The serial number on the card would give the best indication. ATI used a different numbering format than most of their board partners in those early days.

“Built by ATI” was usually better quality, better ramdac, better picture. They would have an EXM fccid and a part number that looked like 109-bbbbb-rr, where bbbbb was the circuit board and rr was the revision. Circuit boards were green up through Rage, and later were often red.

“Powered by ATI” had more variation in price, quality, pcb color, and cooling. They usually have an oem name on them like sapphire, power color, his, etc.

Did ATI only use the series 109?
Ive seen cards that start 102. Would that be a Powered by card?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-05-14, 05:04:

Did ATI only use the series 109?
Ive seen cards that start 102. Would that be a Powered by card?

"102-" is the ATI product number and is usually on a sticker
"109-" is the ATI circuit board and is painted on the board
"113-" is the ATI BIOS, rarely labeled once the chips started getting smaller

I usually use the 109 numbers, since they don't fall off when they get old, but sometimes ATI reused the same board for multiple cards, which can get confusing

The OEM cards didn't start coming in until the Radeon days.

I made a chart of a bunch of them here: https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/ATI#ATi_Radeon_series

Sometimes the OEM boards have a part number that starts with 109, like the ASUS 109-A171GN-00, but those really look like ATI build cards, , probably a reference board.

Maybe the best way is to look for "(C) YYYY ATI Technologies INC" on the card. If you see that, then it was built by ATI. If you see "Power Color", "ASUS", "HIS" it was not.

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/File:Radeon7500agp.jpg

I looked up and my ATi Mach64 VT2 even has PN 109-, same goes with Rage2, Rage3, Rage4 and so on, all are with PN 109-.
ATi cards have © year ATi TECHNOLOGIES INC written somewhere, at least older cards have this trend, have not looked new.