First post, by Ozzuneoj
- Rank
- l33t
So, my collection has been growing over the past couple years and I've started to accumulate a significant number of ATI cards. I posted a thread here a few months back trying to make sense of the various ATI Rage models I have laying around, and it certainly helped to see where they ranked when it came to 3D performance.
Now, I'm wondering how USEFUL Rage and Radeon cards truly are versus using other common cards.
We all know that 3dfx and Nvidia cards are excellent for most early 3D accelerated games (3dfx being a bit better earlier on, and Nvidia being better after 1999 or so). We also have the huge DOS compatibility chart that shows how various cards\chips handle some of the more problematic DOS games out there. On this chart, 3dfx, nvidia, S3 and Cirrus Logic (among others) have very few problems, where as Matrox and ATI seem to have many issues. I don't think this tells the whole story, since most people will probably never play most of the games on the chart, and many people have been using these cards for years. When it comes to later cards, the Nvidia Geforce4 and FX series are known for supporting 8bit Palletized textures and table fog, which makes them excellent for running older games. The Geforce 6 series is known for being among the fastest cards to have good Windows 98 support (though lacking the 8bit palletized texture support).
... so how does ATI measure up in these areas that people commonly base their graphics card choices on? And are there any other areas where they have clear benefits over the nvidia equivalents of the time?
Personally, in 20 years of owning my own PCs, I've only extensively used a 9600 Pro (during the FX era) and an HD7750 (in an HTPC), so I really don't have a lot of hands on experience with them. If anyone has experience with cards from any of these ranges, please post your findings, good or bad.
ATI Rage (I, II, IIC, etc)
ATI Rage 128
Radeon 1st gen (DX7 7000, 7200, 7500, with and without T&L)
Radeon 8500 (DX8 8500LE, 9100, 9250, etc.)
Radeon 9x00 (DX9 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, XT, Pro, etc.)
Radeon Xxx00 (x600, x800, x1600, x1800, x1950, etc.)
Anecdotes, benchmarks, bug reports, special features no one normally talks about, image quality... whatever you can think of, we need a thread about these cards. Currently, Rage cards are practically being given away and the DX9 Radeons don't seem to command the price premium of the GF4 Ti and FX series options, despite having superior performance in games from that time period. I'd love to know if I should hang on to some of mine or just try to sell them all off (except for my beloved Tyan Tacheon 9600 Pro... I've had it for 15 years and its an awesome little card).
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.