The following pictures are showing you how Unreal looks with the new ATI Rage128 card used in the new Apple G3 models (Yosemite) and soon to be available as a stand-alone product. The pictures were taken in 16-bit mode only (thousands of colors) for the comparison since 3DFX cards can't render in millions of colors. I would have loved to show you a screenshot of the ATI in millions of colors, but all screenshots that we took turned out bad with weird green colors. This is due probably to a bug in Unreal [and as noted on the Yosemite Game Performance page the initial Rage128 driver has a 16-bit Z-Buffer limit - to be removed in the next driver update-Mike].

I will try to play with the settings to see which ones we should turn off to be able to take the screenshot without altering the image. The screenshots below were taken with our Unreal HQ setting found in our Xlr8yourmac FPS toolkit 1.04 under Unreal 2.19 [see the FPS tookit readme page for details]. I will let you be the judge and decide which apperance is better but I will give you my impressions :

Well at first glance, it is good. Everything seems to be there. The only problem I see is that it is a bit too dark in my opinion. The coronas are well rendered, maybe even better that the glide version. On the left (3DFX) the coronas appears a bit like you would see from a Video Camera. (reflection on the lens). With the ATI Rage128, the coronas look more natural since we don't see the light contour around the torches. The Mirror effect on the floor is rendered but is different than 3DFX and to the previous screenshots with the ATI Rage PRO. The floor is more brownish (more color saturation?). I am not sure how Epic wanted the floor leading to the entrance castle to look like when they made the game but I guess it is not so bad. It may also be more realistic in that scene since the floor is reflecting the color of the sky texture.

We will try to have pictures taken at various places to see if this is a common trend or simply present in that particular scene. The sky texture seems also a bit richer, but this might be just due to the fact that the global picture is darker. Notice also that the ATI 128 image looks more "grainy" where the 3DFX image is more blurred. To have another person's opinion, I did a blind test and asked my wife to take a look at both pictures. Her comment was ; the "picture on the left" looks better since I can see details more clearly"

[Beware: some of the full sized images are as much as 200K-Mike]

Techworks 3DFX Voodoo I (640x480)	ATI 128 (Yosemite 350) (640x480)

To compare how the ATI 128 differed with 3DFX in this area, we went at the bottom of the Castle near the Water to better appreciate the difference in fog rendering. You will immediately notice that the fog effect rendered by the ATI 128 is not as good as the glide 3DFX version (left). If you look behind the doorway, we seem to lose the fog behind the door (we can see through the Fog, the edge of the cliff near the water). Some work to do here with the drivers maybe.

Now take a look at the water appearance and especially the light reflection on the water surface. It is more like a reflexion in a window or on very calm water. The 3DFX water seems to my eyes more realistic but it is a matter of opinion I guess. Note also that the ATI 128 picture has no water waves like in the 3DFX version.

We will have more pictures to show you soon, like pictures in millions colors (if we solve the image distortion problem when taking the screenshots), underwater screenshots, closer looks at Unreal foes and how they look with the ATI Rage128. All in all, the ATI rendering is not far from 3DFX and the differences might be driver related. Keep in mind that the drivers are very young and will probably we optimized in the future.- Frank

[Note: On the latest Beta 4 of Unreal with a Voodoo2 multitextures in a single pass is fully implemented on the Voodoo2. The result to my eyes makes the _Voodoo2_ fog look a lot like the Rage128 (which also does multitextures in a single pass). For updated performance notes (framerates) see my Yosemite Game Page)-Mike]

Techworks 3DFX Voodoo I (640x480)	ATI 128 (Yosemite 350) (640x480)

Other Site Links of Interest:

• Game Wizard review pages - framerate comparisons, screenshots and more
• For screenshots at 1024x768 mode (SLI) on a PC, see my Obsidian X24 Review page.
• Unreal Timedemo Framerate test Results
• Index of Game Articles Home
• xlr8yourmac.com's Site Features List