My Radeon 1.1.1 Quake 3 Driver Tests: After ATI released the 1.1.1 Radeon driver update (available here) I tested my dual G4/500 w/BTO Radeon AGP card running OS 9.1 in Quake3 before and after the Radeon 1.1.1 Driver Update. (Full extension set other than Multiple Users, which was disabled. Airport and Speech however were enabled.)
I was surprised at the increase seen after the update (appx 16% at 1280x1024). As a reader noted in email, installing the included OpenGL 1.2.1 update (part of the easy install) shows that the ATI OpenGL Renderer extension is a part of OpenGL 1.2.3. (My previous OpenGL 1.2.1 install had extension v1.2.1.)
The table below shows the Quake3 1.17 Demo1 results with all game settings on, 32Bit mode, with High Geometric detail except where noted. (Higher Geometric detail increases the amount of triangles in objects.)
Quake3 v117
HQ settings
G4/500 DP
BTO Radeon AGP
OS 9.1 |
FPS Before
Update
| FPS After
1.1.1 Update
|
640x480
High Geometric Detail |
49.4 | 54.6 |
640x480
Med. Geometric Detail |
51.2 | 56.4 |
1024x768
High Geometric Detail |
47.9 | 52.8
(*54.3) |
1280x1024
High Geometric Detail |
39.4 | 45.6
(*46.5) |
(* FPS in parenthesis is using Medium vs High Geometric Detail setting.)
Of course your results could vary depending on CPU speed, game settings, extensions, previous drivers used, etc. but I didn't expect to see the increase I saw in Quake3 on this system.
User comments on the ATI Radeon 1.11 driver update. (More comments on the drivers are also in the Video card section of our Forums.)
"
Hi Mike,
Just wanted to get the results in for my PCI Radeon with the new
drivers. HereÇs the skinny: Beige G3, 420 MHz, 70MHz Bus, 150 MB
RAM for Q3A 1.17 Demo1
Ejecting Brass and Marks on Walls off, all other Game Options on, 32
Bit color, High Geometric Detail, Texture Detail 1 bump below max.,
Trilinear filtering
1.10 Drivers 1024x768 - 29.3, 800x600 - 29.7
1.11 Drivers 1024x768 - 36.3, 800x600 - 36.8,
1280x1024 - 32.7, 640x480 - 37.2
Ejecting Brass, Marks on Walls, Dynamic Lighting, and HiQuality Sky
off, Simple Objects on, Vertex lighting, 32 Bit color, Medium Geometric
Detail, Bilinear filtering
1.11 Drivers 1600x1200 - 29.3, 1280x1024 - 40.7, 1024x768 - 44.1,
800x600 - 45.2
If I'm reading this right, the 420 MHz G3 seems to really be holding me
back. Thanx for the great job you're doing for the Mac community &
Keep up the good work.
All the Best, Russell
Ps- here are the Q3 results I got on a 733 G4 at MWSF: 1600x1200 -
47FPS, 800x600 - 66.2 FPS all settings seem to have been maxed
out.
"
"
Hi Mike.
I just received my Radeon PCI card today, for my B&W G3/400.
Unfortunately, it seems the Radeon PCI card will not drive my
ViewSonic P810 monitor at all.
Dual monitor setup -- Apple OEM Rage128 card + Radeon. Second
monitor Sony 17sf. Radeon drives Sony monitor without problem.
Problem consistent regardless of which card is in the 66MHz slot. I
am using the newest 1.1.1 driver package.
I sent an email to ATI tech support, but have not heard back yet.
I also have an Adaptec SCSI card and a MOTU PCI-324 digital audio
card installed.
Very strange. Just thought you may be interested.
"
"
Hi Mike
I've installed and tested the 1.11 update on the following system :
G4/400 AGP (not gigabit)
320 Mo of RAM (2-2-2)
10 Go stock drive + 40Go diamondmax + IBM 75GXP 46 Go
AGP radeon
OS 9.04
The results are the following :
Rave games : everything is working fine, no noticeable fps changes since
the precedent drivers (20-25 fps for Unreal Tournament @1024*768, 32 bit)
OpenGL games : every OpenGL games crashes after a few seconds once it has started to show some 3D, exept Oni. I had the same problem before, and I
still cannot solve it.
Mac2TV was working, and is still working.
I have no other video card
Here are the full system characteristics, if interesting for you :
AGP radeon
Adaptec 2930
Mustek USB scanner
Rio 500 drivers installed
Stylus 750
I haven't tested it yet with OS 9.1, but I fear that it will be the same.
"
"
I still have some of the same problems as before on my beige g3
running 9.1 448mb ram and a 400mhz OWC mercury upgrade overclocked to
433. seems that neither AOL 5.0 (I get an account free at work.. ;)
) and CUseeme both give me a wacky plaid screen soon after they try
to launch. I have an IXTV card for video capture and am thinking of
either removing it or going back to my 3DFX V3000.
Darren
"
"
The new drivers work great! This is the reason why I got this card.
Elite Force and Quake 3 looks beautiful and it runs soooo smooth! Sweet!
This card has prolonged the life of my computer for another year at
least! My config: Mac OS 9.0.4, G3/450 overclocked, 384 MB RAM, AND 32
MB Radeon in 66 mhz slot.
Paully
"
"
Mike,
This may be old news now, but I will pass it along anyway.
I installed the new drivers and NOW this Radeon card is everything I
expected it to be. It smokes! My machine runs the Quake3 timedemos at around
46 fps with all the eye candy turned on at 1024x768, medium detail and one
notch back from the highest for textures. Just for fun, I cranked everything
up to the highest at this same resolution and got over 41 fps. Very
impressive compared to what I have lived with up to this point.
Also, all the problems I was having with Pod Racer and CroMag Rally are
fixed too. Everything is working beautifully now.
My system: B&W G3/450, rev 2, 384MB RAM, MacOS 9.0.4, OpenGL 1.2.1
Jeff
"
"
Hi, to be brief, the installation of the newest (Radeon/Rage v1.1.1) drivers
have caused strange blue visual artifacts (perpendicular short lines?)
directly below the picture on some widescreen format DVD movies i've played.
I have played Unreal Tournament, (with dynamic lighting on, thus artifacts
are pretty much at a minimum to begin with) and still seen some white
banding artifact-stuff. No other problems persist.
OS 9.04
G4/400 Single Processor (Sawtooth)
896MB 2-2-2 PC 100 Memory
Retail Radeon AGP Mac Edition
OEM 10GB ATA/66 drive as startup volume
40GB Maxtor slave to 10gb
Apple DVD drive
18GB U/160 drive
Adaptec card
30GB FireWire drive
VM On (+1MB)
"
"
Mike,
I tried the new Radeon update. Not sure what it is all supposed to fix except the one thing I would like it to, it did not. My monitor still starts up in 640x480 for a few seconds, then changes to my 1600x1200 resolution that I have as my setting. Quake does now work without changing that one item in the confiq folder. Other than that, I would like to get that resolution thing fixed because to me it is annoying.
Mark.
"
(reports from 1/30/2001 follow)
"
Mike-
I am running a B&W (rev. 1)
G3/500MHz(OWC IBM chip)
576mb RAM
Dual Maxtor HD's
PCI Radeon (66 slot)
Rage Pro OEM (33 slot)
This update fixes all of my issues (so far). Elite Force works great now, as does Q3A. Able to run dual monitors now without any problems.
I'm one of the folks that is also having monitor-shuddering problems on a G4 DP 500/Rage [128 Pro I assume-Mike] w/ Trinitron setup. That Mac is at the office, so I will install the new driver there tomorrow and see if this helps the problem.
Mark
"
"
I am running a 533 with a Radeon (AGP) and a Rage Pro
I had horrendous screen artifacting in Flash 4 and 5 (to the point of unusibility) on the monitor that was connected to the Radeon (and not the Rage) using the drivers that came with the 533. Switching to the Radeon 1.0 drivers did nothing, thankfully the Radeon 1.1.1 fixed this
(comes with OpenGL 1.2.1 as well)
d T h e o r y
david rosenfeld
"
"
Thanks but well my Xclaim Video Player still does not work when the Radeon AGP is the startup monitor (menubar location doesn't matter). "Cannot locate Video Digitizer"
When I make the Xclaim the startup monitor the Video Player works fine but then Quake3 is a jumble of triangles on my Radeon monitor.
At least my Mac2TV problems are fixed and I know this driver update is mostly for PCI Radeon cards. I guess I'm waiting for a new Universal Installer. The Xclaim specific software hasn't been updated since 9/99
willpower
"
"
Hi Mike,
I just wanted to say that the ATI drivers look good so far. Problems with EF
on Q3A screens loading screens being momentarily garbled appear to be gone.
I did some quick benchmarks with Q3A for anyone who might be interested if the driver update might improve game performance.
Here is my results of Q3A timedemos 1 & 2 with a fresh config file ( I
posted benchmarks with the same setup using the ATI 1.0 drivers a few days
ago.)
System Specs:
400 Mhz Sawtooth G4
256 MB
10 GB Maxtor OEM drive (startup drive & Q3A resides on)
20 GB WD drive
Radeon AGP
timedemo 1 - 46.0fps
timedemo 2 - 43.9fps
No appreciable performance increase. I suppose any optimizations in the ATI
drivers for the Radeon will have to wait until the next release. Also, there
are no new menus or features in the ATI control panel for the Radeon. I'm
not surprised since they didn't mention any of the MIA features like FSAA in
the release notes. Lastly, OpenGL 1.2.1 is bundled with this driver update
and installs with the drivers in the easy install. Mac users who have
reported problems with 1.2.1 or don't want to upgrade to 1.2.1 should be
careful to choose custom install.
Ryan L.
"
Get the updated drivers that
should fix the PCI Radeon issues reported previously at support.ati
.com/drivers/mac/macos9_radeon_111.html.
Radeon owners let me know if
this solves your problems. Include your system and OS details. (PCI and AGP
feedback welcome).
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