JayCeeBee64 wrote:

You're in for an intriguing and unique "trip" back in time Phil. Just remember to keep your expectations in check with these early 3D cards.

Most of all, have fun! This will be like nothing else you've tried before 😊

That's what it's all about! A retro journey...

I've got a Rage 128 Pro, I think it's an Ultra, but has 64 bit memory bus. So I got a proper Rage 128 Pro on the way. The names are a bit confusing. Rage Fury Pro and Xpert 2000 and all sorts of names. They all have the same chips, but differ slightly in clocks and some, like mine, have a narrower memory bus.

Yeah but 128's are a totally different class altogether. Like PowerVR's KYRO, the Rage128 was ATI's first real 3d accelerator. Don't let the Rage brand confusion throw you off about rage = rage 2 = rage pro = rage 128 etc.

The early Rages were infamous for not doing any alpha blending in hardware, relying on the driver to do it instead. and it couldn't modulate either so no fading black smoke

I used to have an ATI Mach64.
The little glutton ate up two IRQ's.

I also had an ATI Rage Fury (32MB) in a PII400 computer.
It did a good job supporting games that used non-standard VESA modes.
And it only used one IRQ, like a normal card.

I have a Rage IIc card, I only used it once just because it was too slow for my uses and would only work in certain boards.
This card is actually about to be boxed up and sent through to Phil for his benchmark project, I think I did some benchmarks on it, ill check when I get home.

leileilol wrote:

Yeah but 128's are a totally different class altogether. Like PowerVR's KYRO

Heh, I used to work for PowerVR, I was the guy that did (not alone, we were a team of 2) the Linux OpenGL driver for Kyro and Kyro 2. Fun times 😀

vladstamate wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Yeah but 128's are a totally different class altogether. Like PowerVR's KYRO

Heh, I used to work for PowerVR, I was the guy that did (not alone, we were a team of 2) the Linux OpenGL driver for Kyro and Kyro 2. Fun times 😀

Awesome. 😁

If you still know people who are/were over there (well I talk to SimonF occasionally through Beyond3d.com and Phil Bennett I know through MAMEDEV), then the retro community's still looking for some PowerVR info, such as additional datasheets/manuals: ex. http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/ite … icroelectronics
and other things: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/nvidia-nv1 … api-sdks.56206/

feipoa wrote:

The respectful nature of this forum is what originally attracted me here, however it seems times are changing with increasing user base.

vladstamate, if you want to use an ATI Rage PCI card, you could consider an ATI Rage 128VR or 128 PRO. I have had success running OpenGL and some D3D games on the Rage 128VR 32 MB on a fast 486 (e.g. 20 fps GLQuake speed on a 133 MHz "486"), so I would assume it should function even better on P166 MMX. Rage 128 cards are still common and cheap on ebay.

Rage 128 is much more common on AGP cards than on PCI cards. AGP cards can be had for next to nothing, PCI cards cost a few bucks. There seem to be a quite a few offers in the US, though. Keep in mind that it should be possible to take a Mac PCI card and cross-flash it to PC version.
That said, a Voodoo1/2 card is probably a more appropriate choice for the CPU.
See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accele … step,51-17.html for CPU scaling info. Phil's benchmark is also a good source, very comprehensive.

Haha, what a "luck". I got a PII @400Mhz machine and it had a AGP card inside, so I was excited to see what it was (the seller did not mention), and it turns out it is a ATI Rage Pro Turbo (XPERT@PLAY)... I mean come on, anything but ATI...

After installing drivers and DX7 Unreal does run in DX accelerated mode but it looks very bad and buggy. There are no lightmaps, texture quality is very bad and a lot of textures (like fonts) are pure black. It only has 4Mb of memory so maybe it runs out of memory? (although as AGP I would assume it would use the AGP aperture, but I guess not). Also for a given resolution, DX runs slightly slower (I would say about 10-15%) than SW rendering. I NEED a better 3D card...

The only kind of game Rages were really good at were PSX->PC conversions. Low poly, no alphas, and vertex lighting at best

vladstamate wrote:

After installing drivers and DX7 Unreal does run in DX accelerated mode but it looks very bad and buggy. There are no lightmaps, texture quality is very bad and a lot of textures (like fonts) are pure black. It only has 4Mb of memory so maybe it runs out of memory?

No, just adjust game preferences.

Sorry for the necropost.
I found for roughly the same price two version of the same Rage Pro Turbo:
https://i.imgur.com/1xsS63N.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/B2Rt0Ep.jpg

The second one should have 16mb of memory, while the first just 8. Is there any other difference? For example could the one with less memory be faster than the first?