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ATI stands for Array Technologies Incorporated and Radeon is the name of a series of graphics cards that ATI manufactures. Graphics cards are devices that enable superior viewing experience of computer graphics and are highly recommended for gaming and video. Since these cards primarily process graphics, they are also known as graphics processing units (GPUs). In fact, the ATI Radeon series has been designed keeping the gaming user in mind. It has special capabilities for handling and rendering the heavy visuals encountered in 3-D games of today.

There are four generations of ATI Radeon series and each is closely associated with a generation of DirectX that they support. DirectX is the terminology used to identify the multimedia application-programming interface (API) for Microsoft platforms. The first generation of ATI Radeon series was introduced in 2000 and starts with R100. This was followed by the R200, R300, R420, R520, R600 and R700. Each of these series has product models that cater to different price ranges.

The latest to come out from the ATI Radeon stables is the 3000 series and more specifically the ATI Radeon HD 3800, 3600 and the 3400 targetted at the high-end, mainstream and the budget consumers respectively. These have been highly touted by most hardware reviews as among the best and competitively priced. This series supports DirectX 10.1, which is also the latest in multimedia from Microsoft. DirectX 10.1 games are considered the most high-end games with heavy 3D graphics and shading.

The ATI Radeon 3000 series also allows features that can enhance the gaming performance. For example, the ATI Radeon HD 3400 Series graphics card can be coupled with an AMD 7-Series Integrated Chipset to get better gaming performance across multiple monitors. Finally, the hardware itself is smaller and designed to use less power, be more efficient and quieter.

Graphics cards have become an indispensable hardware feature in computers today. While many users may not be so concerned with which graphics card their computer use, they definitely appreciate superior graphics performance from their machines. This is also because the trend has been to increasingly use the computer as a multi-tasking machine with different multi-media applications running simultaneously. This has led to advances in hardware design to support such applications without significantly affecting overall performance or user experience as we call it. ATI, which emerged a leader in the graphics cards segment, has been pushing the boundaries of technology in this field. This is evident by the success of its Radeon graphic card series.