Usually the memory addon board features the same amount of memory that's presoldered.
The chip supports up to 16MB.

My Compaq SFF has the same chip on-board and I upgraded it from 4MB to 8MB of RAM.
I spent last weekend playing around with this chip, I used a Voodoo 3 before. This chip actually works better with the DOS games I play. In Windows, one thing I noticed is that after installing drivers I could select negative horizontal sync in the display settings, and this resulted in a much stabler image on my 1600x1200 LCD. I also found out that some drivers limit color depth at 1600x1200, while others don't. And yet others have corrupt output at low resolutions.
Finally I found a single set of drivers that works correct at all resolutions AND will play GlQuake; the set was w98_rpro_4_11_2628_en.exe.
http://kentie.net/article/retropc/ragedrivers.zip is my collection of Rage Pro drivers.

I wonder if anyone that used these cards when they were new can chime in: what's up with the drivers? Almost all of them are broken in some way, perhaps that's because they support many different card variants? And why would they ship a card with, in theory, functional 3D support and then leave it broken most of the time? I just don't get the point of building a chip like this and then not supporting it well at all. Or were they only really supporting the CIF API?

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-30, 12:08:

I wonder if anyone that used these cards when they were new can chime in: what's up with the drivers? Almost all of them are broken in some way, perhaps that's because they support many different card variants? And why would they ship a card with, in theory, functional 3D support and then leave it broken most of the time? I just don't get the point of building a chip like this and then not supporting it well at all. Or were they only really supporting the CIF API?

Thanks so much for the reply. The PC i got this card (and the motherboard and CPU, for that matter) used to be my family's PC, bought new in i guess 1998 according to the card, i don't remember exactly. But, that was a Sony VAIO, and yours came from a Compaq, so I guess these were OEM cards. According to PC Mag Dec 16, 1997, the same card was shipped in both Sony and Compaq machines with 4MB.

The computer came with Windows 95 pre-installed, and some 3D games and 3D video making software, all of which ran pretty choppy. I would imagine ATI never finished implementing good 3D support by the time they moved onto bigger and better stuff than the Rage series. But, I do remember that it was exemplary in DOS, like you said, it's ultra reliable in DOS, never had flickering or anything of the sort.

Up until I recently re-built the PC into a working state, I had never used drivers besides what shipped with the Sony, and on 98SE i haven't had a single issue yet having played a few 2D and a few 3D games, but I didn't install OpenGL yet. Now I am using the latest Rage 98 drivers from the VOGONS driver library. It tried to run at 1080p on my TV haha which it actually did but slowly!

pii_legacy wrote on 2020-05-30, 12:50:

Up until I recently re-built the PC into a working state, I had never used drivers besides what shipped with the Sony, and on 98SE i haven't had a single issue yet having played a few 2D and a few 3D games, but I didn't install OpenGL yet. Now I am using the latest Rage 98 drivers from the VOGONS driver library. It tried to run at 1080p on my TV haha which it actually did but slowly!

What 3D games have you tried? GlQuake works but has glitchy graphics with the latest drivers (you shouldn't need to install anything OpenGL related), apart from that I tried Unreal. Strangely, the original version, with the latest patch, works in D3D mode, while Unreal Gold immediately crashes. The game runs ok but the mipmap selection looks messed up, i.e. textures suddenly become blurry.

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-30, 13:51:

pii_legacy wrote on 2020-05-30, 12:50:

Up until I recently re-built the PC into a working state, I had never used drivers besides what shipped with the Sony, and on 98SE i haven't had a single issue yet having played a few 2D and a few 3D games, but I didn't install OpenGL yet. Now I am using the latest Rage 98 drivers from the VOGONS driver library. It tried to run at 1080p on my TV haha which it actually did but slowly!

What 3D games have you tried? GlQuake works but has glitchy graphics with the latest drivers (you shouldn't need to install anything OpenGL related), apart from that I tried Unreal. Strangely, the original version, with the latest patch, works in D3D mode, while Unreal Gold immediately crashes. The game runs ok but the mipmap selection looks messed up, i.e. textures suddenly become blurry.

Nothing except Tomb Raider 1 and Quake 2. I couldn't get openGL to work in Quake 2, it would just crash and go to the in-game console.

Great site with lots of information about drivers for Rage Pro series
http://www.oocities.org/ziyadhosein/rprow98.htm