ATI Radeon 7000 PCI

The ATI Radeon 7000 PCI is an end-of-life graphics card from AMD, released on 2001-02-18. It is built on the Rage 6 architecture with the RV100 chip, manufactured on TSMC's 180 nm process with 30 million transistors on an 80 mm² die. The card belongs to the Radeon R100 generation (7000) and sits between the Rage 6 predecessor and the Radeon R200 successor. It offers 32 MB of DDR memory on a 64-bit bus, with 3 texture mapping units and 1 raster operation pipeline. The card's production status is end-of-life, and its bus interface is PCI.

How It Compares

The nearestRivals field is empty, so the comparison must be drawn against the aggregate database distribution. The card holds a 50th percentile ranking among all GPUs, meaning exactly half of the tracked parts are slower and half are faster. This central position is notable given the card's modest specifications — 32 MB of memory, a 64-bit bus, and a single ROP. The 133.0 MPixel/s pixel rate and 399.0 MTexel/s texture rate are low by any modern standard, yet the percentile suggests the database includes a substantial tail of even less capable hardware.

Within the Radeon R100 generation, the card's 3 TMUs and 1 ROP define its fillrate class. The 64-bit memory interface and 2.128 GB/s bandwidth are the primary constraints on performance. The transistor density of 375.0K per mm² reflects the 180 nm process maturity. The card's predecessor, the Rage 6, and successor, the Radeon R200, bracket its position in the product line, but no direct rival scores are available in the data to quantify the gap.

The lack of nearest rivals means the 50th percentile is the only positional anchor. In practical terms, the card would be outclassed by any part with more TMUs, more ROPs, or a wider memory bus — but those parts are not named in the data, so the comparison remains at the level of the aggregate. The 0 average benchmark score further complicates the picture, as no measured results exist to validate the percentile ranking.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Radeon 7000 PCI has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores; both fields are null in the data. This is consistent with its API support: DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, with no Vulkan support listed. The feature set is fixed-function, built around 3 TMUs and 1 ROP. The texture rate of 399.0 MTexel/s and pixel rate of 133.0 MPixel/s are the hardware's fillrate ceilings, which any workload must respect.

The memory subsystem is equally modest: 32 MB of DDR on a 64-bit bus, running at 133 MHz with a 266 Mbps effective data rate, yielding 2.128 GB/s of bandwidth. This bandwidth is sufficient for the card's fillrate but limits texture-heavy scenes and higher color depths. The display outputs — 1x DVI, 1x VGA, and 1x S-Video — reflect the analog-era connectivity of the 2001 launch. The absence of Vulkan support and the OpenGL 1.3 ceiling mean the card cannot run modern graphics APIs.

The lack of RT and tensor cores is not a deficiency for its era — DirectX 7.0 has no such requirements — but it does mean the card has no hardware acceleration for any modern compute or ray-traced workload. The data shows no fp32 or fp16 performance figures, so compute capability cannot be quantified; the card is purely a fixed-function rasterizer. The architecture is Rage 6, which is a fixed-function design; the data does not list shading units, and no compute throughput figures are provided.

Power and Cooling

The card's TDP is 23 W, a very low figure that reflects the 180 nm process and the modest transistor count of 30 million. The suggested PSU is 200 W, which is well within the range of any desktop power supply from the era. The card requires no power connectors — it draws all its power from the PCI bus. It is a single-slot card, so it occupies only one expansion slot.

The 80 mm² die size and 375.0K per mm² transistor density contribute to the low power envelope. With no power connectors and a 23 W TDP, the card's cooling requirements are minimal; the data does not specify the cooler type, but the thermal load is small enough that a simple heatsink would suffice. The 200 W PSU recommendation is a conservative figure that accounts for the rest of the system, not just the card.

For system integrators, the absence of power connectors simplifies installation — no additional cabling is needed. The single-slot design means it fits in any chassis with a free PCI slot. The end-of-life production status suggests that replacement parts are now scarce, but the low power draw makes it a safe drop-in for legacy systems. The bus interface is PCI, which is the original parallel PCI standard, not PCIe; this limits compatibility to older motherboards.

Who Should Consider It

The Radeon 7000 PCI is suited for users running DirectX 7.0 titles at low settings. The 133.0 MPixel/s pixel rate and 399.0 MTexel/s texture rate indicate that the card can handle simple 3D scenes and 2D desktop workloads, but it will struggle with anything requiring high fillrates or large texture sets. The 32 MB memory capacity and 2.128 GB/s bandwidth are the binding constraints — scenes that exceed the memory footprint will cause significant slowdowns.

The 50th percentile ranking suggests that, within the database, the card is faster than half of all tracked GPUs. This is a counterintuitive result for a card with such modest specs, but it reflects the long tail of very old and very low-end parts in the database. Users considering this card for retro gaming or legacy system restoration should set expectations accordingly: the card is a capable 2D accelerator and a marginal 3D solution for early DirectX 7 games.

The OpenGL 1.3 support extends its usefulness to early OpenGL titles, but the lack of Vulkan support and the DirectX 7.0 ceiling rule out any modern software. The 200 W PSU recommendation means it can be installed in virtually any system without a PSU upgrade. The single-slot, no-connector design also makes it a low-risk addition to a period-correct build.

For users with a 2001-era system, the card's 64-bit memory bus and 3 TMUs are adequate for the games of that time at low resolutions and reduced detail settings. The 1 ROP limits the pixel throughput to 133.0 MPixel/s, which is a hard ceiling for any resolution scaling. The 32 MB memory is the other hard limit; any game that needs more than 32 MB of textures and framebuffer will not run smoothly.

Benchmark Performance

The average benchmark score for the Radeon 7000 PCI is 0, and the percentile ranking is 50. A score of 0 in the database typically indicates that no benchmark results have been recorded, yet the percentile of 50 places the card at the median of all GPUs. This combination is unusual: the score is a placeholder or normalization artifact, while the percentile is derived from the database's ranking algorithm, which may incorporate the card's specifications rather than measured results.

Without recorded scores, the performance must be inferred from the hardware. The texture rate of 399.0 MTexel/s and pixel rate of 133.0 MPixel/s are the two key throughput figures. The memory bandwidth of 2.128 GB/s, delivered over a 64-bit bus at 133 MHz with a 266 Mbps effective data rate, is the limiting factor. For any workload that exceeds the texture cache, the bandwidth will throttle the TMUs.

The 3 TMUs can theoretically consume 399.0 MTexel/s, but only if the memory subsystem can feed them. The single ROP caps the pixel rate at 133.0 MPixel/s, which is the maximum pixel throughput. The memory bandwidth of 2.128 GB/s must serve both the texture fetches and the pixel writes, so the effective fillrate in real workloads will be lower than the theoretical peaks.

The percentile of 50 is the only aggregate comparison available. It indicates that the card sits at the midpoint of the database's performance distribution, but the 0 score means there is no measured benchmark to validate that position. The data shows no fp32 or fp16 figures, so compute performance cannot be assessed. The card is a fixed-function part, and its performance is entirely defined by the fillrate and bandwidth numbers listed above.

The 50th percentile is a database-wide ranking, not a generation-specific one. Within the Radeon R100 generation, the card's position is defined by its 3 TMUs, 1 ROP, and 64-bit memory bus. The successor, Radeon R200, would presumably offer more of each, but no scores are provided for that part. The predecessor, Rage 6, is the architectural baseline. The card's release date of 2001-02-18 places it at the very beginning of the Radeon line, and the end-of-life status confirms that it has long since been superseded.

In summary, the benchmark data for the Radeon 7000 PCI is sparse — a 0 score with a 50th percentile — and the performance analysis must rely on the fillrate, memory bandwidth, and API support figures. The card is a low-power, entry-level part from 2001 that sits at the median of the database, with no nearest rivals to quantify against. Its 23 W TDP, 200 W PSU recommendation, and lack of power connectors make it an easy install, but its DirectX 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3 support limit it to software from its era.