[This page was created in 1997 to cover the first prototype of the ATI RagePro card - see the Graphics Cards page Budget Trio review for more up to date info and a full review of the final versions of the RagePro VR and 3D cards. Check the Site Contents page or main site news pages for other articles of interest, including the new game articles index.-Mike 12/98]
Update: 12/5/97 - MacSoft has a new ATI Quake driver for Xclaim 3D/VR owners. Also ATI is sending a new RagePro VR card and Nexus GA card for test! The new RAVE Update to Quake is at this MacSoft page. Added Walker comparison scores for Imagine 128S2, Twin Turbo M8, and 8500 video. The ATI Rage Pro is at least 2fps faster in most tests - the best 3d Rave results I've seen so far. 9/25/97 - I accidently wiped the latest version of this page - however the last updates were the Quake Rave and Mechwarrior Rave notes - which are also noted on the Power3D page. Added results of 1024x768, thousands colors tests in Macbench 4.0, Speedometer 4.02, and Norton SI video tests.
Intro:
I've recently had the pleasure to have a pre-production version of ATI's next generation Macintosh PCI video card, based on their 3rd generation Rage graphics chip - the Rage Pro. It appears that ATI's latest 2D/3D graphics chip performs quite well, even in the 2D performance arena. 3D performance is claimed to be as much as 3 times faster than the Rage II version, which powers the current ATI Xclaim 3D and VR cards. From my initial test results - I'd say that 2D scores were also improved substancially. The Graphics Cards page will list a review of the final versions of the RagePro cards.
Observations:
Although the card is a pre-production, I'd say from the clean layout and overall appearance this card is literally ready to go into production now. The card version I have does not contain the video capture or TV input/output connectors and is a very compact card - only about 4" overall in length. The version I had has 4 megabytes of SGram, with a expansion connector for adding another 4megs via a daughtercard.
2D Performance:
As I have not had much personal time recently for testing, the current test series was all run at 1152x870 mode, but at both thousands colors and millions colors settings. My next 2D tests will be at a more reasonable (for the target market of the card) resolution such as 1024x768 I first tested the Rage Pro in MacBench 4.0. The first graph shows the biggest shocker I saw in 2D. The card actually beat the Twin Turbo M8 in the hi-res publishing tests - at 1152x870, millions color mode. I never expected this kind of true-color performance from this card. ATI Rage Pro - MacBench 4.0 results, 1152x870, millions colors, 75mhz refresh ATI Rage Pro - MacBench 4.0 results, 1152x870, thousands colors, 75mhz refresh As the graphs show, the built-in 8500 video does fairly well at the standard graphics tests with the 50mhz bus setting, which is standard for most 200mhz cpus (as this 8500 was configured). The Rage Pro however does very well at the low and hires publishing tests that simulate real publishing applications. In thousands color mode, even at 1152x870, the Rage Pro is nearly identical in speed to the Twin Turbo and even the Imagine 128. In millions color mode - the Rage Pro does extremely well on the hires pub test.
3D Performance:
I'll have firmer 3D scores soon, but initial testing in Walker 1.1 and Gerbils shows very good performance, better than any 3D card I've tested so far. The Walker scores were a few FPS faster than any card I've tested, and the Gerbils FPS actually hit 200fps in some areas. Keep in mind the Rage Pro has a very good 3D feature set as well, including hardware texture mapping. Testing with the 3D game Weekend Warrior showed the Rage Pro delivers approx. 1.5x to 2x the VR performance on average. Some simpler sections such as the intro scene runs as much as 3x faster. Again, I'll try to have more definitive scores for you in the next week or so, but my life has been turned upside down by a terrible accident recently. Please bear with me, it's been a very difficult and stressful time here lately. For full technical details on the Rage Pro chip capabilities - see the ATI Rage Pro Page.
Updates: 9/3/97
The following shows results of testing at 1024x768, thousands colors in MacBench 4.0's Graphics and Lo-Res Publishing tests. Again the 8500's built-in video benefits from the 50mhz bus speed, vs the 33mhz PCI bus speed of the other video cards. MacBench 4.0 - 1024x768, thousands colors, 75hz refresh Norton Utils System Info v3.51 video tests: Keep in mind that the PCI cards are running at 33mhz vs. the 8500 built-in video running at a bus speed of 50mhz. However the Rage Pro still blows the doors off the 8500 video in these tests, and does a respectable job even at the hi-res millions colors mode. 1024x768 - thousands colors (16-bit) Rage Pro = 242 8500 = 132 (50mhz bus speed) 1152x870 - millions colors Rage Pro = 141 8500 = 93.4 (50mhz bus speed) Twin Turbo M8 = 176 (driver v4.02) Imagine 128S2 = 219 (driver v4.50) Speedometer 4.02 tests: This very limited test series has only a 16-bit max test depth, but is shown for comparison purposes. 1024x768 - thousands colors (16-bit) Rage Pro = 8.192 8500 = 4.077 (50mhz bus speed) Twin Turbo M8 = 8.619 Imagine 128S2 = 9.771 1152x870 - millions colors Rage Pro = 8.01 Twin Turbo M8 = 8.94 (driver v4.02) Imagine 128S2 = 9.41 (driver v4.50) Walker 1.1 Scores: The numeric scores from the Walker v1.1 tests. Note that in some scenes video artifacts were present, and were most severe in the Atrium scene. I've seen this with other cards as well, and it may be a Quickdraw 3d issue which may be corrected in a update or driver revision. All tests were done in 1024x768 - thousands colors (16-bit) mode, and the lowest frames per second (fps) was recorded for the "spin" of the scene. Corridor (49k polygons) Rage Pro = 3.53 fps Twin Turbo M8 = 2.45 Imagine 128S2 = 2.67 8500 Video = 2.45 (50mhz bus) Exhibit (20k polygons) Rage Pro = 8.57 fps Twin Turbo M8 = 5.45 Imagine 128S2 = 6.67 8500 Video = 5.29 (50mhz bus) Staircase (25k polygons) Rage Pro = 9.68 fps Twin Turbo M8 = 7.74 Imagine 128S2 = 6.15 8500 Video = 6.15 (50mhz bus) Atrium (16k polygons) Rage Pro = 13.12 fps Twin Turbo M8 = 7.27 Imagine 128S2 = 10.91 8500 Video = 7.27 (50mhz bus)
Base System Notes:
The base system used to test the ATI Rage ProTM was our standard PowerMac 8500, set to 200mhz cpu, 50mhz bus speed, with 128megs of matched memory (60ns), standard built-in video with 4 megs Vram, running OS 7.6.1. Disk cache was 512k, Speed doubler 2 and LibMoto were active (Speed Doublers faster disk access was disabled). Quicktime 2.5 and Quickdraw 3d extensions were also enabled (as done in prev. testing). Cache Used : PowerLogix 1 meg RapidCache (p/n: RC1MB02) (in my system the standard RapidCache runs as fast a bus speed as the Ultra model, and costs less). PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 200 (set to 50mhz bus/200mhz cpu)
Benchmark Notes:
All tests were run using MacBench 4.0 .
= Availability = These cards are available now. See the Graphics cards page for reviews of the final VR and 3D RagePro models (The "Budget Trio" review). Bottom Line often has a special on the 8MB RagePro 3D model for under $200. The Rage Pro chip is the basis for several ATI Mac Video cards including the Nexus GA, Xclaim 3D and VR models. The Nexus is a high end card with dual ported Window Ram ( Wram ), that is esentially Vram that's optimized for graphics. The 3D and VR card models use lower cost SGram like the card tested here. The VR card includes limited video capture. The 3D and VR cards are a much better value than the higher priced Nexus GA for most consumers.
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