This is the first time we've seen ATI quickly turn their fastest desktop accelerator around and into a multi-media powerhouse. By coupling the RADEON GPU with 32MB of DDR memory clocked at 166/166MHz, 3D performance is similar to a 32MB retail RADEON board (and only $20 more expensive, after the rebate).

Of course, the All-In-Wonder RADEON offers the same 3D feature set as the 64MB card we previewed last month. Essentially, there are two pipelines, each outfitted with three texture units. A quick bit of math gives this card a 333Mpixel/1Gtexel fillrate compared to the 800Mpixel/1.6Gtexel fillrate of the GeForce2 GTS.

In addition, all of the components of ATI's Charisma Engine and Pixel Tapestry have carried over to the All-In-Wonder. For those who've been in cryogenic refrigeration for the past six months, we'll briefly touch on the features that encompass ATI's newest technologies. Or you can take a gander at our full-blown articles right here and here.

The Charisma Engine is a fancy term for the performance attributes of the RADEON. Originally spec'ed to process 30 million triangles a second, that number has dropped closer to 25 million after a core frequency decrease, and you can't forget those triangles all have to share vertices! Additionally, T&L support has been implemented, and up to eight hardware lights are fully accelerated through OpenGL. In order to make the RADEON stand out from the current competition, other features, such as keyframe interpolation and four-matrix vertex skinning, have been accelerated in hardware.

ATI's Pixel Tapestry is a little more intricate, and incorporates the hardware responsible for "beautifying" a 3D scene. We're now able to turn off all of the details in today's most advanced games and obtain close to 200fps, so why not focus on realism? In an attempt to do just that, the RADEON supports all three types of bump mapping (EMBM, DOT3 and emboss), 3D textures, environment mapping (spherical, dual-paraboloid, and cubic), priority buffers, and range-based fog, all of which are thoroughly explained in our ATI Next Gen: Explored article.

Expect to see many of the above features exposed in retail software some time after DirectX 8.0 is released and stable.