Nice CPU. Not so nice video card.

Here's an article describing the ATI Rage:

http://vintage3d.org/rage.php

You can find any version of DirectX here:

http://www.falconfly.de/directx.htm

Only Rage driver I found is for Windows 95/95A (Win95B and later have drivers already):

http://vintage3d.org/driver.php

As for OpenGL, forget it. No OGL game works with it, not even with wrappers. Even D3D is a pain in the neck 😵

Good luck.

What about OpenGL through the Techland D3D or ATICIF wrapper? 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Techland's minigls have decent enough GL compliance to get Q3 booting on most of the first-gen 3d cards (where their normal minigls/drivers can't)

Thank you for the info (and the links). It seems with DX7.0 installed Unreal allows both Software rendering and Direct3D rendering but they both seem to look the same and have same performance. Very strange. But I can understand the card is not very good. I will try to grab a 3Dfx (V1 or V2) or a Riva TNT2.

If they look the same then the driver did not initialize properly and fell back to software. Unreal in D3D is missing software's overbright and dithering

vladstamate wrote:

Provided I can find OpenGL drivers, would Quake II run on it? What about Unreal?

I think a Rage 128 Pro / Rage Fury would be more suited. Or go straight with a Radeon 7500 / 7000 / 8500.

I don't have much experience with the ATI Rage but it's quite old, older than any cards I have ever used I think 😊

leileilol wrote:

What about OpenGL through the Techland D3D or ATICIF wrapper? 😀:):):):)

Techland's minigls have decent enough GL compliance to get Q3 booting on most of the first-gen 3d cards (where their normal minigls/drivers can't)

Probably worth a shot, but I still won't hold my breath. One of the biggest drawbacks is, as the article I linked to mentions, that ATI only made 2mb Rage cards apparently (I never saw anyone offer a 4mb version). This limits its capabilities greatly - barely enough room for 640x480 at 16-bit color (and no, Z-buffering is not even present as a feature, it's missing!). Quake 2 might work; Unreal, I don't think so.

vladstamate wrote:

I will try to grab a 3Dfx (V1 or V2) or a Riva TNT2.

Those are much better options. I have a Riva TNT and Monster 3D (Voodoo 1) in my P166MMX build and they both work great. The TNT is even more compatible with DOS games (something the ATI Rage fails at as well). Just remember that games like Quake 2 and Unreal are still very CPU demanding, even with a proper 3D card.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I don't have much experience with the ATI Rage but it's quite old, older than any cards I have ever used I think 😊

The ATI Rage is a contemporary of the Matrox Mystique, S3 Virge, Nvidia NV1, Creative Labs 3D Blaster and Matrox Millennium. Its biggest strength is its proprietary API, ATI CIF; its biggest weakness is everything else. Only a collector or curiosity seeker should consider having one; there are better options out there for everyone else.

Even with a Voodoo card you need better CPU to enjoy Unreal... I used to play it on Pentium MMX overclocked to 262 MHz and it could have been a better experience.

A Rage Mach 64GT is clearly not very useful for 3D. If it is a GT and not a GT-B that should be the original 3D Rage, not even the Rage II. (Not that a Rage II is useful, for playing glQuake I wouldn't go lower than Rage Pro.)

Window 98 includes DirectX 5.2, Windows 98 SE includes DirectX 6.1. Windows 95 OSR 2.5 includes DirectX 5.0.
With a P166 MMX I would probably use 98SE, not 95, but if you are low on RAM or want to play specific games 95 might make sense.

Q2 should be ok with an appropriate 3d card, Unreal clearly isn't a good idea.
A V1 or V2 sounds good, with a TNT2 the CPU will be the bottleneck, but that won't hurt. The problem might be that you board probably has no AGP slot and TNT2 is uncommon as PCI. If it has AGP there are more options.

leileilol wrote:

What about OpenGL through the Techland D3D or ATICIF wrapper?

So far I've only noticed CIF to OGL wrappers, not the other way around. Or did I miss something? I tried Techland of course, no good.

Rage is just a tweaked mach64 with triangle engine, don't expect too much.
Many things are done in Software as i know.
A Riva128 is a much better choice if you want a lowend Card.

philscomputerlab wrote:

vladstamate wrote:

Provided I can find OpenGL drivers, would Quake II run on it? What about Unreal?

I think a Rage 128 Pro / Rage Fury would be more suited. Or go straight with a Radeon 7500 / 7000 / 8500.

I don't have much experience with the ATI Rage but it's quite old, older than any cards I have ever used I think 😊

Bit overkill, don't you think?
No idea why you'd want a 3D accelerator at all in a P166 system, most games that'd utilize 3D Acceleration would be held back by the CPU, making them barely playable

Personally I'd just say get a nice 2D card and forget 3D acceleration completely in a system like that

An integrated GPU with TCL is definitely ahead of where the industry was by a few years, but quick triangle setup solution was certainly desirable at that time. Accelerator chips were available from 3dfx, NEC/Imgtech, Rendition, etc and were being purchased by enthusiasts and early adopters. Mainstream vendors like ATI and S3 built some 3d logic into their budget oriented chipsets to protect their slice of that market.

I've relocated a number of posts to the Trash Can.

By the way, VOGONS "Marvin" forum is about experimenting with any old computer hardware in any manner a person desires. Remember that before posting.

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.

swaaye wrote:

I've relocated a number of posts to the Trash Can.

By the way, VOGONS "Marvin" forum is about experimenting with any old computer hardware in any manner a person desires. Remember that before posting.

Thanks swaaye for taking action, and I completely agree with you.

RobW0lf wrote:

Bit overkill, don't you think?
No idea why you'd want a 3D accelerator at all in a P166 system, most games that'd utilize 3D Acceleration would be held back by the CPU, making them barely playable

Personally I'd just say get a nice 2D card and forget 3D acceleration completely in a system like that

Back in the old days, I had a Pentium 133 on a Gigabyte board and PCI S3 Trio 64 V+ card. The 3dfx Voodoo was released and all the magazines raved about it. So I got one and it worked well with the Pentium. Tomb Raider was THE game I played on that machine. My memory of that time isn't the best, I remember playing G-police and a few sports games that supported 3D acceleration. Wing Commander Prophecy also ran well on that computer.

As always, that was what we had at the time, obviously when I'm building a machine these days I will likely pick somewhat better hardware, especially with the processor.

I don't have much experience with the early ATI and Nvidia cards, but I have such cards recently acquired, mostly for my Windows 98 SE benchmarking project, so I'm looking forward to going back in time and seeing what these cards can do, what games they can and can't run and all of that 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

I don't have much experience with the early ATI and Nvidia cards, but I have such cards recently acquired, mostly for my Windows 98 SE benchmarking project, so I'm looking forward to going back in time and seeing what these cards can do, what games they can and can't run and all of that 😀

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 😊

vetz wrote:

swaaye wrote:

I've relocated a number of posts to the Trash Can.

By the way, VOGONS "Marvin" forum is about experimenting with any old computer hardware in any manner a person desires. Remember that before posting.

Thanks swaaye for taking action, and I completely agree with you.

Me too. Thank you, swaaye. Now that the fire has burnt out, I feel bad I took part in it.

Just to quickly confirm what JayCeeBee64 said earlier: the reason Unreal reverted back to software renderer is because it could not create a device with Z-buffer support.

Getting a 3Dfx Voodoo seems period appropriate. I will still be able to use the ATI Rage as the 2D card.