FROM THE FIRST moment ATI introduced its 9X00 generation of cards we were a bit confused. We couldn't work out whether ATI had changed its naming logic or not. To remind you, last year ATI decided to change the name of all cards depending on model and the version of DirectX supported. So, cards that were DirectX 7 compatible such as the original Radeon and its derivates where named Radeon 7x00 [the 'x' represents a number that varies from 0, 2, 5 or even 7]. Radeons that have support for DirectX 8.1 and all its features were named 8500 where first digit represented DX 8 support.
This year's Radeon's 9000 and 9700 should have support for DirectX 9 since their name starts with a 9, but this time ATI has changed its mind. For the high-end Radeon 9700 part, we can surely say that it has full support for DirectX 9 but Radeon 9000 and 9000 PRO have support for DirectX 8.1 only.
This leads us to wonder what standard of naming it's cards ATI actually chose this time around. Its clear that with the 9000 generation, the first digit is not assigned to DirectX support and we are waiting for some explanation from ATI at this time. Since 9000 is a bigger number than 8500 everyone expects that 9000 and 9000 PROs to be faster than 8500 and 8500 LEs but this is not the case! Beware of this marketing trick. Although we should add that Radeon 9000 is good mainstream part -- one of the few that can give you DirectX 8.1 support for about 120 USD.
The next Radeon could actually be called Radeon 10000 which is indeed a nice marketing number but caertainly won't represent DirectX 10 support since not even DirectX 9 is launched at this time
News source: The Inq
