ATI RAGE FURY PRO Review - X-bit labs
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Finally ATI launched an enhanced version of its Rage 128. We tested a graphics card on it, so, you may take a look at the obtained results.
About a year ago ATI Technologies Company announced a new graphics chipset generation - ATI RAGE 128. At that time inautumn 1998 the leading position in the graphics market belonged to NVIDIA Riva TNT and 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, but ATI daredsupply a product, which could easily defeat the leaders and become a true sensation of the time. Especially since ATI RAGE128 chip could boast such new progressive technologies as texture and pixel modules caching, which allowed optimizingaccelerators work in 3D-regimes with 32-bit color depth. It was a real step forward because the main problem about TrueColor dealt with the insufficient memory bandwidth. Of course, other manufacturers could be using in-chip texture cachesas well, however there was no information about it. That is why ATI had every right to take advantage of this situationand to use its newly introduced caches for marketing purposes. Unfortunately, the appearance of ATI RAGE 128 was accompaniedby an enormous number of errors and other defects, especially in the drivers, which significantly delayed the chipset launching.As a result, it had to compete with the next generation of graphics accelerators represented by 3dfx Voodoo3 and NVIDIA RivaTNT2 based graphics cards. But even then the censures remained and ATIs drivers quality still left much to be desired.Besides, a few errors in the chip itself cropped up (the bilinear filtering realization, for instance). So, we were really happy to hear that a graphics card based on a newer chipset version ATI RAGE 128 PRO with improvedfeatures was about to come out. Just take a look at the comparative table below. What is the difference between ATI RAGE128 and ATI RAGE 128 PRO? ATI RAGE 128 ATI RAGE 128 PRO API support Direct3D, OpenGL Direct3D, OpenGL Core frequency, MHz 103 140 Memory frequency, MHz 103 159 RAMDAC, MHz 250 300 Max supported graphics memory, MB 32 32 3D Truecolor (32bit) support yes yes 3D maximal resolution - Highcolor (16bit) 1920x1200 2048x1536 - Truecolor (32bit) 1920x1200 2048x1536 Number of rendering pipelines 2 2 Fillrate, mln pixels per second 200 280 Processing power, mln polygones per second 4 8 Larger (1024x1024) texture support yes yes AGP support - DiME yes yes - AGP 2x yes yes - AGP 4x no yes Z-buffer accuracy 32 32 Per pixel MIP-mapping yes yes Auto MIP-mapping yes yes Tri-linear filtering - Single pass yes yes - Approximation no no Anisotropic filtering no yes Multitexturing yes yes Anti-aliasing - edge no no - full-scene yes yes Fog yes yes OpenGL support ICD ICD There are a few advantages that are worth pointing out right away: Anisortopic filtering support; More powerful engine - 8 million polygons triangle setup (instead of 4 million); Higher working frequencies. However, this is just the beginning. According to the announcements, ATI RAGE 128 PRO also boasts texture compressionDXTC technology (developed by S3 Company and licensed in DirectX 7.0). Besides, Triangle Setup modules were also redesigned.All in all, we were about to expect almost a 400% performance gain compared to ATI RAGE 128. So, when we took ATI RAGE FURY PRO we had every reason to believe that it would perform up to the mark of todays graphicscards based on NVIDIA Riva TNT2 or Matrox G400. ATI RAGE FURY PRO graphics card has 2x/4x AGP and 32MB SGRAM 7ns memory located on both sides of the card. The chipset is equipped with an active fan with a relatively small heatsink. This seems to be about all concerning theappearance of the graphics card. The whole RAGE FURY PRO family includes 4 graphics cards: ATI RAGE FURY PRO (we had this particular thing for testing); ATI RAGE FURY PRO with TV-out; ATI RAGE FURY PRO with TV-in/out (chip-companion RAGE THEATER); ATI RAGE FURY PRO with DFP-connector. The chipset default frequency is 140MHz, and memory default frequency is 159MHz (compare to ATI RAGE 128: 103/103MHz).The card proved overclockable but not too much - up to 150/170MHz only. It looks as if 0.25 micron technology didnt allowmaking a two-pipeline chipset with a built-in small cache provide higher working frequencies. For our tests we used the drivers version 6.30 CDH34, which appeared the same for both chipsets (RAGE 128 and RAGE 128 PRO).The installation process was very trivial and hardly caused any difficulties. After the installation was successfully brought toan end, we could notice a new properties page: Direct3D.It allows controlling and setting Vsync regimes and Z-buffer order, enable anti-aliasing and palletized textures support. OpenGL.Here we can also enable/disable Vsync, control subpixel correction and texture detailization levels, enable 32 bit to16 bit texturesconversion, enable dithering (smoothing the visible borders between the color fields) when alpha-blending (work with semitransparentobjects) is on. Besides, we can also enable KTX_Buffer_region extension support for 3D Studio MAX. This page shows the software version information. Well, before passing over to the results we managed to obtain, take a look at our system configuration: Intel Pentium III 600 CPU; ASUS P3B-F (i440BX) mainboard; 128MB PC100 system memory; Quantum FB CR 6.4GB HDD; ViewSonic P810 (21") monitor; Windows 98. We will start with 2D-graphics. Even ATI RAGE 128 showed really very good image quality. We have to admit that ATI RAGE128 PRO retained this advantage. Moreover, the image quality remained perfect even at 1600x1200. The table below presents allthe performance values obtained in WinBench99 at the resolution set to 1600x1200x32bpp: Business graphics Winmark High-End Graphics Winmark Creative 3DBlaster Annihilator 187 651 Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra 183 568 Matrox Millennium G400 MAX 194 645 ATI RAGE FURY PRO 185 610 The numbers once again proved absolutely impeccable results. However, we have to repeat once again that we are considering agaming graphics card and hence approach 2D-graphics as those users, who do not deal with it on a professional level. Well, now its time for 3D. The first thing worth reminding you is the performance. In order to get a complex and objectivepicture we resorted to a number of tools: Rage Expendable. This gaming benchmark with a built-in timedemo, which allows us to evaluate the acceleratorsperformance in Direct3D with multitexturing enabled at 16 and 32 bit color depth. Monolith Shogo. This is another gaming test. Its external Revshogo demo demonstrates the accelerators performancein Direct3D with and without multitexturing. The color depth was set to 16bit. Epic Unreal Tournament DEMO v.3.48 - a gaming test, which external demo mydemo1 shows the cards performance in Direct3Dwith a lot of effects and extremely high level of gaming dynamics. The color regimes considered - 16 and 32 bit. id Software Quake2. This is a gaming test used to find out the accelerators performance in OpenGL. The external demomassive1 helps us to get a good idea of the cards performance in 16 and 32 bit color. id Software Quake3 Test v.1.08. This is a gaming test also intended for the cards performance in OpenGL though in a bitmore complicated conditions. The built-in Q3demo1 provides very illustrative info about the accelerators performance withdifferent settings combinations. We would like to add that we compared the card based on RAGE 128 PRO with another todays graphics adapters, such asMatrox Millennium G400 MAX (driver version 5.30), Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra (Detonator drivers 3.53) and Creative 3D BlasterAnnihilator (NVIDIA GeForce 256, Detonator drivers 3.53). So, here are the results: It is evident that ATI RAGE FURY PRO card occupies a very strong position among its counterparts, having yielded only toNVIDIA GeForce 256 at higher resolutions. We can only admire ATI Company, whose product proved just beyond any competition in this test. Even the graphics cardmade on NVIDIA GeForce 256 failed to catch up with RAGE 128 PRO. Here ATI RAGE FURY PRO performed just brilliantly, having very illustratively proven that it is optimized enough to putup a good show in 32 bit color regime. Actually, the processor working frequency exerts quite a significant influence over ATI RAGE 128 PRO performance, whichis very clearly shown on the diagram below. If the processor frequency doubles (from 300 to 600MHz), the performance getsalmost twice as high. Here we have to admit that ATI RAGE 128 has a bit fallen behind everybody. To tell the truth, we are a little bitpuzzled with a result like that, because this game doesnt overload the graphics accelerator. In the next test ATI RAGE 128 PRO based graphics card managed to slightly improve the situation and to surpass MatroxMillennium G400 MAX in several cases, however, the general lag still remains tangible. This game requires a really fast CPU. Even if it is an Intel Pentium III 600MHz, it is not powerful enough and as aresult at 800x600 and even at 1024x768 it appears the system CPU and not the graphics accelerator that the fps depend on.Nevertheless, we have to draw your attention to the fact that ATI RAGE 128 PRO started considerably lagging behind itscompetitors only at 1600x1200 and at all lower resolutions its performance was close to that shown by Matrox MillenniumG400 MAX. Well, here we were really disappointed. Strange as it might seem but ATI RAGE 128 PRO based graphics card retreated.Of course, the gap between our fellow and Matrox Millennium G400 MAX was not very large but as for NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultrabased graphics card, the lag was just enormous especially at higher resolutions. We found difficulty in explaining thisphenomenon since in Expendable we saw just the contrary, although this game also used multitexturing. Probably it was thescene complexity and too many effects used that matter here. The graphics card made on NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra has oneindisputable advantage in this case: faster memory (200MHz against 159MHz by ATI RAGE 128 PRO). However, there appearsno way to explain the incredible performance drop shown by Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, which memory also works at 200MHz.But this is another story, worth thorough discussion... Well, the fanfare rang out and the joy faded away... Now the whole thing is no longer so encouraging and promising. The shadeof gloom and darkness swallows us as we pass over to OpenGL applications. When the first graphics cards based on ATI RAGE 128 chipset came out we all noticed their relatively weak ICD OpenGL driver.Time passed, it was high time they came to their senses, but ... nothing doing! ATI still has the same problems! The impressionmade by excellent performance in Direct3D simply vanishes as soon as we look at OpenGL applications. Judging by a diagram givenbelow there is only one consolation for ATI RAGE 128 PRO: it miraculously surpasses Matroxs poor ICD OpenGL, which we havealways considered an awful monstrosity spoiling a beautiful G400 chip. Here the situation can hardly be regarded as consoling for ATI RAGE 128 PRO although it is not so tragic as in the previouscase. Of course, it lags behind NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra, nothing to do with it, but there are no reasons for ultimate despair.It is most likely to be RAGE 128 PRO optimization for 32bit color that tells here and slightly makes up for the poorOpenGL driver. Looks very much like Quake2. RAGE 128 PRO falls a bit behind NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra based graphics card and shows theresults similar to those of Matrox Millennium G400 MAX. Well, there are almost no evident changes, however, you can notice that the fps are insufficient for ATI RAGE 128 PROto provide an acceptable gaming level starting from the resolution equal to 1024x768. And this happened to a system witha Pentium III 600 processor! Could you imagine that?! Unfortunately, we had to admit that there was no way to enjoy allthe cool advantages of Quake3 available in a 32 bit color regime. Nothing new - no comments. So, lets sum up what we have just seen. ATI RAGE 128 PRO proved really cool in 32 bit color regime and showedbeautiful performance in Direct3D. However, there are also some drawbacks. First of all, it is the cards performance in OpenGL applications. Of course,when working with this API the performance drop is not so fatal, but it appears very noticeable and oppressive rememberingvery good results in Direct3D. Now, a few words about some unique peculiarities of ATI RAGE FURY PRO and of course, about the image quality it providesin 3D-graphics. First we would like to mention DXTC texture compression support. As is known, this technology was developed by S3Company and introduced in DirectX. The screenshot below demonstrates the image quality achieved with this texture storingtechnology: You are probably surprised to see practically no difference between the two screenshots, arent you? Well, this technologyseems to be really efficient then! When we discussed S3 Savage4 chipset, we offered you an example of Unreal demo level with Egyptian frescos where theyused the texture compression. Now this level can be also run on a graphics card based on ATI RAGE 128 PRO chip: Did you enjoy the image quality? And now take a look at the same level run on NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra based graphicscard, which cant boast hardware DXTC support: Pretty strange but this level looks absolutely the same as it does in case of ATI RAGE 128 PRO. The only differenceis a really poor tri-linear approximation by NVIDIA Riva TNT2: Here we have to mention that theoretically, any graphics chipset not necessarily designed by S3 can decompress compressedtextures and use them in DirectX 7.0. However, in this case it is not the chipset that carries out texture decompressionbut the CPU, which is actually mentioned in S3TC specification. So, it turns out that if you want to run this demo level on the graphics cards based on ATI RAGE 128 PRO as well as onNVIDIA Riva TNT2, your success will depend on the system memory available, CPU power and … and your actions. If you movevery slowly, the system will have enough time to decompress the textures and to superpose them, but any quick or sharpmovement may cause memory overloading and emergency closing of the application. What is this? Is this the vaunted DXTC support? No, it is a pure mockery! Why didnt they honestly write what theyactually meant under this DXTC support, and no one would have hoped for a wonder to happen. And in fact, ATIs marketingpolicy seems to be prevailing over fair competition. By the way, there is one more game, which can also support DXTC/S3TC.It is Expendable. When we wrote about the graphics cards based on S3 Savage4 chip, we mentioned this fact and even provideda few screenshots, showing the use of compressed textures, when the overall performance went up while the image qualitytangibly suffered. In our case if this regime is enabled for the system with ATI RAGE FURY PRO, we saw no real effect.Thats why the only conclusion that occurs here sounds as follows: the current driver version of ATI RAGE 128 PRO chipdoesnt support DXTC. However, there is a certain demo-program called Radiation showing this technology at work. You have to add the followingregistry key enabling DXTC for the current application (without this key the texture compression remains disabled): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareATI TechnologiesDriverOpenGLPrivate]"enableTextureCompression"=dword:00000001 Have you noticed the path to the key? It mentions OpenGL. What is the connection between DXTC technology included inDirectX and OpenGL, we wonder? Of course, OpenGL interface also supports S3TC as an extension, however, we havent everheard about ATI licensing from S3 their OpenGL texture compression technology. Besides, having read the handbook, whichgoes together with the Radiation demo-program, you would understand that this demo was initially intended for OpenGL. Youcan do nothing but make a helpless gesture: "ATI played us a trick". The same thing refers to the promised anisotropicfiltering, which appeared absent in this driver version, although this function was successfully included into the listof supported features. It is none other but a demo-program. Radiation also proclaims excellent larger textures support: And it is really impressive. And now try to recall the drawback, which was so typical of ATI RAGE 128, though nobody wanted to notice it. We meanthe awful bilinear filtering with a banding effect. The screenshot on the left shows this defect by ATI RAGE 128 and thescreenshot on the right the situation with ATI RAGE 128 PRO: ATI RAGE 128 ATI RAGE 128 PRO As we see the defect is successfully eliminated. And it is really a very pleasant surprise, especially taking intoaccount that the drivers had nothing to do with it, since this drawback arose on hardware level. Now lets say a few words about the image quality provided by ATI RAGE 128 PRO in OpenGL applications. We have alreadymentioned above that the performance with this API involved was insufficient. Unfortunately, the image quality also has alot of room for improvement: See the texturing error, when the whole triangle got completely "unsettled": It was in 32 bit color. And what do we have in 16 bit color regime? Worse than you could imagine! It is not only the"dancing" textures (scintillation) that keep irritating our eye. In addition we got a grid over the image: You can almost completely get rid of it by means of additional color palette regulation. It is most likely connected witha not quite correct dithering realization. And now take a look at image quality under API Direct3D obtained in Unreal Tournament. First comes 32 bit color: We cant see any defects, the quality is just perfect. What about 16 bit color? Well, here dithering slightly spoils the impression made by the patches of light, but we think we shouldnt blame ATIRAGE 128 PRO chip for that, because we see almost the same thing with the graphics cards based on NVIDIA Riva TNT2: We believe it should be noted that sometimes especially in the light scenes, there can appear a slight grid and someback-sight mutations, which you can notice only in dynamics and hence they dont actually spoil the impression that much. So, we have every right to conclude that the image quality in 3D graphics is damaged first of all by the drivers,namely by a very badly written ICD OpenGL. And now lets briefly dwell on MPEG2 video decoding or simply DVD-Video support provided by ATI RAGE 128 PRO. The graphicscard goes together with a new ATI DVD player made on the basis of the latest Cinemaster99. As you probably know, ATI Companymade their graphics chips support a number of MPEG2 videostreams decoding components. Playing a DVD-movie RAGE 128 PRO chipshowed the CPU utilization of about 45% while the image quality remained just beautiful. Well, lets make a brief summary. The retail price of this card is expected to be about $150, and we can say that ATI managed to introduce areally competitive product for this price group. However, there is a number of items that dont let us regardRAGE FURY PRO as deserving our praise and admiration. First of all, we are disappointed with the uncompleted drivers. We have already mentioned this disadvantage so many times!However, nothing changed... Secondly, RAGE FURY PRO graphics cards appear somewhat worse than those based on NVIDIA Riva TNT2 (Ultra) in terms ofperformance and image quality though their prices are almost equal. Even if we suppose that the drivers are working perfectly, the market sector these cards are aimed at is already occupied.ATI will really face a lot of problems when looking for a worthy application for its graphics cards. ATI is late again. Assoon as NVIDIA launched its GeForce 256 GPU, the prices for NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra based graphics cards quickly went down.In this respect the conclusion is more than evident. Only if ATI provides its RAGE FURY PRO graphics cards with such specificfeatures as TV-in/out, for instance, they will get a good chance to win the users acknowledgement. By the way, we hear thatATI plans to sell its RAGE FURY PRO graphics cards together with a DVD-disk and a licensed movie. And in this case the moviewill cost you 50% less than if you were buying it separately (dont count on getting it absolutely for free). Probably, ATI RAGE FURY MAXX graphics cards have a happier future, who knows, but they are expected to enter the market only inDecember. Although we cant be sure if this forecast is credible, because now their samples are available only to a limited numberof testers. In other words, ATI keeps pursuing a very strange marketing policy when only most well known observers gettheir products in time.
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