Is that a Radeon bug..? I have exactly the same problem with my Geforce card in Skyrim 😳

jwt27 wrote:

Is that a Radeon bug..? I have exactly the same problem with my Geforce card in Skyrim 😳

That was my thought. I can't see it being a problem exclusive to Radeons since high resolution shadow maps are going to use the same amount of memory regardless of what video card they run on and when you run out of memory you're going to take a performance hit on an nVidia card, too, since it then has to start moving things in and out of memory to keep the game moving.

Yeah, I have seen this same shadowmap problem on the Geforce 8800GTS and 9600GSO also.

I decided to rename the thread so it includes all ATI hardware. So now you can all post about your favorite 3D Rage / 3D Rage II / Rage Pro / Rage 128 hardware too!!!! 😁

swaaye wrote:

I decided to rename the thread so it includes all ATI hardware. So now you can all post about your favorite 3D Rage / 3D Rage II / Rage Pro / Rage 128 hardware too!!!! 😁

So I can talk about my Rage Fury Maxx? 😜

I had a Rage Fury Maxx once. I had some real issues getting it to work right though in a Socket A board. Worked fine in a Slot-1 though. I have plenty of diff types of Rage 128 cards. Always liked them more then the TNT line.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

I had a Rage Fury Maxx once. I had some real issues getting it to work right though in a Socket A board. Worked fine in a Slot-1 though. I have plenty of diff types of Rage 128 cards. Always liked them more then the TNT line.

I think instead of releasing the Maxx, ATi should have just concentrated on getting a single GPU card out that was able to compete with the GeForce. In some tests the Maxx would equal or even slightly beat the GeForce, but in most tests the GeForce still won. Not enough to convince anyone to buy a Maxx over a GeForce and the price of the Maxx was not competitive either. It was only a few dollars less than a DDR GeForce and more than a SDR GeForce. The Rage 128 was also still stuck in the DX6 generation while the GeForce supported DX7 features. Then came the death blow when Microsoft released Windows 2k without the ability to support the second GPU on the Maxx. After that we'd have to wait for the R100 cards to come out before ATi had a card that could match the feature set of the original GeForce but was still slower than the most recent nVidia cards. ATi was not in a good position back then, seemingly always a generation behind nVidia, but managing to eke out a living in the high volume-low margin OEM market.

R100 was well into development when they launched Maxx. Radeon shipped about 7 months later. But everyone was years behind NVIDIA because Jen Hsung Huang had/has vision. Only ATI turned out capable of somewhat keeping up.

Since this thread isn't about only Radeons anymore, I might as well add a few more pics! 😁
First pic is of a couple old AGP ATI cards.
Second one is of a couple PCI ones, to the left are different variants of the Mach64 (with the bottom one looking somewhat similar to a voodoo1).
Third pic is a close-up of the black Radeon PCI (I remember it has only 32MB DDR).
Last pic is of a couple older Radeons which are still untested. One is a Radeon 7500 iirc and one board has 128MB memory. These ones came from my "untested" box.

Enjoy 😁

Cool. You should get a clearer pic of the old Rage cards though!

ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra 32MB from Dell. (my only Rage board)

swaaye wrote:

Cool. You should get a clearer pic of the old Rage cards though!

Will do. I only made a couple quick snaps with the camera (kinda 4am here hehe 😜).

Talking about the Maxx, I'd be interested in trying to enable the secondary VGA on it as I guess it appears as two separate cards on the machine. From what I can see on the PCB all that needs doing is a couple of links being changed and soldering another VGA socket, maybe a little BIOS modification too. Anyone wanting to try? 🤣

This is where it begun. Markings are barely readable but it is GT1 chip, the Rage (TM).

Only ATI I want now is plain Rage II for reasonable price.

How does the original 3D Rage compare to Virge?

Got only six d3d games to work "good" enough. Compared to vanilla Virge with 2 MB the Rage is 30 % faster.

I just bought a bunch of ATi cards a few weeks ago but the only Rage II cards I got was one that says Rage II +DVD and a few Rage IIc cards. The rest are Mach 64, Rage Pro Turbo, and there's a VGA wonder in there, I think and a Mach32 VLBus.

Mostly been an Nvidia fan since '99 or so, but I've bought a few Radeons along the way. Though for some strange reason, this is all that remains:

What I've owned (incl. not pictured):
Rage 128 Pro/ Ultra- had a few through the years, sold all but one for my collection. (top right corner)
Gigabyte Radeon 7500: Given away to my wife's brother. Poor performer.
ATi FireGL 8800: Performs the same as a 4200Ti but any and all drivers in the universe can't give decent performance in NWN 😜 Still use it regularly. (bottom right)
9250 (forgot what brand): SOLD
9600 Pro: Used very short while. Upgraded to 6600GT. SOLD
Axle X550: Old backup card from back in the day. A 9600 Pro with PCI-e. Was OK, nothing to shout about. Cheap. Preferred Nvidia 6xxx series cards back then. Broken years back and thrown out.
Sapphire X1300XT: Cheap and cheerful. Gives my 6800GS a run for the money. (bottom left)
Sapphire X2600 Pro AGP: Ran this in my ol' s939 DFI rig for a while. Good performance for what it cost. Ultimately not enough- I wanted an AGP rig with the same performance as my main 8800GT rig at the time.....strange wish...wonder what I was thinking back then???
Sapphire 3850 AGP: This + DFI NF3 Ultra-D + A64 = pure WIN. Very very stupidly sold it off. If I ever have the urge to recreate that rig, this will be the card that goes in it.
Sapphire 3870x2: I fell in love with this the day it came out. High power consumption and only GTS250 performance so it's been in it's box most of it's life. (middle left)
Asus 4870x2: More of the same. Doesn't see much use these days.
POwercolor 6670: For my old work rig. Sold the rig and the card.

Hmm, gotta stop selling my Radeons or giving them away. Woulda had an almost unbroken line otherwise.

Acquired a few new cards mainly for my newly acquired Mac G4. Now have an 9600SE 256MB which I haven't tested yet (but I found out it cannot be modified for mac), an ATI Rage 128 PRO 16MB with DVI which came from the Mac and I might flash back to a PC card as the Mac now has a Sapphire 9800 Pro 128MB which I bought from eBay for it to give it Quartz Extreme and Core Image support 😀

Oh, I forgot to mention as Rage cards are now included, I got a really nice deal on a bulk lot of Mac PCI Rage 128 cards a few years ago. They were the ones that you could order with the Blue and White Powermac G3 as an upgrade that had the DVD decoder daughter board mounted on them. The seller had 10 of them for $5 each so I bought out the lot as Mac Radeons, even the first ones, were still prohibitively expensive at the time. Radeon 7000/7500 Mac cards in PCI are still more than I care to spend on them considering what they are. I'd rather have a go at flashing PC cards since they are still dirt cheap. With the number of beige PCI Powermacs I have it is out of the question for me to spend $20-$30 each for video cards for all of them. I'm happy with the Rage 128's even if the DVD decoder is unsupported on older hardware.

I've used ATI Cards for years but any major card I've had in the last 10 years I sold to help buy a new card so I don't have them any more. I used to have:

128mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
128mb ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
128mb Asus Radeon X800 GT (BIOS flashed to unlock the disabled quad)
256mb ATI Radeon X1900GT (sadly this one died as I ran it for two weeks in a case without good enough airflow while I was away)
256mb ATI Radeon X1900XT (BIOS flashed to an XTX)
256mb Sapphire Radeon HD 2900GT
512mb Powercolor Radeon HD 3870
512mb Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 (which I still have)

I've had others in the past too that I either bought for a lower machine or got second hand, like a Radeon SDR, 7500, 9000, 9250, 9500, 9700, another 9800 Pro, X300se, X700, X800GTO(still have, BIOS flashed to GTO2 of course), X1300XT, X1650 Pro, HD2600, HD4350...

The ones I have now on hand are:
512mb Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 (with a Tt DuOrb fan)
1GB Sapphire Radeon HD 4350 (not in a system, might use it soon)
512mb Sapphire HD3650 (which needs a new fan and may not work)
256mb Sapphire X800GTO (BIOS flashed to unlock to GTO2)

And Non-Radeons I have:
8mb Rage XL AGP
8mb Xpert2000 AGP
4mb 3DXpression+ PC2TV PCI (TV Out in my 486!)
4mb 3DCharger PCI
VGA Basic 16
Graphics Solution SR