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

New Skin
In addition to the corona skin being the new default WMP9 skin (called 9seriesdefault) they have included a smart new skin called Quicksilver (screenie below) look for it in the Skin Browser. Corona is now resizeable and many visual bugs have been fixed



More Screenshots: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Known Issues
Personal Firewall issue: If you have a personal firewall product installed on your computer, in some cases Windows Media Player fails to receive content over a network and in other cases the Player may crash when trying to receive streaming content. The problem is related to the firewall software that is not yet able to handle new Windows XP and Windows .NET Server networking APIs. Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta Refresh (build 2800) addresses this issue.

Surround Sound Speaker Setting issue: If Windows Media Player starts to play audio but there is no sound, check to see if your speaker settings are set to Surround Audio. There is a known issue in Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta where the Player may crash when you play regular stereo or mono WMA content while your speaker settings are set to Surround. Even if the Player does not crash, you still won't hear any audio. Windows Media Player 9 Series Beta Refresh (build 2800) addresses this issue.


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