AMD
AMD is a chip making company that create the Radeon line of GPU's, in addition to several lines of CPU's.
Radeon
The Radeon line of graphics cards were introduced in 2000 with the Radeon R100.
Radeon Naming Scheme
- Radeon R Series
The Radeon R series began in 2000 with the R100 chip series. It featured a rather haphazard naming scheme, with the retail name often not indicating what chip series the card was. For example, the R7200 was part of the R100 chip series while the R7500 was part of the RV200 chip series.
- Radeon X Series
The Radeon X series began in 2002 with the R300 chip series. The X series continued the haphazard naming scheme of the X series, with some retail names with a higher number belonging to an older chip series. For example, the X1050 belongs to the R300 chip series, while the X700 belongs to the R420 series. This series was the first Radeon series in which all cards supported some form of DirectX 9.
- Radeon HD Series
The Radeon X series began in 2006 with the R600 chip series. It was the first line of Radeon GPUs to support DirectX 10 and beyond. The HD marked a change in the Radeon naming scheme, one in which the chip series could be easily discerned by the name. As an example we can use the Radeon 5670. Here the first digit signifies the series, in this case the 5000 series. The second digit signifies the power range, with a mid-range card signified by the "6". The third digit indicates a further ranking, with the 5670 being slightly more powerful than the 5650. The final digit is always 0.