Gamer's Depot Article
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
When ATI first announced their new RAGE128 chip some time back, I really held my breath, hoping it wasn't going to be overhyped like their previous offerings have been. For those of you who have ever seen the old RAGE PRO in action trying to cope while playing a 3d game, you know as well as I do that it's nothing to write home about. Well fortunately for both ATI and us gamers times have changed, for the better. After FedEx dropped of this 32MB AGP card of love, I was in high hopes that ATI could, once and for all shatter their demised track record. Just wait till you check out the benchmarks that'll make you want to ask yourself "why did I buy a TNT"? :)
It was refreshing to see that ATI didn't exaggerate this card in such a way that was overkill. I guess they've learned the hard way not to do that anymore. The card I received was just sent in a plain white box, with very early drivers and the darn thing still destroys everything we've come to expect from a 2D/3D solution. Let's take a quick look at the specs:
System Requirements
Pentium II with AGP bus
AGP 1.0 compliant
Software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD requires DVD drive
Graphics Controller
ATI RAGE 128GL, a high performance 128-bit graphics accelerator with superior 2D, 3D, and video support
Operating Systems Support
OpenGL ICD for NT 4.0 & Windows 98/95
DirectX 5.0, DirectX 6.0, Direct3D, DirectDraw
Windows 98
Windows 95
Windows NT 4.0
Monitor Support
CRT Monitor: 15 pin VGA connector
TV: S-Video and Composite
AMC Channel
AMC 2.0 compliant
Ready for ATI-TV and ATI-TV Wonder, ATI's intelligent TV tuner and video capture option
Display Support
Register compatible with VGA
BIOS compatible with VESA for super VGA
DDC1/2b/2b+ monitor support
VESA Display Power Management support
Separate horiz & vert sync at TTL levels
Memory Configuration
32MB
TV-Out
NTSC output (PAL versions available)
Composite, S-Video connectors
3D Acceleration Features
Triangle Setup Engine
Texture Cache
Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
Line & Edge Anti-aliasing
Texture Compositing
Texture Decompression
Specular Highlights
Perspectively Correct Texture Mapping
Mip-Mapping
Z-buffering and Double-buffering
Bump Mapping
Fog effects, texture lighting, video textures, reflections, shadows, spotlights, LOD biasing and texture morphing
Warranty
5-year limited warranty
Maximum 3D Resolutions
64K Colors 1920x1440
32B Bpp 1920x1440
DRIVERS / INSTALLATION:
During the installation, was when I had the most problems with the Fury, the problems were so bad that we (me and ATI) had determined that it was a bad card, so they quickly responded by over-nighting me another one to try. Well,boom, same kind of problem, just before windows98 was just about ready to start, the machine would hang. After troubleshooting we finally figured out it was because the "AGP Aperture" setting in my BIOS was set to 32MB, after setting it to 64MB we were in business. I guess I helped discover a "bug" in their early set of drivers. :) The driver CD also comes with a rocking demo that really shows off what this card can do! Below is a screen shot of the menu used to "enhance" game performance. :) I sure hope they can get a better way to disable V-synch.
BENCHMARKS:
The benchmarks were done on the following system: PII450 (4x112mhz) 128MB PC100 ASUS P2B-S Seagate Cheetah U/W 10,000 RPM drive Diamond Monster Sound MX300 Windows 98 Plextor Ultraplex CD-Drive Iomega Internal Scsi Zip DirectX 6 w/ V-Synch disabled.
Forsaken (Biodome):
640x480x16 160.90
800x600x16 109.52
QUAKE2: demo1:
640x480x16 65.8 640x480x32bit 65.6
800x600x16 54.6 800x600x32bit 54.3
1024x768x16 36.8 1024x768x32bit 36
With it's ability to do single-pass multi-texture rendering, the RAGE128 opens up a can o'whoop-ass on the G200 in Quake2, and leaves the TNT scratchin' itself wondering why it can't render in 32bit that fast. While these kind of numbers are not exactly a V2 SLI killer, even in 16bit, you will notice how it really doesn't lose any steam when running in 32bit color. ATI has helped bring 3D into a new paradigm, yet, as mentioned before the drivers I'm using are still super early. Some of you might be saying "well, my system already runs those benchmarks that fast" try doing that in 32bit and see wasup! =p Almost a guarantee you'll see a HUGE performance drop probaly by as much as 50%!
TV/OUT:
For a truley immersive gaming experience I hooked up this bad boy to a Sony 35" TV, and was I impressed to heck at how good it looked. As usual when running on a TV I wouldn't recommend it for text. :) However for gaming, even with it's 800x600 resolution limit, it still kicks ya where it hurts! And one of the unique features you have with the Fury is the ability to run both TV-Out AND monitor out at the same time! Again, superior image quality compared to it's competition!
OVERALL VALUE:
There are absolutly no complaints here in regards to overall value, I'd like to see you try to find another card on the market that gives you killer 2/D & 3/D performance w/ 32MB AND Tv-Output for only $199.00 ESP. As a matter of fact, it's my opinion that this is (or will be) the best value on the market for quite sometime. When you look at it's competition, like the TNT for example, a decent TNT card like the Diamond V550 or the STB V4400 are still going for around the $150.00 price range and only have 16MB, and take a HUGE performance hit when rendering in 32bit.
PLUSES & NEGATIVES:
PLUSES:
Excellent 2D and 3D
Visual quality
Stellar Drivers
Killer TV-Out
NEGATIVES:
Not faster than a Voodoo2 SLI
FINAL IMPRESSIONS:
The thing that impressed me the most, outside of really good performance under 32bit rendering is the overall image quality we are talking here. In both 2D AND 3D I have yet to see a card that provides this level of image quality and detail. I guess for me, the whole beauty here is how ATI totally proved 3Dfx wrong by showing 32bit rendering can be done without a performance hit. It's kind of funny because 3Dfx's Scott Sellars says that 32-bit color rendering is a "frame rate killer" and thus "pointless". Well 3dfx, WRONG! :) The Rage Fury definetly raises the standard for other chipsets to follow. Kudos to ATI for no longer playing "follow-the-leader" and acutally becoming a leader and example for others to follow!
BOTTOM LINE:
As M.C. Hammer once put "Can't touch this" =Þ
Hal
PS: I am going to MacWorld to talk with Apple, NANO, TDFX, & ATI. HR
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