Yosemite: Gaming Performance Just how good is gaming on the newest G3? Updated 6/16/99 for Faster Rage128 Comparions

Introduction:

Note: For more current info on Rage128/B&W G3 performance (including using other video cards like the Voodoo3) - check my Mac Game Framerates searchable database and Video Cards page. 6/16/99 Update: As noted on my page in last week on the new features of the latest revision of the B&W G3s - the Rage128s are running at a faster clock speed (as I noted was rumored to happen several months back). Below is a clipping from the 6/14/99 front page news that compares the original OEM Rage128 to the new heatsinked faster models (thanks to Jake Beck for the test scores): New Rage128s are Faster: As I suspected, the new heatsinked Rage128 cards are faster than the previous versions as Jake Beck found out in game tests: " It is true, some of the new speed-bumped Power Mac's do have a faster RAGE 128. I had the chance to test an old RAGE 128 against the new one, here's some specs for you. Tests were taken in a G3 400/DVD/192MB. Both the new and old card were used in the exact same machine. Test Old Rage128 New Rage128 Quake 1 (Timedemo 1) 59.4 (640x480) 34.2 (800x600) 24.6 (1024x768) 64.3 (640x480) 44.9 (800x600) 28.7 (1024x768) Unreal 2.24 (flyby) 31.6 (640x480) 22.4 (800x600) 35.0 (640x480) 26.5 (800x600) Jake Beck" Also from the 6/16/99 front page and game news: New Apple ATI Drivers: Dave Glen wrote with a note that Apple has posted a TIL 11475 on new ATI Video drivers. These drivers are said to require OS 8.6 and are for all ATI RagePro or Rage128 equipped Macs (iMac, PB G3, Beige/Blue & White G3) and according to the TIL fix the following issues: Corrects the following issues: A freeze when using CPUs with high processor speeds (>=400MHz) and high screen resolution (1280X1024) after heavily using offscreen graphics memory. A crash when millions of colors are used with a high resolution monitor. Also corrects an instance with certain third party applications where scrolling could result in a crash. The ATI Video SW Update 1.0.smi file is 1.2MB (Bin) and 1.7MB (Hqx). I welcome reader feedback on these new drivers (please note your Mac model, RagePro or Rage128 chip, etc.). Some report these new drivers improve game performance (speed) as well. I'm wondering if Falcon 4 now looks better (previously the Voodoo2 Game Wizard looked better in Falcon 4 than the Rage128). This page will list comments and game related test results on the new G3 (Yosemite) models with Rage128 graphics card. For other tips, specs and important information on the new series of G3 models - see my Yosemite page. For MacBench 5 scores of 350-450MHz Yosemite see my new Yosemite Performance Page (includes links to Photoshop 5 400Mhz Yosemite performance as well). Make sure you read my analysis of the results below the scores. At least in Unreal, the Yosemite/Rage128 has nothing better to offer than your G3 upgraded older Mac with a Voodoo2 card. However with the latest drivers and Unreal version, it would be hard for Yosemite owners to justify spending $199 on a Voodoo2 card (better to spend that on RAM). Unreal is just one game however and OpenGL, later driver releases and game patches will make the Rage128/Yosemite a very nice gaming setup. Quake II and Arena are said to be stunning in OpenGL mode. Quake 3 Tips/Screenshots: - see my new Quake 3 page for screenshots from Quake 3 Test running OpenGL on the Rage128. Tips for getting 3dfx cards to work in OpenGL mode are also listed there as well as URLs to lists of Quake3 servers. Check QD 3D Extensions: Andrew found the cause of his lost ability to run RAVE games: " Mike, 2 things: As per your incredible directions, I installed a Maxtor DiamondPlus 10GB drive in my Yosemite 400mhz. Works like a charm. And I have found a fix (at least for me) for restoring RAVE capability to Quake (my example) after upgrading the ATI drivers. I was almost ready to give up when I took one last look at my extensions. It turns out that somewhere along the line my QuickDraw3D extensions had been replaced with older versions. While my QuickDraw3D extension was at 1.5.4, my QuickDraw3D RAVE extension had fallen to something like 1.3. I don't remember exactly, but the discrepancy was obvious. Solution? Pop in the MacOS system CD, reinstall only the QuickDraw3D extensions. This restores the latest QuickDraw3D RAVE extension (1.5.4). And, of course, it allows me to run the RAVE versions of games like Quake. My machine no longer complains that the monitor is not connected to a RAVE device. :-) Now, if Apple and ATI could just get those drivers tested, fixed, and updated quickly... Andrew " No solutions to Rage128 Pauses/Stuttering it seems: " My observations only concern Unreal and problem with stuttering video...the scene occasionally jerks to a later frame instead of smoothly moving to that frame. Diabled Firebird Joystick. Rebooted. No help. Enabled Virtual Memory. Rebooted. No help. Disabled Speed Doubler. Rebooted. No help. Renamed ATI extensions to make them load sooner. Rebooted. No help. Sigh... Nothing seems to work so far. But, you know, I just think about Mac Starcraft and all other Mac problems seem so small. Lance Moody " I've reported this to ATI awhile back. If anyone has a workaround please contact me. One reader reported a tip to eliminate pausing in 3D/Games but other readers said this did not help: " Just a quick note to Jeremy Bascom- Even with an old RagePro, I had experienced intermittent pauses every couple of seconds when doing anything 3D. The cure, I found is to disable the Launcher (from the extensions manager... even if you don't use the Launcher, if it loads, you get pauses) and any background apps (such as the Gravis Firebird BA) (to find out what background apps you might be running, you can search your hard drive(s) for File Type 'appe') Now my 3d graphics run smoothly. Hope this works for you. -Matthew Hall " RAGE 128 Updated Drivers: [2/10/99] They're finally released! - click here to get it (MacBinary 485K or Binhex 660K). See the Apple Updates page for more info. I've added a page on Rage128 Driver Update Feedback to list comments on what is and isn't fixed in the new update (see below for DL links). Also check the main site news page sidebar for the latest Unreal version which has some improvements for Rage128 owners. ATI Replies: [1/10/99 - comments on original shipping version of the drivers] Before you read the info below on the current shipping drivers and performance, read this mail sent to me from Chris Bentley - Mr. 3D for ATI's Mac drivers. As I noted in my analysis - we've not see the best performance or image quality from the Rage128 yet: " Hi Mike, Here's the story on Unreal frame rates. There are two important variables: the version of Unreal and the version of the ATI drivers. Working with Mark Adams over the last month we identified a bunch of fixes and optimizations. I'm not sure if all of these have made it into a publicly available patch yet. The version you need has the following new options in the "Options:Advanced Options: Rave Support": Detail Bias, DisableVSync, MipMapping, Page Flip. If you don't have that version to test with, mail Mark Adams and ask when he'll be posting it. The 3D driver that shipped with the Yosemites is version 5.14. With this version I was getting a high quality config timedemo of 22 fps on a 300 Mhz Yosemite. Then we got to work optimizing :-). The version of the 3D drivers we were showing at MacWorld is 5.17. With this version we were showing a high quality config timedemo of 32 fps on a 300 MHz Yosemite, and something like 34-35 fps on a 400 Mhz Yosemite. Apple will be putting this new version up on their web site very soon. At 34-35 fps on a 400 Mhz Yosemite I'd say that there's not a lot to be disappointed about. You will not have to wait long for this boost, and it will not be the last bit of speed we wring from the Rage128. Then there's the issue of quality. The Rage128 can run Unreal in 32 bit mode (which the Voodoo II cannot), and on the Rage128 running 32 bit is hardly slower than running in 16 bit. The important thing is that running in 32 bit means _no_ dithering artifacts. If you want to see Unreal look _really_ cool, run it in 32 bit mode on a Rage128. People who stopped by the booth at MacWorld were really impressed. Here's how to get Unreal into 32 bit mode. It's a bit of a hassle, but not too bad: start Unreal and bring up the "Audio/Video" options menu. Select "Toggle Fullscreen Mode" - this will make Unreal render in a window and display the menubar. Select "32 bit" from the "Window" menu and then "Toggle Fullscreen Mode" a second time to switch back to RAVE. I think you will like what you see. I will work with Mark Adams to see if we can add this setting to the "Audio/Video" menu to make this less convoluted. Add to this the fact that the Rage128 is 10-15% faster than the Voodoo II running Quake and Myth II, I'd say Yosemite users are going to be having some fun. It's been a while since any 3Dfx chip was _slower_ than the built in video :-) As for OpenGL, as you mentioned, we have support for this now. Expect our OpenGL implementation to get significantly more optimized in the next few months. Talk to you later, Chris Bentley ATI Research Inc. " Great news! On Sunday, Mark Adams, president of Westlake Interactive (developers of Mac Unreal) wrote me with additional information on coming Unreal tweaks just for the Rage128 (as I mentioned in the original analysis below - ATI is by far the most active mfr out there as far as working with gaming companies to improve support/performance for their products). Mark Adams wrote: " Just wanted to drop you a note about the Unreal/Yosemite Rage 128 results. Chris Bentley pretty much covered everything in his note, but I'll add a bit to his thoughts. The frame rates people are getting with Unreal on Yosemite right now reflect older drivers and Unreal apps. Chris and I worked a bunch last month tweaking Unreal for the Yosemite/128 combo, and once we can get the new ATI drivers and Unreal app out to the public we'll see the frame rates go up considerably. As Chris said, the image quality in 32bit is great, if the dithering effects of previous Rage chips annoyed you, they are all gone in 32bit. And we did see only negligible performance hit for 32 bit mode. The new Unreal app (which adds a lot of Rage 128 specific options to the Rave Advanced Options) will probably be out in a couple weeks, we're also waiting to update it to version 221 on the PC. If 221 is delayed more than another week on the PC, I'll probably release an interim version of Unreal Mac with just the new Rage 128 code. Mark Adams President, Westlake Interactive " Improving Unreal Image Quality: Here's an exclusive insider tip on settings in Unreal to improve image quality: " There seems to be some confusion as to the real image quality on the new ATI 128 card when compared to the Voodoo2 card image quality. If users with the new ATI128 would go into Unreal'ss advance options, and change a couple of settings. You will see that the image quality is equal to, or better than Voodoo2. Perform the following changes; go into the advance options, scroll down to "Rendering" and select RAVE support, from there turn on (select yes) all except "NonATI" and "VertexLighting" (leave those set to NO), make no change to "lightmodify". As for the grainy look, toggle screen mode to get to the menu bar, select the "window" menu option and scroll down to 32bit. By doing the above, the image quality will be equal to, and in my opinion, better than voodoo2. I have a 266Mhz G3 Mini-Tower, using a Voodoo2 card running with 256meg of Ram, runs great at 800x600. I have a base unit of the new G3 tower, running at 300mhz, with only 64meg of Ram, with VM on and set to give the machine a total of 128meg, running Unreal in 1024x768, and it hardly skips a beat. I bet with more real memory added, it would scream. I felt users may want to know about the above settings to get the most out of their new ATI128 cards with Unreal. Enjoy, take care, just another crazy Mac lover. Paul. "

Myth II Performance

Myth II Tests: Rage128 vs Voodoo2 in Yosemite: Here's a report of ATI 128 Vs Voodoo II performance with Myth II in the Yosemite 350 using the original (slower than the latest beta) Rage128 drivers. Matt Dwyer submitted these Myth II benchmarks which include results of the Voodoo II 12MB in his Yosemite. For the test, he used the Myth II FPS toolkit Frank Bernier created for this site. Yosemite G3 350/175/1MB MC GameWizard Voodoo2 12MB Rage128/16MB (original drivers) Thousands of colors 128 MB RAM 640x480 3D card Frames per second MC GameWizard Voodoo2 12MB 36.5 fps ATI Rage128 16MB 34.29 fps It will be interesting to see what effect the latest drivers have on Myth II performace. Bottom line in my mind - is it really worth a Yosemite owner adding a $200 games-only Voodoo2 card?

Unreal Framerate Comparisons

[More Tests - taken from our Unreal Tips and Tricks daily news page] More tests with the shipping driver version (scroll down for tests with the latest beta rage128 driver and unreal beta results with both a the Rage128 and Voodoo2 (8MB) running in a Yosmite G3/400): The Challengers ATI 128 Voodoo II Yosemite G3 350/175/1MB ATI Rage 128/16MB Thousands of colors 128 MB RAM 88 MB allocation to unreal 8500/120 Powerlogix 275/275/1MB (clocked to 300/300) MC Game Wizard Voodoo II 12MB Thousands of colors 384 MB RAM 88 MB allocated to Unreal 1/25/99: Unreal Beta Notes: A few things I forgot to mention about the latest beta release of Unreal on the Rage128. At 800x600 I notice a very annoying 'pause' in gameplay (in outside areas) - it's repeatable and occurs often. Also that 800x600 I did not see the player model at the start of the game. At 640x480 neither of these oddities are present. These two items and the wall light toggling (at the castle fly-by) are the main issues that I'd like to see resolved via driver updates or unreal mods in the future. Otherwise the RAVE version looks very good now. The Voodoo2 is still the king in Unreal, but the Rage128 is closer than I ever thought a all-in-one card would get, especially for a card that ships as standard equipement. 1/15/99: Updated for Beta Rage128 Drivers and Unreal: Note the large speed increase, but there will also be a boost for 3Dfx cards as well I'm told in the next Unreal release. I have only a 8MB Game Wizard to test in the Yosemite but I'm trying to find a 12MB card now. The results:HQ setting Vertexlightning NO Machine type 640 x 480 16 bit 640 x 480 32 bit 800 x 600 16 bit 800x600 32 bit Yosemite 350 ATI Rage128 21.86 20.36 17.35 15.53 Yose 400 Rage128 Beta drivers Beta Unreal 34.90 34.66 25.13 25.11 Yose 400 Voodoo2 8MB Beta Unreal 42.70 (can't do) 33.45 (can't do) G3 300/300/1MB VoodooII 26.38 (can't do) 22.49 (can't do) [The 12MB Voodoo2 scores are almost identical to my 8MB card] Unreal Beta/3DFx Note: Maybe it's my eyes but the fog on the 3Dfx card running the latest Unreal really didn't look any better to me than the Rage128. However it was faster with the new Unreal Beta (all 3dfx Voodoo2 owners will see a boost) and did not have the light toggles on wall faces (a bug to be addressed I'm told). Bottom Line is the Voodoo2 is faster in Unreal but the Rage128 is faster at Quake and Myth II. Like most hard core gamers on the PC, many Yosemite owners will have both I suspect (If you can find a Game Wizard in stock - I'm looking for one myself and have had no luck for weeks). It seems the 8MB Voodoo2 produced literally identical scores to a 12MB version according to Bare Feats tests with a 12MB card in a Yosemite 400.

Quake RAVE Framerates

Quake Performance: Here are the framerates recorded with the 1/15/99 Beta Rage128 drivers (new drivers to be posted soon at Apple's site I hear - by the end of Jan. I suspect) RAVE Quake 1.09 Timedemo Demo 1 Results (Both cards in a Yosemite G3/400) Card 640x480 800x600 1024x768 Rage128 (all options on) 55.3 38.1 24.9 Voodoo2 8MB (3Dfx mode) 47.7 31.0 (can't do) RagePro Apple G3/300 21.4 13.9 9.4 [The 12MB Voodoo2 scores are almost identical to my 8MB card] These are higher numbers than I've ever seen with the Voodoo2/MacQuake but As soon as I can locate a 12MB Voodoo2 Game Wizard in stock I'll test it in the Yosemite. My Game Wizard is a 8MB model and I don't want the issue of texture ram to cloud the performance. For Quake framerates I saw with the GameWizard in other Macs see my Game Wizard review (includes screenshots as well). Frank put together a page comparing Unreal screenshots of the OEM Rage128 vs Voodoo2. The beta drivers I'm now using are faster but the fog is still not as nice as the 3Dfx version. [1/12/99 update] Previous Reports: Dan Baldwin downloaded our FPS Toolkit for testing his new Yosemite G3/400 and his 9600/350 with RagePro and Voodoo II Cards. The results were interesting and disappointing. Especially since the Mach 5 (9600/300 and up) systems are famous for low video performance (see my systems page for more info). I've generally seen a 25% or so lower MacBench score in the 9600/350 here with literally every video card I've tested compared to other systems (9500, Apple G3, etc.). See our and other pages linked on the Unreal Tips and Tricks page for performance of many other systems with various Video card/CPU speeds. Dan writes: Hi Mike Here are the results, I ran the Unreal timedemo tests on two systems: 9600/350, OS8.1, ATI Nexus GA and MC Voodoo II, 448MB ram and Yosemite G3/400mhz, OS8.5.1, ATI Rage 128, 128MB ram Unreal had 91,814 kbytes ram assigned. In all cases, the monitor was set to the game resolution, VM off, thousands colors. I ran the 9600 with both the Rage and VoodoII. I only tested the High Quality [INI file]. Here are the fps from timedemo [scores below the Yosemite were added by me from 3Dfx and Timedemo Results pages. The G3 300 (overclocked to 333/222) is my personal Apple G3 with 8MB Game Wizard -Mike] our : Unreal Framerate Comparison 16-Bit color mode (PC used 32-Bit) Machine Rendering 640x480 800x600 9600/350 Rage 9.10 7.48 9600/350 Voodoo II 24.82 23.01 Yos/G3/400 Rage 128 24.5 24.0 Pentium II 400 32Bit Color Mode Rage 128 24.1 21.9 Apple G3@292/146/512K Voodoo II 32.3 25.2 Apple G3 333/222/1MB Voodoo II 35.5 25.8 [Keep in mind the HQ INI file has detail settings at maximum, higher than many players may normally run them but this is done as a stress test-Mike] I guess the frame rates are acceptable, however, there is no possible concievable way that the visual quality of Rage is anywhere close to that of Voodoo II, despite what a screen shot might show. I noticed this as well on my 9600/350 comparison. It's fairly dissapointing because it looks like we'll have to buy a VoodooII for the new Yos machine. Now, thats going to rock !! Regards, Dan Baldwin " Dan sent two screenshots (portal and castle flyby) of the shipping drivers in Unreal. Other owner comments on Game Performance (most recent first): " Well, I got the 32 bit working pretty well ... it appears to work MUCH better at 800x600 or 1024x768 ... my earlier observations were at 640x480 ... I'm sending along screenshots. Perhaps I'm just not used to seeing a more *detailed* version of the game ... 3dfx is a much softer look and therefore little stuff you see with the ATI may get blurred-out in 3Dfx .. Anyways, *either* option (3Dfx or RAVE) is fantasic at this point, and I'm probably picking nits here =) Numbers for 32 bit @ 600x800 w/HQ settings (except for vartex lighting): pass 1 15.53 fps pass 2 15.43 fps pass 3 15.39 fps There you have it! matt dwyer" " Hi Mike, I picked up a new G3/400 on friday and concur with the other reader that unreal does not perform well. I average about 23 frames sec running the timedemo, and it is pixelated and doesnt look near as pretty as my old 3DFX card. Myth II exhibits the same problem as well as quite a few graphics anomolies. Dacian Connell " Another reader comments on Yosemite performance compared to the PC with Rage128: "Hey Mike, the RAGE 128's performance isn't that bad when compared to a PC also using the RAGE 128. I found this page which compares the ATI Fury to a TNT and Voodoo 2. The system is a 400 MHz PII with the results 640X480@24.1 (fps) and 800X600@21.9 (fps). This is slower than the Yosemite G3 400 MHz, [Not really - as noted at that page it was running 32-bit color mode - the Yosemite was running 16Bit color mode-Mike] and remember that the RAGE Fury has 32MB of memory, while the RAGE 128 in Yosemites have only 16MB. Also, this site lists the RAGE Fury as having the best graphics quality of any PC 3D card, so what is the "image quality" problem? I plan to get a Yosemite as soon as Apple fixes the weird ATA bus issues and external USB modems are confirmed to be available. Mike Stitzer" See the ATI driver update comments above - better and faster is coming.

Unreal Scores Analysis: Update: As shown in the Unreal and Quake updates above, the beta drivers deliver excellent performance. Fog still looks better on the 3Dfx cards in Unreal and there are some other minor issues that are to be addressed in Unreal (light toggling on the stone walls around the flyby, excessive mirroring in the first level floors (stunning effect but disorienting almost)). ATI is continuing to improve the drivers every day from my talks with Chris and Apple should have updates on their web site by the end of the month I hear. It seems from the framerates the Rage128 graphics chip is not the limiting factor. Since it performed literally the same at 640x480 as at 800x600 (where fill rate demands are 1.5 times higher) that seems to indicate it's not getting data fast enough (or fast enough to saturate the chip at least). If the card's engine was the limit you'd have seen a noticable drop at 800x600. Note the Voodoo2's drop in framerate from 640x480 to 800x600 on the Apple G3 (the 9600/350's infamous slow memory bus was likely the limiter on Voodoo2 performance on that machine as it also stayed flat). As shown above if you're a gaming fan your existing Mac, with a fast CPU and a $199 Voodoo2 card can be just as good as a $2000+ new system. That's what upgrading is all about. Target your needs and address them with specific upgrades that improve performance in that application. Your games won't care if the plastic outside is blue or beige. Performance (and image quality) is the bottom line. I guess now we know why Unreal was not used in the MacWorld Game Demo of the Yosemite vs the PC. The framerate speed is fine I think, considering it's as fast at 800x600 as a Voodoo2 equipped G3/333 (higher end than most gamers run). I'd like to point out a few things as a reminder to those that are very disappointed in the Yosemite/Rage128 performance. Unreal is just one game. It's not really fair to judge overall performance based on one game's results (the most demanding game ever on the mac) with initial drivers. 24 FPS is good performance in Mac Unreal at 800x600. The image quality issues may be addressed with an patch, driver update or tweaks to the INI file perhaps. [See above updates from ATI and Westlake that indicate this is in the works! This is great news as later this year there are many new 3D games based on the Unreal engine (Rainbow Six, Unreal Tournament, Klingon Honor Guard, Wheel of Time and several others Frank tells me. I didn't realize that Rainbow Six would be based on the Unreal engine.)] It's the first version of the Rage128 driver. ATI has historically had performance and image quality improvements on past chipsets as the drivers were optimized. ATI is also famous for working with developers to improve support for features of their card. OpenGL: ATI historically has led the Mac video card mfrs in both RAVE and OpenGL support. OpenGL on the Rage128 could lead to better performance and remember Quake II/Quake III will likely require OpenGL to run. The Rage128 will likely be the fastest OpenGL card for the Mac. Adding a Voodoo2 is always an option. If you're not satisfied with performance you still have that option. I'll have more information and insight into the Rage128 game performance issue when my Yosemite arrives (a 350MHz) and I can personally do further testing. This page will be updated with additional information in the future. If you have comments or input on gaming with the new Yosemite G3's please contact me. For other system benchmark results in Unreal, see the links on our Unreal Tips and Tricks page. For other site gaming related articles, see the Games Articles index or Site contents page.

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