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ATI End User Recommendations

Nothing like a strong recommendation by a respected friend to ease the decision to buy a product. It has often been said that people spend more time shopping and researching a purchase for a Stereo sound systems than the do for a house. The same can be said for Video Graphics boards.

Below, I have links to various e-mail threads, discussion groups, forums that compare both the merits and faults of ATI products on their own and against other competing products on the basis of visual quality, viaual glitches/driver problems, 2D performance, 3D performance and features.

Perhaps one of the strongest advocates of ATI is Allan Cole on the newsgroup scene. He actually buys or has access to most of the new products (Riva, VooDoo, Stealth, etc) and has personally owned dozens of Video Graphics cards over the last few years. He has a very balanced and readable writing style that gets to the point.

1) Rage Pro Testimonials

  1. ATI Rage Pro news - Give ATI a break comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video Long Newsgroup reply by Allan Cole. An excellent comparative summary of RagePro against other Video boards. ATI's strengths in high quality TV-tuner upgrade, best MPEG video output, Linux compatability, and good 2D performance are covered. His position on gaming is pair up the RagePro with a VooDoo. Posted March 13, 1998
  2. Phil's comments A programming professional comments upon why he chose and bought cards based upon the RagePro chipset (Xpert@Play/Work). He runs a site called at 3D and I would classify him as a balanced person who plays games more often than he would like to admit. Ever wonder why people talk about detailed projects at work in front of blank looking guests when they are at home...Phil wonders why as well? Good FAQ, though, Phil....its nice to see people update their web pages from time to time. Just one second, If you haven't seen the December 1997 review by Boot Magazine, the you better click here. Just in case you thought "...and I bet Phil and Alan also watch the X-files on Friday nights"
  3. 3Dfx Rush Owner Comments Newsgroup post compares two cards in terms of framerate, image cripness and bugs on lowly P200. April 14, 1998. On a related CPU note, Alan Dang runs a great web site and posted this Evaulation of the Rage Pro running Quake2 on a P166 overlocked to to P187.5(2.5x75) using the Beta1 ATI OpenGL driver. Nice pictures.
  4. P2+RagePro=P2+VooDoo Anand has run a comprehensive set of benchmarks and concludes that the RagePro benefits more from P2 CPUs than the VooDoo chipset so that equivalent performance is achieved with a P2-233 (Next link shows 1.5 fps drop when switching from P2-300 to P2-233). P2-233+Rage Pro observations. For lower strength CPUs the performance swings in favor of the VooDoo. The problem centre around unoptimized Via VP-3 AGP driver and the unoptimized Beta1 OpenGL driver. Both Beta2 and Beta3 OpenGL drivers have increased performance with AGP.

  5. 3Dfx VooDoo owner tries RagePro OpenGL for kicks The converted preach back about playability of RagePro on P233MMX processors. I suspect the lack of texture thrashing and slightly better image quality may have a role. General comments in other posts are that RagePro cards give consistent framerate are preferable to higher overall framerates that are jerky at points. Posted April 16, 1998.
  6. Alan revises view on RagePro for Gaming. Alan is one of few people to actually own and try out Millenium II, Riva 128, Rendition 2100, Permedia2, i740, VooDoo boards using 2D, gaming, multi-media MPEG and TV-out performance under various resolutions and refresh rates as his yardstick. He has finally tried out the OpenGL driver and revises his stance on RagePro as acceptable for gaming without the requisite need to pair up with VooDoo, as he has recommended in the past. To understand why, See Item 4 by Anand on this page about P2+RagePro=P2+VooDoo.
  7. Nvidia stability and quality issues Post on April 11, 1998 by Allan replies to another Riva Post about his experiences with Riva128 cards and stable driver updates. Lower image quality of Riva discussed in more detail in December 1997 by Boot Magazine, see below:
  8. Final Reality User Results Final Reality is a gaming benchmark clear and simple. It is the collective effort of Cirrus Logic, S3, Nvidia, 3Dfx, ATI, Rendition, VNU Labs, and Remedy Entertainment. Perhaps the most objective benchmark there is in the industry right now. For a given CPU, Rage Pro chips in Xpert@Play/Work cards are posting top marks. If ATI could get 3D bus transfers up it would do even better.
  9. New "Lonsdale" DirectX 6 "fast car" driver: The new beast supports coding efficiencies/features in DIrectX 6 to allow for better exploitation of advanced hardware featurres Note, link will break on site due to lack of archiving at site, it is archived below:


    Date: Fri Sep 4'98 - 9:53am
    Author: IllglWpns
    Subject: To everyone complaining about ATI's 3d performance, I have s

    To everyone complaining about ATI's 3d performance, I have some news. The new lonsdale DirectX6 drivers provide a HUGE
    increase in performances. Here are some numbers for you:

    DirectX6 w. 5.2 Drivers X-Demo: 640x480: 45.5 fps

    Turok: 640x480: 23.4 fps

    DirectX6 w. lonsdale drivers X-Demo: 640x480: 65.5 fps (that's almost a 50% increase!)

    800x600: 54.8 fps

    1024x768: 40.8 fps

    Turok: 36.5 fps

    Test System: PII 266, 48 mb SDRAM

    Some notes: Turok still has unfiltered explosions, but otherwise image quality is perfect. No cracking in sight. G-Police runs silky
    smooth even at 800x600 and with texture size set to extreme. Also, the X scores are on par with the Velocity 128ZX and Intel
    i740 numbers from the August issue of PC Magazine. Not bad considering I picked up this card (Xpert 98 8mb AGP) for only
    $69, and I get great 2d/Video performance as well, although I still think that ATI should have had this driver out much earlier
    instead of dicking around with 3d wb. 


Date: Sat Sep 12'98 - 12:52pm
     Author: IllglWpns 
     Subject: More Benchmarks

     More Benchmarks 

     After playing around with the refresh settings and tweaking the sound I managed to squeeze out some pretty significant gains
     over the last numbers I posted. I have crappy integrated sound on my Mobo, and it was slowing everything down. I also
     changed the refresh rate to 120hz. 

     X-Demo Benchmarks: 

     640x480: 74.2 fps 800x600: 56 fps 1024x768: 40 fps 

     This is with music OFF, and sound set to the primary sound driver. 

     Forsaken Ship Demo Benchmarks: 

     640x480: 66 fps 800x600: 45 fps 

     Incoming: Ranges from 28 - 40 fps (AVERAGE) at 640x480 

     Test System: Dell PII 266 w. 48mb of SDRAM, Xpert 98 8mb AGP 

     This is definitely +Voodoo 1 level performance, and very acceptable. 

     Also, I've seen some posts comparing the i740 and Rage Pro, so here's what I think based on the reviews, numbers, and
     screenshots I've seen on the web and in magazines 

     i740: 

     Pros: Fast 3d performance, excellent visual quality, comprehensive AGP support, 

     fully featured 3d, cheap Cons: Mediocre 2d (Speed/Refreshrates/ddraw), cheap noname cards have limited 

     support, some people complain of pauses during gameplay, cannot texture 

     out of local memory 

     Price: Around $50 for a noname 8mb card, $60 - 80 for the G460, and around 100 for the Real3d Starfighter 

     Rage Pro: 

     Pros: Fast 2d/video, high refresh rates, great picture quality, comprehensive 

     2d/3d feature support, support for multitexturing and texture compression 

     in DX 6, Fast 3d (w. new drivers on a PII) especially for a 1yr old chip, 

     stable drivers, good driver support (as of now), good 3d visual quality, CHEAP 

     Cons: Immature OpenGl, slow OpenGL performance, no support for multitexturing 

     in Quake 2, cannot filter in the alpha channel, texture compression 

     scheme will likely never be used. Price: 60 - 80 US$ for an 8mb card w.o tv out 

     Opinions seemed to be mixed on this board about the new driver, but I personally am very pleased witht the results. Forsaken
     seems to be as fast on the Rage Pro as it is on the i740, and X actually seems to be a little faster. The drivers are stable and I
     have had a video related crash yet. Picture quality is very good, crisp and clear. I also have a Riva 128 board, and it IS fast, but
     the texture cracking is still bad in almost all Direct3d games, even with the latest drivers, and it noticeably detracts from
     gameplay. The lonsdale dx6 drivers have pretty much erased the Riva's speed advantage and the few extra fps I might be able
     to eke out of the Riva isn't really worth the bad image quality and the washed out 2d picture.

2) Rage 128 Testimonials

Rage128 Logo (6K bytes)

The Rage 128 information release has been recent, voluminous and furious. Here are my two cents: Rage Pro hardware design teams worked towards industry standards and pushed early development in the areas of TV-out, DVD(motion compensation), 3D multi-texture capability, AGP-2X allowed Beta releases of Win95 (OSR anyone ?) have enabled Microsoft to refine their operating system using real ATI hardware often as the development vehicle for Win98. These mature developments are incorporated into the Rage128 chip at a second generation level that are only now just being offered by ATI's competitors for the first time. You will be hard pressed to find any other chip in 0.25 micron technology that is engineered to support 5V legacy PCI buses and video technology while pushing new developements in DVD hardware decode. Onto the testimonials:

  1. Alan Cole re-iterates the value added is not just 3D. The major OEM's are the most careful shoppers anywhere and much pickier and anal than people you find on 3D web sites. The difference is that they have a better sense of balance when it comes down to how one uses memory bandwidth for graphics, video, MPEG, and 3D. In the 64 bit days, ATI's early adoption of 100 MHZ SDRAM's in deep memory configurations allowed it to support all of the new features concurrently and led to many design wins. You will not see that in a product review but OEM's run some of the most grueling benchmarks in the world running MPEG movies, 3D, video in a window and 2D simultaneously.
  3. Date: Tue Apr 6'99 - 9:54pm
    Author: Allan Cole (allan@nuc.net)
    Subject: The TNT hasn't been out for a year, and its drivers where ho

    The TNT hasn't been out for a year, and its drivers where horribly buggy when initially released (although, it wasn't as bad as the Riva 128's drivers which didn't get worked out until nearly a year after its release). I recall Velocity TNT boards originally causing problems for users trying to access their mainboard's BIOS, not working at all on a number of motherboards, having problems with yellow DOS text and other graphics corruption, having numerous incompatibilities, and having problems with lockups and blurry output... and people complain about ATI's initial board releases? Oh yeah, and I should mention that nVidia's reference TV output isn't much more than a useless gimmick added to help sell their boards. That's just the hype of PC hardware for ya. The 3DFX Banshee has been on the market months longer than the Rage 128, but it still has driver and BIOS issues as well.

    Tom's Hardware and many other sites continue to compare the Rage 128 with its early driver set to the TNT with its more mature driver set or they compare the Rage 128 to unreleased beta boards... ATI has quickly improved their drivers since the Rage 128's public release and ATI could have also distributed faster beta versions of the Rage 128 (as the Rage 128 Pro announcement shows) just as nVidia did with their "TNT2". It's all just endless hype... I've watched it for the past three years and I've owned and used dozens of video cards... what I've found is that ATI delivers the goods and is on track while other companies most often shoot high and miss. Sure, ATI isn't perfect and their previous cards weren't great 3D performers, but during those generations, nothing was really better than adding a 3DFX board anyway and ATI has always had solid 2D drivers and a superlative feature set otherwise. I have no doubt the Rage 128 should solidly outperform the TNT1 soon (if it doesn't already with the latest drivers)... the Rage 128 already significantly out features it. It's clear, IMHO, that ATI is better at the video card game than all the other manufactures... why do you think 3DFX bought STB so they can solely design\produce all their own chips *AND* boards... sound like any Canadian companies you've heard about?

    Only thing really gettin under my skin about ATI is that they've removed the panning and resolution change hotkey utils from their drivers under Win98 (ATI, change those features back like the Rage Pro drivers under Win95 damn it).

    Anyway, it just seems to me that way too many reviewers don't really consider the underlying scheme of the video card market when they make their comparisons. Sure, this beta board is faster. Sure, an older board may have less driver issues or may be slightly faster than a new board after it's had six months of driver revisions and optimizations helping to juice ever last bit of performance out of it. What the hell is the point downing a great new product such as the Rage 128 based on issues such as those? The issues should be: how does the Rage 128's drivers rate for a newly released video card? (very good to excellent, IMO) or could other companies such as ATI use faster RAM and processor technologies just now coming on the scene to make their cards competitive with unreleased beta boards such as the Voodoo3 3500 and TNT2 which are also using those bleeding edge technologies? (of course they can, and apparently they will with the Rage 128 Pro). Spin it any way you want, but IMO, ATI is the number one player in the PC video game. :P Take care.

    -Allan Cole 

  4. Date: Thu Jun 17'99 - 1:42am
 Author: Dailo (dailo@jps.net)
 Subject: Say, Alan, what do *you* use?
 Say, Alan, what do *you* use? 

 I know you 3DGaming folks have access to great hardware. What do you personally use/prefer? Do *you*
 seriously play Q3Test or Unreal on a Fury, most of the time? I'm just curious; you are in a position that many
 of us envy. I mean, you guys review hardware, so you guys know what sucks and what doesn't. 	


Date: Thu Jun 17'99 - 2:44am
 Author: Alan Dang (alan@3dgaming.com)
 Subject: Well..., in response to Say, Alan, what do *you* use?, posted by Dailo on Thu Jun 17'99 - 1:42am
 Well... 

 I too regularly use a standard retail Rage Fury. The one thing I've noticed with the Rage Fury is that either
 the card is very compatible with a system or horribly plagued with problems. Fortunately, I belong to the first
 group. I'm not really sure *why* this is the case since I have the "standard" Celeron 300 overclocked to 450
 on an Abit BH6. I must admit that DVD support plays a significant role in my decisions. 

 The only other card I use is the S3 Savage3D. It's not very fast in 3D, but my reference board has the
 sharpest 2D I'ev seen in a long time. ;) Would I use the TNT2? The board I had for a while was only
 marginally faster and I really didn't notice a qualitative speed improvement. The multimedia quality wasn't
 very good and I place a strong emphasis on that. 

 Chris Angelini also uses a Rage Fury as do a few other 3DGaming staff members (3 I think). In case you're
 concerned, the rest of the staff at 3DGaming purchased their own Rage Fury from regular stores. The only
 Rage Fury that came from ATI directly is my own, which I used to write the review... maybe they realized that
 the long-support would be strong with this forum. ;) 

 The sound card situation in my machine is a bit odd. I have a Hi-Five PCI (Canyon3D), a MonsterSound
 Original (great Mic. input) and a SW60XG MIDI only card. 

 Other than that, I don't think anything is out of the norm. I will say again that I have been lucky to have not
 had many problems with the Rage Fury from the beginning. Even with the original CD37 drivers with a
 pre-release board, I didn't have too many problems. 

 I really enjoyed the Savage3D, and so I have high expectations for the Savage4. The Matrox G400 also
 looks like a very strong card although I'd like to have a closer look at their multimedia quality first. ;) 

 As for Quake3, I'm a pretty good player and I do play often. My rocket accuracy is probably 90%, but I don't
 play at a competition level. I'm essentially only good in small groups (3-4 players) where I can "generally"
 keep track of where everyone is and "generally" can expect rockets to be available readily. The other
 games I've been playing are Star Wars Racer and Re-Volt. 

 I don't like Unreal too much, but if that's really your thing, I think ATI would even have to admit that the
 Savage4 is a better card since it has S3TC support which will really shine in Unreal Tournament. I don't like
 the weapon balance in Unreal too much. 

 As for you, the decision for the "best" video card is really up to you. I like the Fury, but I'm not going to
 "push" it if you already tried it and it didn't work. There's no doubt that there is something unusual with the
 Rage128 that makes it perform very well in some machines, and terribly in others. I have yet to see a
 "perfect" video card. For me, it'd be a card with the speed of a Matrox G400MAX, the multimedia quality of
 ATI, the S3TC of S3 (duh), and the reliability and compatibility of an Intel CPU. 

 Alan Dang

3 Rage 128 Installation Hints and Workarounds

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