There is no framerate improvements. There is only resolution improvements. My ATI RAGE PRO runs Quake II only in up to 800x600 with onboard 4Mb RAM and fails in 1024x768. After upgrade it with additional memory dughter card i can run it in 1024x768.

Not sure I understand. The literature says the onboard 2MB is split between the frame buffer and 3D texture memory. That equates to roughly half (1MB) for textures. Would this not become a bottleneck in games, limiting framerates? It is said that cards that natively had 4 or 8MB already were faster in benchmarks.

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-04-03, 19:13:

Not sure I understand. The literature says the onboard 2MB is split between the frame buffer and 3D texture memory. That equates to roughly half (1MB) for textures. Would this not become a bottleneck in games, limiting framerates? It is said that cards that natively had 4 or 8MB already were faster in benchmarks.

If you upgrade with additional vram you can get higher 3d resolution but NOT higher framerates.

I interpreted your post correctly. The question is WHY? I get how the frame buffer will increase, and that can hold more pixels. So getting higher res support I totally understand. But the texture memory will correspondingly increase. Why would this not improve performance in texture heavy games? I mean nowadays when you compare any 2 cards of the same type, 1 with say 1GB and the same card with 2GB, performance goes up with more memory... so... why does it not work that way with this card?

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-04-03, 19:40:

I interpreted your post correctly. The question is WHY? I get how the frame buffer will increase, and that can hold more pixels. So getting higher res support I totally understand. But the texture memory will correspondingly increase. Why would this not improve performance in texture heavy games? I mean nowadays when you compare any 2 cards of the same type, 1 with say 1GB and the same card with 2GB, performance goes up with more memory... so... why does it not work that way with this card?

Just count FPS and maybe you get other results.
I check it and get only higher resolution support but no framerates improvements. 😀

Ok fair enough. But before I can do that I have to buy the memory module and I'm just concerned about compatibility. The serial number on the RAM actually leads me to believe the onboard RAM is already SGRAM but advertising and wikis on the product hints at it being the crappy underclocked EDO RAM.

This is SGRAM.
I don't recall pure Rage II board with EDO.

If it's SGRAM, then there's no problem. I keep seeing descriptions of this product all over the place that say the product comes with either EDO, SD or SG RAM and sometimes you get the clock speeds attached to each... I think 60, 66 and 83 respectively? However the daughterboard mentioned seems to be for the P/N I have so that's sort of the deciding factor right there. It "has to work".

I see many games run at 512 resolution on ATI cards, owing to the 2MB memory floor on these cards. It's too bad you can't set the resolution in mechwarrior because if I get 4MB from the upgrade I'd want to play it in 640 at least since these cards don't do bilinear filtering all that well

BTW can PowerStrip (or any other piece of software) (or any other method whatseover) overclock any part of this card? I think 10% wouldn't hurt it, as I've heard the chips can handle up to 30. The fact that there's even mention of clocking these differently leads me to believe that it is possible but I can't find anyone who's done it or discussed how.

I just installed the card and it doesn't appear to be detecting the additional memory. Is there something I need to know about the physical installation or about how to detect the vram? Speedsys just says 2MB and so does some m64 tool I downloaded. WTF am I doing wrong? Is the memory not compatible or just broken?

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-04-19, 03:30:

I just installed the card and it doesn't appear to be detecting the additional memory. Is there something I need to know about the physical installation or about how to detect the vram? Speedsys just says 2MB and so does some m64 tool I downloaded. WTF am I doing wrong? Is the memory not compatible or just broken?

Recheck it in Windows (Device manager - Videocards -> ATI RAGE… here in drivers properties)
Look at memory chips pins - sometimes they are jammed after module removing.

Under Diagnostics>Status it says:

SW Release Version: 4.35-C20E
ASIC Type: 3D Rage II PCI
Video Memory: 2MB SGRAM
VGA Memory Boundary: 2MB
DAC Type: Built In
I/O Base Address: 6800h
ROM Version: 3.019
BIOS PN: 113-38204-101
VGA Functionality: Enabled
Aperture Status: 8MB@3584MB
Upgrade Module PN:
100-401021 (2MB)

It certainly doesn't look like it's working. I'm not sure what I can do. I don't really think it's defective...

OK... I pulled the memory off and put it on again and now it reports 4mb. Considering how damn tight those connectors are I would not have suspected a connection problem is even possible but there it is. Lesson to all those out there. You're never above plugging something in twice I guess.

Now to find something to test the extra memory with. TR2 already has less graphical corruption but my whole setup is wrong (dx8 on w95 is baddd) so I'm going to reformat first and then do it properly

Gahhhrrrlic wrote on 2023-04-20, 02:31:

OK... I pulled the memory off and put it on again and now it reports 4mb. Considering how damn tight those connectors are I would not have suspected a connection problem is even possible but there it is. Lesson to all those out there. You're never above plugging something in twice I guess.

Now to find something to test the extra memory with. TR2 already has less graphical corruption but my whole setup is wrong (dx8 on w95 is baddd) so I'm going to reformat first and then do it properly

Final reality benchmark?

I tried. It sucked.

I think DX is part of the problem. I think I can get way faster performance with DX6 or 7 vs DX8. Not sure if I should go DX7 even... would there be any point for a 1996 machine running W95 and first gen 3d games?