Although ATI had initially set their sights on a 200/200MHz core and memory clock speed, shipping boards are configured to run at 183/183MHz. A major drawback that all of the large manufacturers have encountered is a lack of high-speed memory availability. Fortunately, it seems as though ATI may have had better luck than NVIDIA in scoring fast DDR RAM. In addition, we've seen several boards running at 200/200 via a third party application. Expect to see the shipping Radeon boards to boast between 1.1GigaTexels per second (if you do the math) and 1.5GigaTexels per second fillrate (if you use their calculations utilizing their HyperZ technology), which they figure will bring it close to 8GigaBytes per second of bandwidth but we figure a bandwidth closer to 5GigaBytes per second.

In order to better focus the Radeon in the retail market, there have been three board configurations announced. At the top end of the spectrum, 64MB of DDR RAM will be used in conjunction with ATI's Rage Theater companion chip for video in/video out capabilities. The mainstream Radeon board will sport 32MB of DDR memory and the value card will feature 32MB of SDR memory. Those with digital flat panel displays will enjoy stunning quality via the integrated TMDS transmitter and an optional DVI connector.

Following Sharky Extreme custom, the Radeon board was scanned for heat issues with a Raytek ST-3 infrared thermometer. Despite having a higher transistor count than any other ASIC on the market, the Radeon’s PCB gets no hotter than 116.6F (47C). Compare that to the 160-degree VSA-100 and you’ll see why ATI claims that the fan on the chip is purely cosmetic. Thanks to a .18-micron process design, there is definite overclocking potential in the Radeon.