Displays Control Panel The ATI Displays control panel provides access to the advanced features that RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION has to offer. To open the ATI Displays control panel using Mac OS X: 1 Open the Apple® System Preferences. 2 Click or 1 Click the Hard Disk icon. 2 Click Applications folder. 3 Click Utilities folder. 4 Click ATI Utilities folder. 5 Double-click ATI Displays.
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 specific ATI Technologies’ web pages such as product information, warranty registration, and FAQs.
Using Mac2TV™ Video Out The RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION’s Mac2TV Video Out feature allows you to output your computer’s display to your TV or VCR. Anything you can display on your monitor can be output to TV. • View computer output directly on your television with advanced flicker reduction and artifact suppression. • Connect using Composite or S-Video output capabilities. • RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION provides a bigscreen experience for playing games, giving presentations, and browsing the Internet.
5 If your are using S-Video connection to the TV/VCR, attach one end of an S-Video cable to the S-Video Out connection of the RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION and the other end to the S-Video In connector of your TV/VCR. If you are using Composite, connect the supplied Video Out Adapter to the S-Video connector of the RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION. Then attach one end of your Composite cable to the Composite connector and the other end to the Composite In of your TV/VCR (see diagram above).
Enabling Mac2TV Open the ATI Displays control panel. The TV Set-up dialog will open automatically on the TV. (This default can be changed in the ATI Displays Preferences. For more information see “ATI Displays Preferences” on page 14). Set Up Tab Video Output shows whether a TV or VCR has been detected. Select Always Connected to over-ride this feature and force TV detection. Video Output will display Device Detected (Off) or Device Detected (On) depending on whether TV mode is selected.
Detect Video Device allows you detect a TV or VCR without restarting your computer. This option is only present when no TV is detected Turn Video On/Off button allows you to enable or disable TV output without using Apple®’s Displays panel. This option only appears when running a merged mode list or you have two displays plus TV connected. Your display will momentarily go blank when enabling/ disabling any of the above features.
Anti-Flicker reduces the amount of display flicker. Display flicker is both a distraction and tiring to your eyes, and is most pronounced when text is being displayed. Brightness is related to the amount of light emitted by your display or reflected from an object. Contrast is a ratio of how far the whitest whites are from the blackest blacks. If the contrast is too high, the image may look stark, like pure white squares on a jet-black background.
The Ratio/Size tab allows you to adjust the Aspect Ratio and change the display size and position. Aspect Ratio allows you to select between a fully adjustable display or one locked to a specific aspect ratio. 4:3 Standard, 16.9 Widescreen, and Current screen resolution are all fixed modes. Overscan increases the vertical and horizontal size to fill your TV. Movie Mode gives you the best results viewing TV or DVDs. Display Position allows you to move the TV/VCR image on your display.
Viewing Text on Television Due to the different technology used in the manufacturing of televisions and monitors, standard text may look too small on your television. You can compensate for this by using larger fonts. To change your font size 1 2 3 4 Click the Apple® menu. Select System Preferences. Select General. Choose a larger font size. ATI Displays Preferences From the ATI Displays drop down menu you can set the Preferences for the ATI Displays control panel.
ADVANCED DISPLAY OPTIONS Advanced adds even more functionality, giving you complete control over your display. To access the Advanced feature open the ATI Displays control panel and click the ADVANCED button. VERSAVISION™ Tab VERSAVISION allows you to rotate your display while maintaining the full feature set of other ATI 2D and 3D technologies.
Display Control Tab Force Single Display Operation, when using a dual display video card, causes all display modes to appear as a single list of supported resolutions in the Apple® Displays Properties. Only one display is on when this feature is enabled. The default setting is Disabled. Enable GTF Modes for CRT provides a list of all available modes for your monitor based on the Generalized Timing Formula standard. This feature is enabled by default.
Advanced DFP Tab The features on this tab are intended to support Digital Flat Panels (DFP) only. Enable ATI Hardware Scaler on non-Apple panels can be used with flat panels with fixed resolutions. Enabled, this feature allows you to change video modes using the ATI Scaler. Enable frequency reduction on high resolution displays allows higher resolution displays to be supported. (This feature is not required for the RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION.
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. Using DVD and QuickTime® Playback The RADEON 9800 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.
Using Digital Flat Panel (DVI) RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION’s DVI support feature allows you to output your computer’s display to your DVI digital flat panel, providing you with: • Crisper, clearer images. • A true flat screen. • Virtually no eye strain from prolonged viewing. Using RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION DVI Connector Your RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION includes support for DVI allowing you to connect to a digital flat panel display.
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Specifications Video Mode Table The video mode table below lists the color depth capabilities for the supported resolutions on your RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION. Please consult your monitor’s specifications to determine which resolutions are available with your display.
Digital Flat Panel Digital Display Mode (at any Bit Depth) 1920 x 1200* *Using a reduced blanking interval compatible with Apple®’s Cinema HD ADC Display. This timing is not compatible with VESA’s 1920 x 1200. The RADEON 9800 PRO MAC EDITION has been used successfully, without modification, set as high as 3840 x 2400 at 15Hz on Digital Flat Panels that support this resolution.
Specifications System Requirements • Power Macintosh® computer with an AGP expansion slot. Operating System • Mac® OS X version 10.2.5 or higher. Graphics Controller • ATI RADEON 9800 PRO — graphics and multimedia accelerator chip. Video Display Buffer • 128MB 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 128MB relocatable memory aperture.
Power • +5V ± 5 %, @ 1.3A typical. Environment • Ambient Temperature: 50° to 122° F (10° to 50° C) operation. 32° to 162° F (0° to 70° C) storage. • Relative Humidity: 5% to 90% non-condensing operation, 0% to 95% storage. MTBF • 120,000 hours. EMC Certification • FCC Class B. Safety • 24 PCB made from UL-listed flame retardant material.
Glossary Alpha blending When an image has an alpha value for each pixel, this tells how much to blend the colors from the image with the background colors. The lower the alpha values the more transparent the image looks. Anti-aliasing Method used to remove the jagginess of an image. When anti-aliasing is used, the edges of an image appear smooth and usually somewhat blurry. Anisotropic Filtering This filtering technique uses a rectangular filtering pattern to render smoother, crisper images.
Bitmap A bitmap is a graphics or character representation composed of individual pixels, arranged horizontally in rows. A monochrome bitmap uses one bit per pixel (bpp). Color bitmaps may use up to 32-bpp, depending on the number of colors desired. Buffers Your ATI accelerator card includes on-board memory which is used in a number of ways. Buffers are portions of this memory used as temporary storage on your card.
Pixel, Pel Picture element. Smallest addressable area of the computer screen. Pixels on computer displays are square; pixels on NTSC televisions have a 4:3 aspect ratio. Refresh Rate Also referred to as “vertical refresh rate”. The rate at which a monitor or television can redraw the screen from top to bottom. NTSC television systems have a refresh rate of approximately 60 Hz (but only draw onehalf of the video frame in one pass); computer displays typically have refresh rates of 75 Hz or more.
Index specifications Numerics 3D Graphics supported features 5 A Apple Displays using VGA adapter 2 ATI Guide accessing 18 description 18 G Graphic Card features 4 requirements 2, 23 specifications 23 M Monitor Resolution 2D video mode table Q QuickDraw 3D supported features 5 QuickTime requirements 23 S Software ATI Guide 18 requirements 2, 23 V Video Card features 4 requirements Page 28 2, 23 21 23
