October'2001 3Digest:
ATI RAGE 128 PRO
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By Andrey Vorobiev
This chip is presented by ATI RAGE FURY PRO 32 MBytes, AGP videocard.
Features:
- ATI RAGE 128 PRO chip, 118 MHz clock rate;
- 32 MBytes SGRAM memory in eight SEC 7ns microchips, 140 MHz clock rate
, 128-bit bus;
- Peak speed of scene drawing in multitexturing mode is 118 megapixels/sec
and 236 megatexels/sec.
Overclocks to 150/166 MHz (see summary diagrams).
ATI Rage cards have appeared in the late Fall'99 as ATI's answer to NVIDIA
Riva TNT2 Ultra, but NVIDIA GeForce256 has been making its way that
time, and ATI RAGE 128 PRO has been left undemanded. Besides, due to
postponed shippings, these cards have appeared for sale in the Winter'2000
only when NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS has been already at hand. But the fast
price lowering for RAGE 128 PRO cards helped them much and they've found
their customers. But the unclear situation with drivers spoils the image
of these cards. We think the production of these cards will be cancelled
due to releases of low-end RADEON models.
For the 20th of October'2001 the latest drivers version from ATI is
7.140.
As you can see the results are different. So there will be no simple recommendation.
And there were a lot of artefacts. Texture bugs in Unreal and Unreal
Tournament:
Below are screenshots taken on this card, and reference ones taken on NVIDIA
GeForce3.
Game list:
- 1. Quake3 Arena
- 2. Unreal2 - for GeForce cards, Unreal - for all other
- 3. Unreal Tournament
- 4. No One Lives Forever
- 5. Serious Sam
- 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
- 7. Red Faction
- 8. Rally Trophy
- 9. Sacrifice
- 10. Venom
- 11. Need For Speed V (Porshe 2000)
- 12. Real MYST
- 13. Blade of Darkness
- 14. Giants
- 15. 3DMark2001: Game1
- 16. 3DMark2001: Game2
- 17. 3DMark2001: Game3
- 18. 3DMark2001: Game4
- 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
- 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
- 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
- 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
- 23. Black & White
- 24. Undying
- 25. Anachronox
- 26. Max Payne
As we can see Need For Speed: Porshe 2000 lacks fog and 3DMark2001, Game 1
shows very unpleasant picture:
Pay your attention to Unreal Tournament: as you can see, the car is drawn well
in 32-bit color mode, but here's what we get in 16-bit mode:
Take a look at the car, besides, dithering is awful.
And also take a look at the above screenshots from Sacrifice, you can see that
textures are missing.
2D quality is good enough for gameplay. Only in 1600x1200 slight soaping
effects appear on some monitors.
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