ATI’s Radeon 9700 (R300) – Crowning the New King

The 3D Pipeline – R300 Style

The R300 does not change the way the 3D pipeline works at a high-level, but in order to meet the forthcoming DirectX 9 specifications, ATI had to introduce a number of improvements to the pipeline. The thing to remember here is that because both R300 and NV30 will be DirectX 9 compliant, they will both have very similar pipelines.

We have already explained how 3D rendering works in the past, but as a refresher we will walk you through each stage of the pipeline once again, but this time from the perspective of the R300 and how ATI does things with their latest chip. We’ll also draw comparisons to the GeForce4 and other competing solutions where appropriate.