ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, said that its graphics cards do not and will not have compatibility issues with aging platforms. Unlike some of the latest Nvidia GeForce 8800 graphics cards, ATI Radeon HD 3000-series works on old problems without issues.

Back in August ’07 X-bit labs reported citing Asustek Computer’s claims that some PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards may not function on mainboards that only support PCI Express 1.0a and 1.1 2.5GHz transfer rates. Many, but not all, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT-based graphics cards, which support 2.0 transfer rate and are supposed to be backwards compatible with PCIe 1, could not function on Intel 925 chipset-based system at X-bit labs.

“There were potentially compatibility issues with PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards and certain PCIe 1.0/1.1 platforms. We asked Asustek to double check if there were any issues with ATI Radeon HD 3800-series as we believed there shouldn’t be. Asustek carried out that test and verified that, indeed, ATI Radeon HD3000-series cards do work with no compatibility issues,” said David Baumann, a technical marketing manager at AMD’s graphics product group.

The representative for AMD stressed that that ATI Radeon HD 3000-series “bootstraps” in PCIe 1.0 mode and brings up to higher modes once detected that they are available;

“This way ensures that there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues with pre-PCIe 2.0 platforms,” Mr. Baumann said.

X-bit labs’ testing team found no compatibility issues with ATI Radeon HD 2000 and HD 3000-series graphics cards with PCI Express 1.0a and 1.1 motherboards.