^/\^ PeaK /\^/\

For me lack of "sleep/stress/worrying/lack of productivity/ mid life crisis/right of passage" are all words to describe the same thing. It been a focal point of discussion between me and my older brother but the essence is the inability to concentrate and to feel energize. I like to thank him for lending more than a ready ear. The experience has had its good points (yes it seemed to get worse before better) and I can now understand better why people get "grumpy". I'll keep you up to date on the experiment and will open up a new "hidden" page for those are going through a similar "time warp". Yes it is embarassing when close friends detect a difference in the person they thought they knew. I have said it before "it is easier sometimes to tell total strangers on a bus your deepest darkest secrets" ...so to all my acquaintences reading this stuff...SCRAM!

The Rage Theatre decode (input) provide and extract the signal from your Cable, Camcorder, Digital camera NTSC output and whatever it misses will be digitally filtered and outputted for viewing or stored for archival/editorial purposes. On a really good TV, images generated from a Camcorder will have an almost HDTV-like quality due to higher bandwidth and lower noise capability of the video-in path.

ATI software engineers have working with UnReal to sort out advanced 3D support issues like multi-texture support. ATI now has a mature OpenGL team sorting out the Worstation CAD application program problems with acknowleged bugs in the newly minted SGI/Micorosoft OpenGL codebase. The turnaround from Microsoft is not surprisingly...wanting/trying and even driver developers have to fit into their release scheduels. 3Dfx may continue to have the fastest subset/mini-GL/games-only/ OpenGL for Quake due to early participation/co-development but you will never see a mainstream Workstation OpenGL based program run on their hardware. The Rage 128 has already caused more that a few dropped jaws as OEMs continue to drop their favourite OpenGL programs in and run them with barely a hitch.

It is easy to overmargin a chip for just 3D performance (by adding extra pipeline stages to meet timing) but the tradeoff is extra heat and lack of silicon area for other useful features. The production driver development is ready and when all is said and done, the "3D FerrariGauge" will be part of the overall excellence of the Rage128. I leave it to the media to educate themselves about why "two Voodoos w'ont do" if one is sufficient to play and to delve a bit more into broader implications and uses of video and graphics information. The silver lining for those who stick with ATI will be Workstation business-solid OpenGL drivers, Broadcast TV support via Genlocking, Hardware DVD decode assist, HDTV companion products, and performance OpenGL via hardware direct walk of OpenGL vertext lists. What you will not see in the reviews for a while "RealWorldGauge" which in my book puts ATI in a select class on its own. Expect similar promises at Comdex as competitors re-think their video chipset offerings, alound. ATI has already shown all of the above in action in September and the polish at COMDEX should be impressive. Expect to see the generation of computers that IBM, Sony, Fujitsu, Compaq HP, and Dell want to release in the near future pass a bit on the "FerrariGague" and wait for ATI on the "4x4Gauge"...I got my fingers crossed...just in case. You should be seeing independent benchmark testing very soon from major PC magazines.

The acquisition of Chromatics puts ATI in a rare group of companies that will be able to selectively merge the inherent programming flexibility of DSP approaches into audio, video, and graphics. It will be a killer combination. The hardware architects are already wispering to each other on how to ease the programming model of existing Chromatics's hardware . ATI should be able to put Chromatics over the hump of their "close but no cigar" architecture which captured the mindset of the computer industry in the early years. This is a significant acquistion...make no mistake about it.

Here are two pictures from Rage Dawning showing complex highlights rendered by the Rage128 chip. The mountain scene shows a lot of detail. I added three more links for new Rage 128 articles. More reports about TNT running extremely hot.

A great stride was taken up by ATI last week in the area of hardware multimedia development in the prototyping labs at ATI. You will have to wait until further comment from ATI on this development.

After having played through all my relevant CD music, I'm going to keep these little babies. I could live with them for the next 3 months without touching them but I'm getting itching just reading what others have to say and have done to these LX-5 units:

1. LX-4 predecessor and modifications that started all this
2. Image of LX-5 at this site
3. LX-5 reviews
4. Crossover/speaker mods

Septermber 98 News

Click here for a small picture of a prototype Rage 128 board. Where do these guys get GIFs of these prototype cards from , anyways? In the course of gathering this information and comparing this lastest chipset, one cannot help but be whelmed by the progress in 3D chipsets. The Rage 128 is definitely a lot more than just about 3D graphics and games but you can be sure that TuroK, Quake2, Forsaken, and Incoming are up and running today. Expect to see maturation in the application game code on Unreal's part as they learn to take advantage of multi-texturing. No longer will VooDoo enjoy the advantage of being solely able to exploit multi-texture hardware as graphics drivers/DirectX 6/game code are jointly co-developed on drivers now sporting beta implementations of advanced hardware features: Stencil buffers and multi-texture to name a few.

It is an exciting time at ATI to see long term efforts converge simultaneously into 8 million transistors and to then have some of the details laid out...what is even more amazing is the yet to be disclosed capabilities enabled by this chip in the realm of Digital Broadcast TV and HDTV. DVD will be a highly exploited media(data, images, mpeg, sound) that will tax video chips and software development....the Rage 128 hardware awaits it deployment. I'll apologize upfront for my biased enthusiasm but I hope it is contagious for your long term benefit by having you wait long enough (how about no later than a month prior Xmas :) ) for its release. In the meantime have a look at the possible uses of TV-in/TV-out/multimedia ports features for security monitoring, feeding goldfish, to producing a CD-ROM multimedia high school graduation "flashback" via the All-in-Wonder Pro. For those who persist on gaming, take a look at Alan Dang's early impressions/review of Unreal running under ATI hardware with D3D, not yet optimized for extended DirectX 6 features. Later.

1. PC World....Grace Aquino covers the product line.
2. Electronic Buyer's News....Mark Hachman...remember Cable set-top boxes ? Rage Pro technology will merge Internet and TV singals in separate windows using a nice compact OS via Windows CE. ATI's display solutions up through Rage 128 GL are discussed.
3. Gamasutra...A Game developer magazine mentions the ultra-thin driver layers and the OnNow power down technology that allowed for a heatsink-less and fan-less chip design. SGI has seen prototypes and offers comments on ATI's fourth generation chip.
4. RageOn 128 comeents... Cybertitan has a 3D centric description of the Rage128 features. I have an animated GIF of various Rage 128 prototype boards but need to clear this with ATI for release first...in the mean time go to the above site for a preview of a small low res GIF image of a prototype Rage 128 board. It is green with the standard black patches and the dreaded heatsink are nowhere to be seen :<)
5. Computer Retail Week... Kristen Kennedy discusses the 8 million transistors with Phil Eisler of ATI and quotes Jon Peddie on the performance positioning of the Rage 128 relative to VooDoo2 technology.

If you look at the DirectX5 and DirectX6 Winbench benchmarks at Mercury, it is easy to see roughly where 3rd generation chips stood. As DirectX 6 will be the standard bearer, 3rd generation chips (Riva128, Rage Pro, Permedia2, Rendition) generatlly hover around the 1000 mark and below. Interim chips released in the April time frame (Riva ZX, G200, i740, etc) give a Winbench numbers boost greater than 1000 but less than 1500. The fourth generation chips (in terms of performance) give greater than 1500 Winbench scores and this select company includes the Rage 128 and Riva TNT. Before I get to the comparisons, I like to discuss an issue I'll call zero margin overlocking. This may be a carryover of mine from the Apple Mac days when the earliest McIntosh computers were absolutely quiet due to the fan-free design.

1. Environment Margining
   The best case solution for a volume chip solution is to offer a heatsink-free design meeting performance targets at extreme voltage/ambient conditions. CPU's must typically meet environmental marging because computers can be found on the loading docks of a cold Minnesota meat packer or beside a warn blast furnace of some steel factory.
2. Zero Margin Overclocking
   CPU's are easily overclocked due to proper "environmental marginging". The average consumer typically runs regulated supplies at room temperature operation which allow for users to tradeoff and tradeoff the margin (possible operation at extended conditions) by overclocking the chips beyond manufacturer settings for room-only operation. The tradeoff is that the system may become unstable when a brownout happens or if the air conditioner shuts down. Looking at the sheer number of overclocking pages, forums, postings leads me to believe that North Americal has either a very good power distribution grid and/or most homes have air conditioning.

Zero Margining Overclocking is indicated in two ways typically. Instability during normal operation (Think Riva). Hot case temperatures even in the case of heatsinks (Think VooDoo). Be especially suspicicious if "clock adjustment utilities" exists when a new chip is released. ATI products run stable and cool to the touch and have never used heatsinks. Distirbution of clock adjustment utilities is strictly forbiddien.

• Rage Pro: Fully competitive with i740 (what I call a generation 3.5 technology. These are chips release in the interim April 98 time frame). with the latest release "Lonsdale" driver. It has gotten so good that the "Turbo" designation (nee 3.5) might be justified. Most of the games (Forsaken@800x600, X-demo@1024x768, Turok@640x480) run at 40 fps. Worst result(Incoming) runs better than the minimum "24 fps" to eliminate choppiness. Quake needs some co-development to take advantage of the multi-texture support offered in both DirectX 6, Lonsdale and in the OpenGL ICD.
• i740 Good chip features and quality. Chip absolutely needs a heat sink to reach design performance targets while meeting environmnetal margining. I wonder where the performance would have stood without heatsinking in an Apples to Apples comparison with other non-heat sunk products. Question of where driver support will come from for Windows NT and Win 98 if not Express or Starfighter card product. PCI solution requires expensive bridge chip solution. Already eclipsed by later and better 3.5 generation chips from Matrox and S3.
• G200 They are back and have good visual quality. Good example of what can be achieved in 0.35um technology. 64 bit external memory bus does not support new double data rate memories limiting memory bandwidth. Zero margin overclocking issues exist but a heatsink is required in the design.
• Savage 3D Top of the class 3.5 generation due to use of 0.25 um technology. 128 bit internal architecture only. 64 bit external interface does not support external double data rate memories. No idea zero margin issues but a heat sink is required in their prototype design. Near the release prototype stage. Main disadvantages are maximum 8 MB memory footprint limit and single texture unit. Reports of Lossy texture compression. Key OpenGL features not in hardware.
• Banshee DirectX 5 Winbench 98 numbers about 10% better than the Savage 3D based upon card based upon early prototype card putting it in the 3.5 generation classification. Based upon VooDoo1 and VooDoo2 products and user reports regarding hangs and hot heatsinks/fast memories, I would expect the recent Banshee numbers to come from "zero margined" 0.35 um technology. Just got a JPEG image of the Banshee and it not only has a heatsink but a fan...beware. Main disadvantages is pseudo AGP 1X scheme that behaves like faster PCI bus only. No direct execute mode. Limited to 16 bit rendering and one pipeline. Key OpenGL features not in hardware.
• Riva TNT 4th generation performance in 0.35um technology but hampered by speed/heat issues (ref1-anand, ref2-stb). No DDR memory support. My guess is that "Zero margining" hangs in the Riva 128 are no longer acceptable due to desire to more mainstream chip instead of a just being a 3D optimized gamer chip that hung under 2D applications. ATI chips are margined across all applications including MPEG-2, TV-out, 2D and 3D applications for stability first. Here is a link to a JPEG image of the just released Canopus TNT card. Note the combination fan/heatsink on at least a heatsink". I hope it will be a ball bearing unit cause the combination of the power supply/CPU/TNT fan should be quite an earful. Without a fan, you might expect TNT to explo...!!! ;) . Key OpenGL features not in hardware.
• Rage 128 4th generation chip in 0.25um technology than runs cool to the touch. The GL version comes with a 128 external bus for twice the memory bandwidth of 64 bit wide generation designs. 64 bit interface supports new DDR memories for equivalent memory bandwidth by two bits of information per clock cycle. Greater than 1500 Winbench performance today on prototype silicon. 4th generation muti-media extentions include hardware DVD/MPEG-2 decode. Expect robust "enviromental margining" that you have come to expect without a heat sink. Direct Walk of OpenGL vertex lists implemented in hardware.

Other than obviously putting on my hype hat for ATI, remember that this is the same page that says a 486 system running Linux makes for a great performing system for those who wish to more balanced computer usage in terms of 2D applications and software development. In this regard, I still think the Rage Pro chip makes for one of the best supported, applicaton stable, and cost effective quality video cards on the market with, currently, the best multi-media hardware support and quality. The Rage 128 evolves upon it and offers OpenGL hardware features (eg. direct walk of OpenGL Vertext Lists) to run Workstation OpenGL class applications which should make all those HP/SUN/SGI power users smile.

Beta release page announces 2nd version of Lonsdale Driver (version b37x ) released supporting DirectX 6. Release notes do not indicate reasons for quick update. Do you prefer a release quickly and release often schedule which seems to be the temporary course or would you rather upgrade/download (15 minutes) based upon information. I'll wait for others to report their findings/comparisons in FPS ATI forum. The FPS ATI discussion Forum has changed their links, but, the link on the ATI page is broken and not correct.... click here.

Rage128, Casa Loma, Cape Breton, Cavendish, Digby, Tiverton....Lonsdale. Theses are the names that lend convenience to the description of majestic images and in the case of ATI....the heart and soul of their latest creation. The release of details (CNET, TCP ) surrounding the Rage128 chip was held at at Casa Loma, a real castle finished in 1914 at a cost of 3.5 million dollars, complete with secret passage way. I live down the street only two blocks away and was away in the greener pastures of the Atlantic provinces of P.E.I, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia visiting the sites of Cape Breton (spectacular Mountains created along a Fault line) , Cavendish (monstrous and endless pictureque beaches made famous by Anne of Green Gables), Digby (a romantic 3 hour ferry ride from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick). Hurricane Danielle ended up with us at the same time in Cape Breton and we were unable to get a view of Bald Eagles or of whales swimming in the Atlantic.

Lonsdaleis the full Win95/98 driver set providing traditional 2D and 3D primitives (code that maps DirectX output to ATI hardware) for Rage Pro hardware interfacing to DirectX. DirectX must support older 3D applications calls but is free alter/improve/enlarge/re-architect the the interface to the ATI driver interface for improved speed and capability. It is all transparent to user providing he/she updates both DirectX and the compatable Win95/98 driver set from your card vendor. This basically means an avenue for the supporting the following initiatives:

• New 3D features such as multi-texture support or texture compression.
• Extentions mechanism for D3D as in OpenGL to cover those features not anticipated to be handled by today's graphics chips....lighting and transformation, anyone.
• Provisions for easier integration of new SGI/Microsoft OpenGL codebase and SGI/Microsoft initiatives.

My feeling from reading the responses of those who have tried it (ICD) is that concept of a general subset OpenGL was fine when the application developers and driver teams (i.e. 3Dfx) were working together with relatively stable interfaces to figure out what part of the application/driver fence to change for best efficiency via code archtiecture and design. Many of the Direct3D games, have seen a sizeable increase in framerate but it is unclear whether these were due to pending developmental releases in application or just due to improvements in the MS code, ATI code or all three (?). I have seen ATI's multi-texturing described as robust, but can tweaky/kludgy hardware specific code developments (ie. 3Dfx centric Quake/Opengl code optimiazations) have have a negative impact on different hardware implementations of similar features such as multi-texture support ? This is similar to the question of why a game, written to a device independent standard (such as OpenGL), needs a specific code release to support AMD 3DNow initiatives. Are the present transformation/lighting operations in Quake accomplished by OpenGL calls that are subsequently software/CPU computed or is it accomplished internally via the Quake engine, thus necessitating a AMD specific version of Quake ?

Finally, I have come to realize that much of gathering and dissemination of information around the "internet" is now handled by a number of ATI/Rage centric web sites that will allow the reader to hopefully make better comparisons and to pose pertinent questions. I will leave the bulk of this reporting to sister Rage Pro sites.

When I started my this site, it was in response about the lack of central repository regarding Linux video card configuration and setup for 2D Rage hardware. This evolved to helping support extentions to 2D Mach64 architecture bought on by non "watermark" based display update. I am sure similar issues will arise once again for the Rage128 chip and I will help focus there. Answers to questions about TV-out support, 3D support and DVD support can be found here. Questions about protecting hardware design might best be addressed by having individuals within ATI getting familarized with Linux internals and writing thin interfacing layers, such as Glide.