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What's new... is old again

December News

  • Dec 27, 1998
  • Hey! Can a site with an http address llke http://3dfx.dimension3d.com do a review on an ATI product ?...It would equivalent to me doing a glowing Win98 preview...not! I will assume he is preaching to the converted on this page. Anyways...go see the latest review (Euroupean) that has had the benefit of seeing 9 previous review and in the Voodoonation review he focusses on some of the reputed non-issues/fear mongering raised in 1/9 other reviews. (heat was confiremd to not be a problem). Alan Dang of 3DGaming measured heat on the surface of the chip as 49C/120F at the chip surface running 3D applications and below 32C/90F in the ambient above the chip. To be upfront, I would say Alan's result could be a touch on the low side and Tom's result towards the high side. Got to get me one of those infrared measuring units....might come in handy for monitoring the state of my Turkey without opening the oven door :) .

    Voodoonations's impressive collection of 36 screen shots from the "Rage Dawning" demo. I wonder if Armin has ever heard of a chap named Salmon Rushdie uttering "satanic verses"...Voodoo can be very powerful magic but I know it that the GL in Rage 128 GL does not stand for GLIDE...more like OpenGL.

  • Hello. I will be altering the course of this site a bit over the next year. I will be devoting some time to evangelizing "portability/power consumption" in digital cameras. Picture quality at 640x480 is more than adequate for most peoples needs todays despite the marketing and magazine hype and Comdex mentality that more means bigger. I have created a new page discussing digital camera requirements. In short, I want a tough, durable, and good image quality unit that does not have to be tethered to a AC socket or require the latest in battery technology just to function.

    Another new section will cover high quality graphical imaging where the various components of software (OpenGL, Heidi, SoftImage3D, 3D Studio Max, Alias's Maya, and SolidWorks) and hardware (Rage 128 OpenGL components, high speed 32 bit handling capability) come together to define Professional Workstation Class graphic capabilities used to generate commercial-grade images and animation. These packages have all been beta tested in-house already and demonstrate the commitment of ATI to defining the enhance capability of their present generation's hardware. ATI is a level III licensee of SGI OpenGL. My prediction is that the present level of hardware offered will define new uses and create new opportunities at the application software level. It is this give and take between software and hardware that will create new paradigms and opportunites for emerging companies. It will in turn redefine the needs/wants of future hardware...the present hardware from ATI is a potent combination of features beyond just catering to the well worn framerate counter found in 3D games. To get an idea of the what 128 wide datapath and 32 bit resolution computer generated images can do in the commercial world, click on the image of the new VW Beetle created somewhere in the far north by some real neat OpenGL software. Be sure to display it in 32 bit mode...Neat Huh ?

    Another new initiative will coverage of Linux on Laptops and portable computing functions offered by simplified platforms such as the Palm Pilot and PalmIII as a result of a battery-dead Compaq LTELite/25 computer that I inherited from a garage sale. For your holiday amusement, I'll leave your with this link to an animation of the Dancing Baby that has made its way to Ally McBeal and the David Letterman Show. The animation sequence was generated by industrial OpenGL software called "3D Studio Max" and then decomposed into a animated 340K GIF.

  • Dec 25, 1998
    "Tux" at the top of the page is normally dress to the "nines" in his daily tux...today he brings on a touch of Xmas. The laurel is made possible by Phil of @3D, GIMP image manipulation tools, and Linux...Ho...Ho...Ho....Merry Christmas.

  • It is the day after and other than honouring my wife's promise to limit my internet time over the holidays, I have two significant links relating to Digital camera's. One is that the Epson Photo 550 camera is supported under Linux. In a related link a nifty GUI based utility called gPhoto (g stands for GNU). I take advantage of the post-Xmas sales and am looking to buy a "GNU" camera....for those who are new to the Linux world, GNU is pronounced "GANEW" :) . 1000 pictures on 3AA Akalines and a 147 photos on a 4MB smartmedia card sound good enough to me. There are utilities for controlling your camera so that you can take pictures every 5, 10, 30 minutes and download it to a timestamped file. Gee...I wonder where Rover hangs out in the house when I closed the door behind me in the morning ?

  • Dec 24, 1998
    ...at least a "C"...:)

  • Alan Dang of 3DGaming has finished his reiview...did I say "big"... did I say "massive"...well click here for his big/massive/20 page review of the Rage Fury card using the the Rage 128 GL chipset. I'll try to be humble but Alan's review picked up on many issues that ATI is addressing on Win95. The focus has been NT and OEMs (See Apple announcements) getting priority on early production and Retail is now setup for January. This "book of a review (20 pages)" reflects ATI's view of a fourth/fifth generation breakthrough product. The first generation reviews focussed on Windows 2D performance. The second generation reviews focussed on Framerate. Third generation reviews have focussed on Framerate refinement and Quality. The Fourth generation reviews to date have focussed on all of the above at higher resolution...Alan has expanded coverage to NT performance, NT OpenGL stability and performance, defining various classes of DVD support and a real world test of choppiness and the benefits of IDCT, 8-bit pallettized texture support for filmed sequences such as Final Fantansy, 32 bit performance, heat/temperature/power measurements....etc. As in the RagePro, there are features that have been yet to be enabled, such as HDTV and Direct Broadcast (satellite) support features that will make their way systems as features and drivers evolve. Hang on and go read the book. Peace on Earth and may you are do your part in helping maintain this elusive goal within your family, friends, workplace and in the world. Happy Holidays until next year.

  • ATI has clarified a minor issues (my opinion) raised in one of the nine ATI reviews about power dissipation. The Rage 128 video chipset has the lowest power dissipation of all current 3.5/4th generation chipsets allowing it to run "bare/sans heatsink". My prediction is that it will become a "classic overclocker" for those who already have spare heatsinks, fans, and refrigerators left over from G200s, i740s, and TNTs. AGP peak current demand limitations that were issues with some of the competitive chipsets do not exist with this chip. Peak power dissipation with the Rage128 chipset is on the order of 4 Watts which is way below the 15 Watt maximum allowed for in the AGP specification. Motherboard implementations are expected to run cooler still with up to 20% power reduction due to reduced interface drive requirements. Read the responses form AVault, Sharky's Extreme, and ANG3D.

  • Dec 20, 1998
    Michael Verstichelen has had his web site in the early days when there were only a handful of internet hardware sets. He was there in the early days, with famous Tom, with his The Computer Hardware Performance Site. Other than the "uncool" name of his site he seems to still run a good site. Here are his comments from his Dec 11 News section:

  • Dec 18, 1998
    How do you describe someone who picks on and keeps beating a defenseless person already unconcious from the first blow....Bully! I do not like the present leadership in Iraq anymore that anyone else who has grown up in environment of "free" elections but the lessons from past war/hatred/World Wars/Bosnia show that the actions of a few meglomatic individuals can be held in check by effective use of economic sanctions and penalties. You may win the battle (or first strike) but it means little when bullies face an allied and fair society. I actually preferred having Bill Clinton in office until the recent missile strikes. Good luck Hilary. In the end when people look back, the decision to impeach speaks volumes for why the American justice system has survived the last two hundred years.

  • With all the heat (sic) dissapearing and the coming of winter, I did my little bit to conserve a wee bit of energy and to save people linking to this site some time by replacing all GIF images with JPEG equivalents. They do not look as good but download times have improved by 25% over what they were originally. With a 1KB/s transfer rate, this page should load in about 30 seconds without images turned on. One item to add to the "STOP the MADNESS" list are those sites that override the "Auto Load Images" button and load images regardless of the browser setting. Try these sites...give us choice not mind numbing download times:
    1. 40 autoloaded GIFs for a navigation menu
    2. Paul's great but graphically challenged site
    3. ...here is your chance :-)...

  • Today's Lesson: The difference between HEAT and TEMPERATURE:
    If you walk into a hardware store (the hammer and screwdriver type), you will normally find three versions of the soldering iron.

    1. Low wattage 10 Watt or low heating capacity pencil iron
    2. Medium Wattage 25 Watt soldering iron
    3. 60W soldering iron
    The irons will all have the same temperature and melt solder at 650F but the pencil iron does not have enough heat or heat transfer to allow it to heat up 12 gauge wiring. Equivalently, the "heating effect" is less for a lower power unit. The Rage 128 draws less power and will generate less of a temperature rise in a real system.

    Now go back to "Tom's Hardware Store" and you will find that the salesman does not know/understand the difference between heat and temperature. This is especially evident by the following statement:

    I guess the salesman will alert all i740, G200, Banshee, TNT and S3 owners that "serious" damage is forthcoming if he follows to form on his notions of the world. Religion can be a very radical and contradictory science at the best of times...so take it with a grain of salt. Now, where is that "empty light bulb socket ?". ;-] .

    P.S. The thermal tape covering the Rage 128 and air pocket between the tape and chip surface will result in a insulating effect that will raise the temperature by containing the heat. This effect is used to good measure by placing thin transparent plastic sheeting over windows, made by 3M, in the winter time to keep the temperature warmer in the house during the winter time. Here is an article on the heat/temperature characteristics of the Banshee and here is a picture of a modified unit taking up 3 PCI slots to keep it cool. Sorry about all the mudslinging at good products...No further comment. Tom ?

  • I updated my terse 3D for dummies section with some info on fourth generation video chipsets and force fed the "trilinear thread" issue onto that page just to sum up what is probably one of the longest discussion group threads that I have ever seen. Bottom line is the TNT and i740 are faking "trilinear filtering" to exagerate benchmark numbers. The Banshee chip apparently uses this technique as well. It is not exactly cheating as it gives some visual improvement but it is not "trilinear filtering". A glossary of 3D terms can be found on that page for the uninitiated. This technique will probably be adopted as a user enabled function on the Rage 128 but will be called LOD Dithering.

    Another raging/raving Rage 128 Review by Gamers Depot. I have mentioned this point before but significant testing and development with Socket 7 based boards has been done with Rage 128. One of the difficulties was to recognize the 32MB of memory by setting the "AGP aperture" set to 64MB. One aspect of the Rage 128 not covered in reviews is the testing of the OpenGL ICD has been done on many Professional Workstation class applications. Note that the concept of an ICD offers the possibility of supporting advanced features such as "multitexturing". Game specific versions of OpenGL utilize subsets of OpenGL, called mini-GL, due to reduce requirements. an ICD may/may not be faster but offers the possibility of using more of the hardware capability for a larger set of the 3D functions used in applications byond games. All subset function being equal, it offers the potential for significant "overall" speedup. The mini-GL is similar to the 100 meter sprint vs the decathlon. Donovan Bailey may be the fastest man on earth but only in one race. He may finish dead last in the overall decathlon.

    Some problems typically seen in ICD OpenGL testing can be traced to common OpenGL binaries controlled by SGI/Microsoft. It is usually easier if we provide a workaround in our driver which we later need to unfix when their code is fixed. Back to heat non-issue. Many OEM's have come in shaking their heads asking how we manage to get this chip to run acceptably without a heatsink. The Rage 128 chip has the lowest heat/power dissipation of any 3.5 or fourth generation chip with a little help from laptop/portable technology. Present air flow rates are sufficient enought to cool Pentium II CPUs and K6 CPUs will be more than adequate to handle the small relative heat production of the Rage 128.

  • Dec 13, 1998
    In case you've been in your bomb shelter for the last few days, a ton of great reviews on 8 of 9 sites have been written on production release versions of the next ATI Rage Fury card based upon the Rage GL chipset.

    Brian Hook's .plan file updated his benchmark rendering rates for the Q3 Arena engine, this is what he had to say:

  • I have narrowed down by Digital camera down to the Epson PhotoPC 550. It is an economical ($199) with good image quality unit with standard 1MB memory configuration that can be upgraded to 4MB for 146 pictures. The three akaline batteries are engineered to operate up for up to 1,000 pics by taking away unecessary features such as flash and LCD panel. I'll be checking into Linux support. See the following review. How does it compare to the state of the art ? See here for an article from C't. I applaud Epson for making good tradeoffs such as omitting flash, LCD display, and TV-out. I think I'll throw one in my backpack and go hike around Euroupe for a few months. Fuji? Kodak ? Minolta ? Casio ? Nikon ? Canon?...are you guys listening ?

  • Music Boulevard is one great recorded music resource categorizing biographies/discographies, and reviews of major artists. How I missed it till now is a story in itself. It is simply amazing. Ricky Lee Jones could never be mistaken for a Spice Girl, but I could not help remarking on a incredible album of Jazz standards with Charlie Haden called Pop Pop. The recording and playing of the Bass by Haden is just awesome. The recording was made using tube mikes and it is one of the sweetest sounding recordings I have ever heard...providing Ricky Lee's voice has grown on you. Give it to a fan of Jazz Legends (Xmas?) such as Cole Porter, Sammy Cahn, Oscar Brown Jr., and even Jimi Hendrix. Here is a list of articles on this amazing musician. From my last music post, those of you wanting to know more about Bruce Cockburn, click here

  • Dec 12, 1998
    My final rant for today is about "neutrality" and "apples-to-apples" comparisons. I can honestly see and realize that I will have obvious biases for a company and its products if I work for that company. What concerns me are Jekyl and Hyde transformations of people whose "reputations for objective reporting preceded them" and for whatever reasons stop being so. I have respect for 3Dfx and their VooDoo products which set the 3D gaming and hardware industry on its ear when it was introduced two years ago. Much of the performance gains were due to a highly optimized proprietary interface called Glide which just plain performed better than Direct3D. Back to the present. Tom's recent review of the ATI Rage Fury focussed on 1) Heat and 2) Optimized game setting menus which he became almost indignant and nasty in tone. The twist here is that these issues have always been with VooDoo products and if you read the reviews...the tone is "markedly" different. Why adopt the high moral ground on a new product with an issue that is markedly less severe than in other competing products that he finds totally acceptable. I smell politics.

    His reviews of 3Dfx VooDoo1/2 and Banshee products make dismissive or no comments about excessive heat and the tweaked proprietary GLIDE drivers and optimized game settings. This is a bit like the Mac vs PC debate of whether to go with closed designs or open ones. Each has their advantages. Brian Hook best summed it up recently when he discussed valid comparisons. Thresh or Brett Jacobs is the author of the Quake "Crusher" level, acquaitance of Tom, and a user of Banshee products and this is what he had to say about the heat. Tom remains eerily quiet about the whole issue. Last, Tom's like minded (See Feb 15 entry) buddy Alex "Sharky" Ross's site called http://www.sharkyextreme.com gave a rousing review of the Rage Fury. Can measurements/comments be made about temperature be made on TNT, G200, Banshee and Savage3D by Tom as well. Can Mr Hyde turn back to Mr Jeckyl ?...stayed tuned. End of rant.

  • I think the defacto ATI message board found at 3DGaming run by Alan Dang served a very useful function. Although other ATI sites have their own variants of how a board should be designed, I found Alan's to get the job done. With his ISP limiting his bandwidth by shutting him down until next month, it would be useful if all of the ATI webmasters voted on one site for everyone to converge on one site to minimize the amount of time we all spend hopping around....whoa!!! Alan's FPS site is back on line and so is his discussion forum. Sorry RageOn but I'm an old dog who likes his bone...you do run a pretty message board.

  • John Coates spotted a error in my NAD 3020 modification article. Figure 3 has a missing connnection to the base of the NPN buffer transistor driving the Pre-out stage. It should be connected in exactly the same way as Figure 2. Note: I have just uploaded a corrected Figure...continue modifying :)
    Thanks John.

  • Dec 11, 1998
    3 freshly minted reviews from Tom, Kyle and Alan for a total of nine. ATI is batting 8 for 9. Tom Pabst was the only one who gave it less than two thumbs up. Truthfully, I smell politics...bigtime? You might say so. What gives ? I put out a caustic rebuttal to Tom's comments on heat in his review but I took it down after 5 minutes. For Tom's benefit, I created a special page (just for him) where I will not "pull my punches". Tom, you know where to look It just isn't worth my or my readership's time.

  • Anand has been reviewing the various web reviews of the Rage 128 and he gave a knod to two others as good reviews ..Tom's review...not suprisingly... was not one of them:

  • See Dec 7 news for updated link to all nine reviews. It waa Graeme Bennett of The Computer Paper who wrote an article called A closer look at the world's "fastest" graphics chip back at the end of November. He scooped everybody and is also one of the reasons for the new ICD OpengGL that was just released for the Rage Pro that supports robust multi-texturing. The Rage Pro just keeps on getting better.

    For those who have just hopped onto the Rage 128 Fury bandwagon...here are some early background info of the chip.

  • Dec 9, 1998
    The huge interest in the Rage Fury (Rage 128) has Alan Dang of 3DGaming gobbling more than his assumed allocation of bandwidth from his service provider as the web community fires hit after hit on his site. He will be down for a while until he sorts out these issues of bandwidth with his provider. Alan, I will cross post your review if you like.

    Why does ATI leave Vsync "ON"? It is a quality measure that can be more readily scene in slow walkthroughs of 3D scenes. See Paul Hsieh's explanation

  • Dec 7, 1998
    ATI has simul-punted....Rage 128 cards are landing everywhere...
    1. Super 7 compatability has arrived....and title of best 2d/3d card of 1998 Anand's review...I think the kid will pull an all nighter...cheers!!!
    2. Heaven...Sharky's in heaven...
    3. Mondo...Mondo...Marcia/Barry of Adrenaline Vault and authors of the PC Upgrade and Repair Bible do the right by the Rage 128.
    4. Alan of 3DGaming Rage 128 review. Temporary home of 3DGaming and review is now at Standford
    5. "...kickes some major ass..." 3Dhardware review
    6. Comments by Bjorn's 3D World
    7. First impressions...Drop Vead Dorgeous!!! AGN News. Full review here.
    8. Lots of pictures and a review at RageOn by Kyle Strsbourg.
    9. Doctor Tom Pabst's review. Seems like Tom's elbow is acting up...he seems very irritated in the review above... Must be the valium he is taking. In the end it is just a video card and Xmas is just around the corner. Enjoy.
    10. Phil Rogers and Brian Hook talk about the 32-bit performance of the Rage Fury.

  • Dec 4, 1998
    Phil's @3d internet address has changed. This excellent web site has had me confused for the last while...It seemed to work on and off and I blamed it on the Internet Provider. All is well, the Brotherhood of Rage has reclaimed a lost soulmate.

    While I am at it....Alan Dang runs a ATI centric site with his primary link found here. When his site first started up about a year ago, there were very few ATI sites and none with a message board/forum. As a result, my links pointed directly to this forum page. Now here is the confusing part. There is a ATI news page that is a selection off the main page menu that reads If you have already read this then move on into the News section. It should be one of the main menu items. Click to this page and you find out (by scrolling) that the news is further broken down into Official ATI News, Software News, Hardware News, Driver News, and Other News. There should be a navigation menu at the top of this page with links to the various sections. Last if are not a hardcore Rank and File ATI fan, there is the daily news news

    ....sign PeAK, unofficial motherhen of ATI sepcific web page design.

    P.S. Send me back comments on my broken links and how I might better organize this site.

  • Bruce Cockburn has played a major role in Music scene over the last twenty seven years and I couldn't help linking the recent news on the web by two major web sites (Anand, MaximumPC and SharkyExtreme about pending ATI Rage 128 card reviews to a song he wrote called Rumours of Glory . There is a line from the song that goes ... like gold but better...rumours of glory . Most of the Retail Channel was being sucked dry by the huge demand in the OEM channel gearing up for the Xmas rush with drop-in board solutions. Rumours of Glory first appeared on the Humans album dealing with our common humanity. Bruce has been able to put out a new album almost without fail in every year from 1970 to 1997. Humans was release in 1980 showcasing his unique coupling of an acoustic band music with heavy influences from the Jazz scene.

  • If you want to follow some of the discussion relvolving around about how the Rage 128 GL chipset is able to maintain performance in 32 bit resolution compared to the 50% drop off in the Nvidia TNT part in 32 bit vs 16 bit, then click here. Here is an image comparing a 32 bit image to a 16 bit image. Note that some the of latest cards from other companies using non-Rage 128 GL chipsets are distributing prototype cards with SGRAM parts to up their benchmarks and then using lower performance/lower clocked SDRAM parts to the retail chain. The ATI Rage GL chipset is able to use SDRAM in an efficient manner to essentially offer SGRAM performance in a SDRAM package. This results in lower cost and higher memory footprints. All of the cards tested to date and demoed have been SDRAM solutions.

  • There have been many people who are now putting Linux onto their high end laptops. Dell Computer's Inspiron laptop has several sites discussing support of Linux/Xfree86 on the mobile Pentium II unit. Thank goodness it is running on the power efficient technology of the Rage LT Pro˙ chipset that pioneered low power design now used in the Rage 128 GL chipsets. Expect to see a Rage LT Pro section on these pages reviewing the perfect Rage LT Pro laptop for use with Linux. High on the list will be battery life. The candidate laptops now number well over 15 including Dell Inspiron 7000, Compaq 5600, AST Ascentia,HP Omnibook 7100, Sceptre Soundx6500, Nec Versa, Fijuitsu 990TX, etc. In the interim take a look at recent reviews where the Rage LT Pro has taken the laptop market by storm. To get an idea of how efficient the Rage LT Pro is in power, some of the computers today are getting about 3 to 3.5 hours on a 4,500mA-hour battery that is equivalent to 18 1.5V AA batteries. The Rage Pro chipset itself would run on two of these batteries for an hour. To find out more about the laptop scene click here and here.

    November 98 News

  • Nov 29, 1998
    Step by step instructions for modifying the high level section of the NAD 3020 integrated amplfier can be found in my audio pages. Included is a scan JPEG image of the high level preamp section containing the variable gain, tone controls, muting and balance controls. You will have to be handy with a soldering iron and have some electronics background or just be really careful.

    • Just a note about the senstivity of amplifiers to setup. Having taken the NAD 3020 apart and putting things back into my system, I let the unit warm up playinging some background music for about two hours. I put on a cut from Bonnie Raitt's CD called "Too Soon to Tell" and everything sounded flat and uninteresting. I then went and disconnected the RECOUT (tape monitor output) from the 3020 and reversed the power plug....all is sweet and well again. I'll investigage further....things cannot be this sensitive ???

  • Nov 26, 1998
    Want to recommend a low cost video card to your uncle ? The latest 5.30 drivers were tested out on ATI's low cost 4MB Xpert XL video card with EDO memory. Rage On tested it and the card ran smoother that the VooDoo2 on the Tresspasser game and was able to run fine in six player deathmatches in Quake2. The worst case crusher demo using 12 players ran smoothly in 800x600 at 14 fps. I find 14 fps to be an adequate minimum for occasional family gamers. In more realistic timedemos (DEMO1), you can expect about 20 fps. Not too shabby.
  • Got time on your hands this weekend and looking for a good COMDEX summary ? Marcia and Barry Press offer a refreshing writing and coverage of hardware beyond just reporting more numbers and hype. I'll be adding them to my links section. Here is M&B's COMDEX summary ...the Rage 128 was on their picks and they will be covering this card when it debuts. John Dvorak from PC Magazine took a digital camera to COMDEX and here is his coverage of the event in pictures. Enjoy.

    • Last, guess what happens when you type http://www.rage128.com.

  • With the DOJ investigation of Microsoft monopolostic practices, major computer vendors as no longer have their hands tied as tightly and as a result, Dell, Gateway and Compaq are now able to offer Linux pre-installed. Alternative operating systems seem to have reach the status of major trend for 1999. This means they will support the Dual Boot options possible on PC hardware by allowing the user to boot up either to Win98 or to Linux. The support of Linux by major OEMs will gurantee Linux compatible hardware as a requirement in new systems. One great way to follow operating system developments( Linux, Java, QNX, Red Hat) is to read OS News. Before I hang up my love-in with Linux this weekend, you Linux newbies and scaredy cats should have a peak at Simple End User Linux aims to address common complaints about Linux's usage by the average Win95 user regarding installation, increasing the selection of applications and a standardized desktop. It seems as if part of the solution will lie with Caldera which has recently opened up usage of KDE to Open source status. Read about it here The problem above should be solved by a watershed development by Red Hat which will allow users to boot a live Linux Kernel off of a CDROM. This will allow users to try Linux and eventually opt for a faster and more permanent dual boot option on their hard disk.
  • The latest state of the art 3 pound Laptop from Sony called the VAIO 505gx runs Linux. The unit comes with 32 MB of memory and a 2GB hard drive. 10 years ago my highend Apollo CAD workstation ran on 8MB of memory and kept me warm when the thermostat kicked to a lower setting after 5PM. I think I want move away from the hardware area and focus on software development...one thing for sure is that I would not complain about the hardware! My idea for the perfect portable would be to have it run 7 hours on a charge ...meaning I would trade off processor power for battery life. There is a disconnect somewhere thinking about about running CAD apps on the porch of a cottage.

    • Expect to keep a backward compatable legacy video driver for 16 bit 3.1 applications to run with the newer Win98 and newer 32 bit video drivers. The movement toward fully 32 bit code (anyone rember Pentium Pro's 32 bit optimized architecture and disspointment in Microsofts heavy use of 16 code ) is upon us for better performance. One example is Intels Indeo video player which needs to be updated with the latest release of ATI's Rage Pro drivers.

    The continued support and incremental improvements in performance with updated driver technology and lastest generation's CPUs is making the Rage Pro a very viable video card. Pentium II 233 units already enable it to exceed VooDoo games performance handily with great 2D and multimedia TV tuner and TV out support along with better/continued OpenGL support. Unreal or Quake 3 Arena are targetted in development to run near 30 fps on very high end video chips, like the Rage 128, and computer systems. But except for these two ambitious "games", the Rage Pro provides for state of the art real world performance at a very fair price. Remember that the average lifetime of a TV in North America is 15 years. The average car gets updated every 4 pushing 3 years. The average computer today far exceeds what the average consumer needs to do the books, process a report, or surf the internet two years ago. Computer manufacturers are now extending the life of computer lines and taking advantage the extended life of video chipsets. So if occasional gaming is your fancy get a Rage Pro. If you want the very best gaming performance or Windows NT OpenGL performance...get the Rage 128. It should have a very long life ( recent announcements by Sun, Fijitsui, IBM, in excess of the two years (and counting) for the Rage Pro. The Rage Pro on running a 32 bit Unix driver on a Sun workstation runs like stink. The mature OpenGL runs a slew of CAD OpenGL application packages while the game developers sort out the 32 bit migration funnies of wrong palettes and visual funnies.

  • Nov 21,1998
    Performance Numbers of Rage 128 at COMDEX formatted/taken from 3Dimensional 128. The 2D and 3D numbers are fully competitive but the interesting thing for me is the OpenGL performance under NT and the 20% CPU utilization by the DVD software. The DVD hardware assist makes a big difference. While on the subject of Winbench 99, the driver writers using i740(Read3D Starfighter) and TNT(STB Velocity 4400) have already been resorting to "false optimizations" and "benchmark test cheats" by dropping pixels and frames to raise benchmark numbers. Read about how PC Mag caught them by filming the chips on videotape during the benchmark.
    •  

    3D Winbench 99

    3D Mark 99

    Unreal

    CDRS-03 NT4

    Business Winbench NT4

    High End Winmark 99

    DVD CPU Headroom

    ATI Rage 128

    575

    1834

    35 fps

    69.3

    200

    374

    79%

    Riva TNT

    480

    1424

    30 fps

    40.2

    90.1

    367

    52%

    Banshee

    467

    1694

    29 fps

    11.4

    183

    352

    52%

    G200

    323

    1199

    17 fps

    9.9

     162

    344

    52%

    Savage 3D

    Failed

    1308

    20 fps

    11.8

    78.1

    284

    52%

  • Best short summary of COMDEX to date is by TCP. Read about Linux embracing Win95 and the Rage 128.
  • Being open or transparent is a life decision. Sometimes the decision to not be is not yours. For example, if you worked for a bank, you must protect the financial status you have on each and everyone who walks into your bank. Education and software development have been two areas were mankind has been able to leverage itself by standing on the shoulders of predecessors and open standards to raise itself. Being closed and competing for market share of information/products is part of the North American free enterprise system. Whilst in school, I came across "private" individuals who hoarded knowledge. Ask them a question was like pulling teeth. In the end I followed the unselfish path exemplified by teachers by sharing their knowledge. The recent preoccupation with patents and hindrance suits sometimes makes me wonder where those "private" individuals ultimately ended up in our society? Today I sit at a X11 terminal clicking a mouse due to a ground swell of ideas at Xerox Parc back in the 80s. Thank you.

    • In the computer area, Linux code released adopted the sharing aspect exemplified by Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalis. It has been a watershed for innovative computer systems based upon common hardware. The release of DOOM source code will paved the way for new leaders and developers who will hopefully pass the torch. This site has recently been upgraded for faster loading and quicker surfing of the main page. Email me your comments if you would like any further changes.

  • ATI activism is much in evidence on the net. Here is penguin wake up call for Linux Support. Discussions within ATI in relation to 3D and multimedia (TV-in and TV-out) support on alternate platforms such as Linux are happening. The PC world owes a lot and can learn a lot from IBM. They opened the PC architecture in the 80's and lost/shared some of their prestige with others in the world. Here we are today, a decade and a half later, and they have come back and are stronger, leaner and fitter than ever and doing cutting edge work in "copper chips", high density hard drives and advanced CPU design. Bill Gates could take a leaf from IBM and allow another operating system to compete for consumer acceptance. Their is enough room for another operating system in addition to NT.

    My prediction is that Operating system development is going to stagnate under Win95 and NT . Under Linux, new hardware can have operating support by dynamically allocating kernel extensible software modules. Not need to recompile binaries or replace the operating system kernel core. Modules obsolete the need to maintain one huge database of
    operating system code and allows for co-development. It is correct by construction versus by logging bug fixes: The operating system maintenance programming task for Win95 must be more one of accounting for side effects than the art of programming and system design. The "blue screen of death" is a failure to anticipate and lock out all these possible side effects intrinsic to NT. DOS legacy side effects are handled by dropping it like the LP phonograph was dropped in favour of CDs...most 17 year olds have never heared a LP or DOS...they do not care to. My dentist's dental database is run on DOS and he does care. In Linux, DOS is open source software that can be run and maintained by developers and not one closed guarded binary. My dentist will rejoice.

    • There are already GUI frontends under Linux which emulate the "look and feel" of WIn95 to perform common operations of copying files, opening software and doing all the Win95 for dummies stuff, if this is what you like. Linux is about choice and people are finding that if they like Win95 they do not need to change. At COMDEX this year, recent developements now have Linux able to open and read MS Office 95 files and boot up off a CDROM with a Win95 interface as reported by The Computer Paper magaizine.

    Releasing new binaries of classic office suites is possible and companies should learn how if that will make them happy and learn how develop commerical software under Linux. Not everything, especially applications, needs to be Open Source.

    The official ATI policy regarding programming details of multimedia hardware is stated on the ATI web page. Various web sites are asking for a change in this:

    1. TV-tuner petition discussion thread.
    2. ATI petition for more programming information. These guys love ATI products that they have taken a "tough love" approach to asking and supporting a product they believe in. They need information. or some sort of Linux SDK. Sometimes it gets a little ugly but I applaud them all for getting organized and getting down their thoughts in one place. Sometimes you need to get a lot of people up to speed on issues and this site will help.
    3. Linux Software Wish list Want to start a small software company. Go here to see what user's are willing to pay for on their Linux machines.
  • Here is Gordon Grigor in the ATI garb at COMDEX The man plays software like a stradivarus but he needs to learn how to keep his food down when rouging it in the woods. His favourite canoe paddling stroke leaves a lot to be desired but I hear he plays a mean game of Black Jack....D'ont worry, Gordo, your status is still "persona grata" in Las Vegas and at COMDEX. It's "J" to go right except when you are on the left :)
  • In Tornto, Canada, we have primarily two different types of newspapers: One we all buy on Boxing Day (Dec 26 which moved to Dec 27) for all the sales ads and the new bikini clad sunshine girl that greets you on page 3 (High school habits are hard to break). The other is the Globe and Mail. It is a bit like watching the X-Files or Seinfeld. There are good writers with insightful commentary in a well laid out format dealing with daily world, local, and mundane issues: Fewer advertisements but real brain food. I lied, there are actually three papers. The Toronto Star is for those who cannot make up their minds. What does this all have to do with ATI ? Not much except that on the web, I have much more to choose from beyond the three daily choices offered to me by the newprint media. Here are the Sun and Globe versions of various "compute" related threads on the net dealing with Framerate, Prototype silicon and hype, and Big Heatsinks/Honduras:
    1. Framerate
    2. Prototype Silicon and Hype
    3. Big heat sinks and the Honduras
  • Nov 17, 1998
    The "New Breed for Speed" is a.k.a the Rage 128 was shown to the general public at COMDEX. The timing of the launched coinciding with the general release of Winbench 99, Unreal co-development, and 3D Mark 99. Here are a few links previewing the Rage 128:
  • What looks like a CDROM, plays CDROMs but is not a CDROM. The answer is DVD. I had a close look at a 5.25" add-in Toshiba CDROM unit today and I think it will provide a discontinuity in PC functionality once the "write" aspects get sorted out. It provides for the possibiliy of quick backups or large harddisks and even the possibility of use as a boot medium and store for applications. I am looking forward to backing up my hard disk (viruses anyone ?) and applications to a DVD unit and then using my hardisk for random access of data files. The Rage 128 support for hardware decode of DVD should allow the enough CPU power to process this stream on the fly for some interesting possibiliites.
  • Linux and alternative operating systems can expect to see a new openess regarding ATI co-development due to the rapid acceptance of these systems. For those who pine for this....keep writing to ATI about your wishes....it may come before Xmas.
  • Nov 5, 1998
    I was in on a conspiracy. Several days before the ATI Conspiracy link was revealed to the internet world, strategic leaks were made to several ATI internet (including yours truly) sites of the impending new information page covering free game demos, tweakers, developer information, game patches, interviews with game developers and some gas additive called OVERDRIVE . You have been warned...I plead guilty to conspiracy.

    • The Rage 128 will create new paradigms due to added useful features such as digital broadcast, DVD hardware, Digital TV, HDTV. Video processing poses a significant demand on memory when compared to and in direct competition to traditional 2D and 3D window displays. The RagePro was architect to handle the demands of NTSC in 800x600 information resolution with scaling in the backend to enable full window display to any pixel resolution without dropping frames,stalling, or overheating as other 2D and 3D applications multitask in separate windows. Similarly the 128 wide internal bus and new internal caches have been implemented (like the Celeron 300A) to increase bandwidth so that HDTV 1920x1440 (4:3 aspect ratio) can be handled in the Rage 128. The Rage 128 will allow you to map a video image onto a 3D texture (3D paint) onto say the shirt of some Quake character. In this way you could watch the evening news off the shirt of some Alien as you chased him down in a DeathMatch. The market for a chip with 4th generation 3D capability and the above features will grow very quickly with DVD and could be the basis for defining what a 5th generation video/graphic chipset should be. Present delays are deliberate and have partly to do with foundry qualification procedures to ensure meeting high volume delivery in a cost effective manner and to and to showcase it with some unique recent ATI developments at COMDEX. Theater anyone ? Expect a cost effective and versatile chip with true 4th generation 3D performance, extended multimedia hardware for workstation-class OpenGL, large memory footprint support, TV-in, TV-out, DVD, MPEG-2, DTV and HDTV in a cool running package.

  • How does Linux figure into 3D, the fastest growing operating system in the world today. The same question was posed to the PC World a few years ago. X is 2D GUI interface used and supported by all UNIX computers. For games, it has been shown that only a small backend part of the 3D transformation process needed to be implemented in hardware to gain a significant perfromance boost. This is known as mini-GL or the original 3D capability of Direct3D. Lighting and transformation were basically software inventions to standardized common calls that could vary from one development package to another (Id software engine, ATI's CIF frontend , RenderMorphics/MS frontend, MESA OpenGL). Because MESA is purely a software implementation of OpenGL found in X, both the frontend and the backend are done in software. This means that OpenGL must somehow meet the 2D interface which in turn talks to the hardware. The following discusses the interface between OpenGL and X called GLX. For more information click here . With the release of the Rage 128 it would be great if the 3D register specification for the Rage Pro could be released to the Linux community for what might arguably be called one of the most common 3D chipsets found in computers today. Another commercial iniative offering OpenGL binaries is the OGL initiative. currently supporting the following chipsets.
  • Partner Linux, Java and an efficient StrongARM microprocessor architecture and you have what might be called the PC of the future. Take a look at Corel's Computer