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Comparison Tests: Rage128 PRO vs Rage128 By Mike Published: 2/5/2000

Benchmarks, Photoshop 5.5 Scrolling and Movie Performance

Intro | Game Performance | Benchmarks/Apps Tests

This page covers the (expected/boring) MacBench 5.0 benchmark results, a scrolling test in Photoshop 5.5, RaveBench tests and a comment on Quicktime 4 movie playback. In case you're wondering, with sample models in Lightwave 3D 5.6D (OpenGL) there was no discernable difference between the two cards in the G4/450 system. Remember CPU speed is the main factor in improving 3D/modeling applications rendering speed. A video card can improve the display of models with shading, but it can't speed up the calculations of 3D lighting, etc. needed for final scene rendering. MacBench 5.0 Results The graphs below show the results of MacBench's Graphics scripted test (emulation of mac applications graphics calls, scrolling, zooming, searching/replacing, etc.). Since the display used was an Apple 15" LCD with a maximum resolution of 1024x768, the more demanding "Publishing" tests (1152x870/millions colors) could not be run. The faster Rage128 PRO chip would likely show a large advantage over the original Rage128 at higher resolutions. I did run the graphics test at thousands and millions colors as shown in the graphs below. Photoshop 5.5 Scrolling Tests I measured the time it took to scroll the Flowers.psd file (resampled to 300DPI) at the maximum zoom (1600%). I positioned the scroll bars at the max left and top positions, and then timed how long it took for each card to scroll the image horizontally (left to right) and then vertically (down). The results are shown in the table below along with the performance (%) gain seen from the Rage128 Pro card. All times are in seconds, lower numbers are faster. Photoshop 5.5 Scrolling Horizontal Vertical Rage128 AGP 15.59 15.53 Rage128 PRO AGP 14.25 14.00 Gain % 9% 11% RaveBench 1.11 Test Results I used VillageTronic's RaveBench 1.11 Benchmark (only available on the CD supplied with their graphics cards to my knowledge). For more information on this benchmark, see my Illustrated Guide to RaveBench published in 1998. As you can see from the results, some rates exceeded the benchmark's expected maximums for both cards so the performance bar is outside the grid. If I can find time, I'd be curious to see the results of higher resolutions which may show additional benefits from the faster Rage128 Pro chip. Quicktime Movie Performance: I didn't bother to post a table of the results, since every movie I tested including the Phantom Menace high-res, 44KHz audio didn't show any real framerate or quality differences between the two cards with full-screen playback. (Even the original Rage128 card seems to have more than enough horsepower for good movie performance). About DVD Movie Performance: Based on what I've seen in limited tests, DVD movie performance is not really affected by the Pro upgrade, since the issue is not graphics card related. The latest Audio Update 1.3 along with disabling Virtual Memory seems to have improved the audio-sync issues here in limited testing, but the player's lack of Altivec support and very sluggish response are reasons why I much prefer the Wired4DVD PCI decoder card, which also offers TV out. (For more info, see the full review of the Wired4DVD card posted earlier this week.) Related Links: For more info on graphics card performance, reviews and other related articles - see the main www.xlr8yourmac.com site's video cards page.

Index of Rage128 vs Rage128 PRO Tests Intro | Game Performance | Benchmarks/Apps Tests - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM

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