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Comments on Rage Fury are below
"ATI Rage Fury prerelease notes
Because the Rage 128 card we tested was a prerelease unit, we cannot supply definitive benchmarks or driver software reliability ratings (except to note that the Dec. 11, 1998 release we tested was definitely not stable). However, our initial tests revealed a few interesting points.
Perhaps most importantly, the 16-bit display mode of the card has an idiosyncratic dithering pattern of an apparently stochastic (random diffusion) nature, quite unlike any other card we've seen.
Clearly, the Rage 128, even more than the TNT and G200, excels at true-color display tasks. The Rage Fury has 32 MB of SDRAM on-board, allowing very high resolutions at high bit depths. For comparison, the TNT and Banshee cards tested here carried 16 MB onboard; the Permedia cards and (expandable) G200 provided only 8 MB.
In our tests, Rage Fury's 3D renderings were generally accurate, though 3D rendering in 3DMark99 seemed somewhat "over filtered." Display anomalies and incompatibilities with some games have been noted, at least with the prerelease drivers. As mentioned above, an odd stochastic "graininess" is visible.
With its prerelease drivers, we had some difficulty during initial setup. After a flawless plug-and-play detection and subsequent reboot, the screen came up black. Apparently, a default refresh rate other than that supported by our admittedly low-end monitor was being used; we solved it by booting into Safe mode, choosing screen color mode and resolution of 16 colors at 640x480 and restarting. From then on, it worked normally in all color modes and resolutions tested. (The company says this will be fixed in the shipping version.).
The driver we tested also displayed incorrect colors in the Windows 98 desktop (the clouds in the upper-left corner of a window in "Web View" mode had an odd green patch). Some compatibility issues also exist with Socket 7 systems, particularly those based on ALi's Aladdin V chipset. These, of course, may be fixed in the shipping driver. We did, however, successfully test it on an Asus P5A board. A full OpenGL ICD is provided, as are Windows 9x and NT drivers.
DVD playback, too
A "Soft DVD" player is provided, supporting the chip's DVD decoding and overlay functions. DVD playback was smooth, but grainier than that achieved from a hardware-assisted solution such as the Creative Labs Encore DXr2. The hardware provides TV-out jacks and the driver software supports this and various centering and gamma adjustment features. Like other ATI cards we've seen, a helpful tutorial is displayed on-screen after the initial installation is complete to help you configure the various options. Reportedly, three games (Half-Life: Day One, Moto Racer 2 and Expendable) will be bundled with the product. We've played Half-Life and Moto Racer 2--both are excellent.
A small daughtercard includes S-video and composite video output jacks. Although we've seen reports on some Web sites that the Rage 128 is compatible with ATI-TV, an ISA-based add-on tuner, this is, at least currently, false. However, the company says the Rage Fury will support the new ATI-TV Wonder card, which provides TV tuner and capture functions. Also, a future Rage 128-based All-in-Wonder 128 product is said to be forthcoming. Considering ATI's digital flat-panel (DFP) display initiative, it is surprising, perhaps, that the Rage Fury does not include a connector for DFP displays. ATI says the card is ready for HDTV, however.
Scoring 970 running on the 150 MHz Pentium PC in our 3DMark99 test, the prerelease Rage 128 fared a little less impressively than we'd hoped. Still, the score was not too shabby, and the chip's speedy 32-bit rendering gives it an advantage over the TNT in that mode.
The Dec. 11, 1998 driver we tested contains an odd (and awkwardly implemented) feature: Optimal Direct3D and OpenGL game acceleration is optional, and the dialog cautions that system instability may result if the game-optimized settings are not disabled when running standard apps. Worse, you have to reboot to change modes! Even with this setting enabled, the Rage 128's 3DMark99 scores in most 16-bit modes lagged behind those of the TNT and even the Banshee on both 150 MHz Pentium and the 266 MHz Pentium II test machines. However, the Rage 128 fares well in other tests: it is approximately on par with the TNT in 16-bit graphics mode, and ahead of all others in 32-bit mode."
John Edwards |
