When I tested this Rage IIc in the early posts I was expecting the usual "S3 Virge like" card with also some bad performance/compatibility memory of the past when a friend had an AGP 4MB version built by ATi, green PCB, that had problems in most 1997/98 games. But at that time at least here it wasn't that common to look for drivers upgrade or to even think drivers could have been that important like instead became for the whole Rage chip serie.
At the end I imagine that computer was using a early version of them and instead testing the 8MB AGP version with latest driver I found it to be very interesting when and if seen from its correct market prospective which imho was the S3 Virge/Trio3D one.

And at the end most Direct3D6 games even heavy ones can often be rendered at 400x300 with no gfx errors or unexpected problems beside a common low frame rate but still on the acceptable level for those times. Considering I still had a 14" CRT monitor using it at 640x480 or 800x600 (56Hz... or an impossible 1024x768 strange setting I don't remember it was a great monitor anyway) I would have played most games of that times with this having better drivers that came late. Of course from what I remember as it is designed it does need a fast CPU too. I wonder if the last SiS 6326 version can be faster I suppose it is.

I love more Rage3 based cards, than Rage2 ones.ATi Xpert@Play (RagePro) with TV out was my first 3D videocard, played many games and watched many movies with it, worked well with my Celeron 300A. I used it for 2D/D3D and OpenGL back then, about 3DCiF API support i found out later. DVD playback was nice to have for RagePro, even some Rage2 had DVD support ( Rage II+ DVD ). All in Wonder started with Rage2, i have one All-in-Wonder Pro, cards without Tv tuner had AMC connector for TV tuner addon and i liked option to show TV channel or input as moving destop picture. With Rage Pro you can mostly play well @ 640x480 resolution and 16bit colors. There are lots of Rage2 and even more Rage3 cards out there and i like it, many driver versions to choose for both of them.

Best Rage3 card for me is Compaq RageXL AGP 8MB odd shaped cards, very clean VGA output @ 640x480 resolution and low power consumption. Rage3 = more than 40fps possible with GLQuake and demo1 @ 640x480 with right OpenGL version. I would choose Rage2 mostly for 2D and Rage3 for 2D/early 3D and use them in dos and win9x.

MACXW4 4.11.2598 is the latest driver for Rage2 and for Rage3 it is ATI2DRAE 4.13.2655.

I am back to 2474 (DX5 driver with installed DX6) for my Rage Pro LT 4MB Onboard.

2474
- CIF OK
- D3D OK
- DDRAW OK
- OGL (DoomGL broken on lights and floor, Quake1 seems to be OK but flickering black in menu, Quake2 seems to be OK)

2540
- CIF OK
- D3D OK
- DDRAW OK
- OGL (DoomGL OK, Quake1 lightning broken, Quake2 seems to be OK)

2560
- CIF broken
- Rest not tested...

386SX wrote on 2022-08-07, 15:53:

When I tested this Rage IIc in the early posts I was expecting the usual "S3 Virge like" card with also some bad performance/compatibility memory of the past when a friend had an AGP 4MB version built by ATi, green PCB, that had problems in most 1997/98 games. But at that time at least here it wasn't that common to look for drivers upgrade or to even think drivers could have been that important like instead became for the whole Rage chip serie.
At the end I imagine that computer was using a early version of them and instead testing the 8MB AGP version with latest driver I found it to be very interesting when and if seen from its correct market prospective which imho was the S3 Virge/Trio3D one.

I think the explanation is simple: you are using CPU that is much more powerful than was available back in the days of Rage/Virge.
This is from S3 Virge series review from czech retro-hardware site: "Several (modern) web pages show ATI Rage II/II+DVD as a superior chip to S3 ViRGE DX/GX. It is good to add that they’ve benchmarked the cards on a newer PC with powerful Pentium III CPUs (or better). However, ATI’s pre-Rage Pro chips behave badly when combined with slow Pentium I CPUs due to large CPU overhead caused by the ATI driver. In a 150-MHz Pentium system, you would get nearly twice as much performance from a ViRGE DX/GX than from a Rage II+DVD, although the chips should be comparable on machines with faster CPUs (Rage I/II should be combined with at least Pentium II)."

Kruton 9000 wrote on 2022-08-15, 11:51:

386SX wrote on 2022-08-07, 15:53:

When I tested this Rage IIc in the early posts I was expecting the usual "S3 Virge like" card with also some bad performance/compatibility memory of the past when a friend had an AGP 4MB version built by ATi, green PCB, that had problems in most 1997/98 games. But at that time at least here it wasn't that common to look for drivers upgrade or to even think drivers could have been that important like instead became for the whole Rage chip serie.
At the end I imagine that computer was using a early version of them and instead testing the 8MB AGP version with latest driver I found it to be very interesting when and if seen from its correct market prospective which imho was the S3 Virge/Trio3D one.

I think the explanation is simple: you are using CPU that is much more powerful that was aviable back in the days of Rage/Virge.
This is from S3 Virge series review from czech retro-hardware site: "Several (modern) web pages show ATI Rage II/II+DVD as a superior chip to S3 ViRGE DX/GX. It is good to add that they’ve benchmarked the cards on a newer PC with powerful Pentium III CPUs (or better). However, ATI’s pre-Rage Pro chips behave badly when combined with slow Pentium I CPUs due to large CPU overhead caused by the ATI driver. In a 150-MHz Pentium system, you would get nearly twice as much performance from a ViRGE DX/GX than from a Rage II+DVD, although the chips should be comparable on machines with faster CPUs (Rage I/II should be combined with at least Pentium II)."

Sure the card did benefit from the Pentium III (early model) or late Pentium II cpus but at that time anyway the Celeron 300Mhz and similar was the new modern entry level config. The Rage drivers serie situation was complex with so many different quality drivers during its lifetime and most video chip suffered so much from missing good drivers that might have saved some old company in the late 90. At the end the compatibility was good and the speed was "acceptable" maybe on an higher cpu cost anyway. I imagine the Rage IIc version reached its limit with latest drivers for what that design could do.

I have high oppinion for both the Rage2+ and Rage Pro line of chips, not particularly fan of the 2c.

When S3 released the Virge, the first real 3D accelerator for a PC (capable of 16 bit rendering, 3d polygons, textures, z buffer, blend) the only company that was able to answer to this, was ATi.

Some people usually laugh at this, saying it was a 3d decellator, and software rendering is faster. I suggest these people to try Croc 1 on a p75 with software rendering in 400x300, and then try it with a Virge . In reality, the Virge offered monstrous 3D performance for its time (1995), and good support for late 486 boards with PCI, and early Pentium 1 based systems. The 2D quality was also excellent.

The first Rage was useless, because it lacked the Z buffer. ATi quikcly removed this from the market. The Rage2+ family was okay. Rage2+ was able to gain a good 20% in performance over the Virge (1996). Of course 4 MByte Virge and Rage2+ cards had to be used to be actually able to run D3D based workloads. In parallelly to this, S3 released the Virge DX, which is about 20% faster over the original Virge, and the performance is identical to the Rage2+ (according to my benchmarks).

Both card is capable to render a few 1000 of polygons at max, because they dont support vertex transformations from hardware.
The Virge DX dies above 512x384, but the Rage2+ can go even in 640x480 due to its bigger fill rate.

Of course nvidia, 3dfx, matrox, sis, cirrus logic, rendition, and other companies also arrived by their solutions by this time, neither of them was able to compete with Rage2+ and with the Virge initially - except for the 3dfx voodoo1, which was a high-end accelerator card, not even a video card.

My problem with the Rage2c is that it looks like a non-sensical product. Targeting the AGP slot in an era where its performance became anemic (Rage2+ and Virge were older technologies, targeting the PCI slot, early PC-s, and most cards were PCI, only some later iterations were built with AGP later on) . The AGP Rage2c is trying to come up with a 486-ish 3D performance for an AGP era computer, and its only about 5% faster than the PCI ATi Rage2+ chip and its really disappointing. That card basically doesnt belong to a pentium2 computer.

The Rage Pro, in other hand, is a very good product. They created circuit for triangle calculations in hardware, speeding up the chip to easily reach the performance of the Voodoo1, making it a worthy competitor of the Voodoo, Permedia2 and Riva128 in 1997.

Geri wrote on 2022-08-20, 22:07:

In reality, the Virge offered monstrous 3D performance for its time (1995)

It wasn't available in 1995.

Geri wrote on 2022-08-20, 22:07:

Of course 4 MByte Virge and Rage2+ cards had to be used to be actually able to run D3D based workloads.

It depends what is the "workload".

Geri wrote on 2022-08-20, 22:07:

Virge DX dies above 512x384, but the Rage2+ can go even in 640x480 due to its bigger fill rate.

I haven't found much difference there. Memory speed of particular cards will likely be decisive.

Geri wrote on 2022-08-20, 22:07:

I have high oppinion for both the Rage2+ and Rage Pro line of chips, not particularly fan of the 2c. […]
Show full quote

I have high oppinion for both the Rage2+ and Rage Pro line of chips, not particularly fan of the 2c.

When S3 released the Virge, the first real 3D accelerator for a PC (capable of 16 bit rendering, 3d polygons, textures, z buffer, blend) the only company that was able to answer to this, was ATi.

Some people usually laugh at this, saying it was a 3d decellator, and software rendering is faster. I suggest these people to try Croc 1 on a p75 with software rendering in 400x300, and then try it with a Virge . In reality, the Virge offered monstrous 3D performance for its time (1995), and good support for late 486 boards with PCI, and early Pentium 1 based systems. The 2D quality was also excellent.

The first Rage was useless, because it lacked the Z buffer. ATi quikcly removed this from the market. The Rage2+ family was okay. Rage2+ was able to gain a good 20% in performance over the Virge (1996). Of course 4 MByte Virge and Rage2+ cards had to be used to be actually able to run D3D based workloads. In parallelly to this, S3 released the Virge DX, which is about 20% faster over the original Virge, and the performance is identical to the Rage2+ (according to my benchmarks).

Both card is capable to render a few 1000 of polygons at max, because they dont support vertex transformations from hardware.
The Virge DX dies above 512x384, but the Rage2+ can go even in 640x480 due to its bigger fill rate.

Of course nvidia, 3dfx, matrox, sis, cirrus logic, rendition, and other companies also arrived by their solutions by this time, neither of them was able to compete with Rage2+ and with the Virge initially - except for the 3dfx voodoo1, which was a high-end accelerator card, not even a video card.

My problem with the Rage2c is that it looks like a non-sensical product. Targeting the AGP slot in an era where its performance became anemic (Rage2+ and Virge were older technologies, targeting the PCI slot, early PC-s, and most cards were PCI, only some later iterations were built with AGP later on) . The AGP Rage2c is trying to come up with a 486-ish 3D performance for an AGP era computer, and its only about 5% faster than the PCI ATi Rage2+ chip and its really disappointing. That card basically doesnt belong to a pentium2 computer.

The Rage Pro, in other hand, is a very good product. They created circuit for triangle calculations in hardware, speeding up the chip to easily reach the performance of the Voodoo1, making it a worthy competitor of the Voodoo, Permedia2 and Riva128 in 1997.

I suppose the Rage IIc was intended to be something like the Rage XL has been at the end of its time, a very cheap solution for the low end sectors and manufacturers; the IIc was still built on 2000 cards with 2000 chips, 8MB SDRAMs 7ns, of course totally late compared to anything even low end at that point. I'm thinking for example to any Savage3D or Riva 128ZX in the same sector (the classic AGP 1x/2x early 8MB product sector) that were faster I suppose everywhere. But from a technical point of view and finally with acceptable final drivers, it wasn't bad simply more a cheap card for AGP mainboards that didn't care about 3D but eventually might have run some apps requiring it.
Of course it should be compared to the early 2D/3D video cards and impressive it lasted that long into the 2000 year.

About the Rage Pro I'd agree beside the PCI version. I was quite sad testing that because I'd say the difference with the AGP BGA video chip based card is quite a lot. At a point I was wondering if it's really the same core inside that package or a different design. It'd be interesting to see the core images of the two different Rage Pro packages of PCI and AGP cards.

Putas wrote on 2022-08-21, 04:40:

It wasn't available in 1995.

It was introduced in 1995 and was available in smaller numbers - large quantity of manufacturing indeed started in 1996 when the PCI bus started to become more popular.

Putas wrote on 2022-08-21, 04:40:

It depends what is the "workload".

None of the d3d based games i have tested worked on the virge with 2mb. Except probably motoracer. Most of them crashed, or below 1 fps. After adding the extra 2 mbyte, they miracolously start to work. Maybe a different driver would bring more luck for the 2 mb versions, i havent played that much with the drivers.

386SX wrote on 2022-08-21, 07:26:

AGP BGA video chip based card is quite a lot.

Some of the Rage Pro PCI cards were built onto lightly modified Rage2+ PCI PCBs which use the more potato EDO ram. This nerfs the card, but the difference shouldnt be bigger than 20-25%. AGP itself might also add 5-10% difference in those early games. Not a serious loss of speed, but it can push you from 25 fps to 20.
(I would still prefer this card regardless of the speed loss.)

Geri wrote on 2022-08-21, 11:55:

386SX wrote on 2022-08-21, 07:26:

AGP BGA video chip based card is quite a lot.

Some of the Rage Pro PCI cards were built onto lightly modified Rage2+ PCI PCBs which use the more potato EDO ram. This nerfs the card, but the difference shouldnt be bigger than 20-25%. AGP itself might also add 5-10% difference in those early games. Not a serious loss of speed, but it can push you from 25 fps to 20.
(I would still prefer this card regardless of the speed loss.)

I've got the 4MB SGRAM upgradable PCI version and it really felt slower than it should. I might test it again in more powerful configs but the feeling was strangely too much slow compared to the classic AGP SGRAM 8MB version. Also another thing that make me wondering something might be a bit different on the core is that only the AGP version was said should be used (I don't remember if in the card box or somewhere) for DVD Motion Compensation decoding which I tried and I could not see much different forcing it enabled or not on the PCI version. Just a theory of course maybe the old packaged Rage Pro chip core might have been a bit different from the BGA version who knows. It'd be interesting to try a speed test of the Rage 2C AGP and the Rage Pro PCI.

Shogo / Blood 2 works mostly fine on 2 Mb Virge. Forsaken automatically downscales textures on 2 Mb cards, including Rage.

It was introduced in 1995 and was available in smaller numbers

Following the same logic 3Dfx Voodoo 1 and Rendition V1000 were "available" in 1995, LMAO.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-21, 12:59:

Following the same logic 3Dfx Voodoo 1 and Rendition V1000 were "available" in 1995, LMAO.

i have seen virge cards with 1995 manufacturing date on their back. when they have arrived the computers of the end users i dont know.
i dont think voodoo1 cards reached end users before 1996

386SX wrote on 2022-08-21, 12:58:

I've got the 4MB SGRAM upgradable PCI version and it really felt slower than it should. (...)

I have these: Rage2+ PCI, Rage2c AGP 4 mbyte, Rage2c AGP 8 mbyte. The difference is typically 1 fps in games like croc, motoracer, lego racer, croc2, or 0 fps (frogger, tomb raider, freespace).

Geri wrote on 2022-08-21, 14:13:

386SX wrote on 2022-08-21, 12:58:

I've got the 4MB SGRAM upgradable PCI version and it really felt slower than it should. (...)

I have these: Rage2+ PCI, Rage2c AGP 4 mbyte, Rage2c AGP 8 mbyte. The difference is typically 1 fps in games like croc, motoracer, lego racer, croc2, or 0 fps (frogger, tomb raider, freespace).

I don't have a Rage 2C PCI but on PCI I do have the ATI Xpert@Work PCI with the SGRAM ram socket and the old packaged Rage Pro chip. Interesting would be to compare these to the classic Rage Pro BGA IC on AGP at the same clocks.

I forget to mention, all of the agp rage2c cards mentioned above, have SD ram, the rage2+ has edo.

I forgot tests about this question exists already at vintage3d.org site at the ATi Performance Summary page of the Rage Pro review, where the Rage 2C AGP seems to be much slower than the Rage Pro PCI 4MB which seems close to the AGP version as expected to be at first. Which surprise me a bit considering last time I tested both the PCI and AGP "Pro Turbo" cards. I'll try them both again anyway to understand why I didn't have such positive feelings in the past.

386SX wrote on 2022-08-21, 14:51:

I'll try them both again anyway to understand why I didn't have such positive feelings in the past.

i am curious to see. there could be other differences between the cards too. like different chip clocks. of just the driver you used, was underperforming with the pci version for some reason. btw i have a riva128 pci and a riva128 agp. i might compare them some time.

If the chip has "3D" boldly on it, it's not very good at it. (edit: but not, as seen above, completely terrible either 😀 )

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-01-08, 01:21:

I used to be a diehard ATi guy. The Rage Pro and Rage IIC really turned me off of their products. I would say the Rage Pro marks the point where ATi stopped focusing on professional products and started catering to "gamers". My previous card was a Rage II+, which I really liked as a 2D card. I believe ATi had actually promised Rage II users a driver for OpenGL support, but that never happened and instead we got a big "F#$% you, please buy our Rage Pro instead". For some reason I actually bought one (at a steep discount), but only kept it in my system for about a week before I returned it, due to the cheap feel and crappy image quality. I think the Rage Pro must have been the card that gave ATi the reputation for having crappy drivers. I always remembered the drivers for their older products being top notch. Shortly after that I bought a Voodoo3. Despite being mainly a 3D card was much better at 2D than the Rage Pro.

Ati Rage Pro was competition to Voodoo1!!! Not voodoo2, or voodoo3. It was not fair, you bought it somewhere in voodoo2 or even voodoo3 era, and expected to run late 1998 and even 1999 flawlesly.
I kinda agree with drivers, but they matured quite good after some time. Maybe you used early ones. Anyway, I just testing these cards right now, and find out, Tomb raider 2 runs good, MDK direct3d patch runs, but GLQuake... that is a problem, it even doesn't run. Ati released some opengl.dll for quake2, claiming it works even with glquake, but when I copy that file into GLquake directory, it doesnt start. Returning some errors in small window messages.

I think it was good card for 1997, and early 1998 (after releasing voodoo2, it should be considered low end/budget card). Rage pro 2x, and pro Turbo, was not new cards. It's still old Rage Pro from 1997, just they upgraded it to 8MB, used SGR on some of them, and released new drivers, that increased performance (it was fraud, because it is same chip as Rage Pro 2x, but they masked it, as it is new chip). So, just don't consider Rage Pro Turbo to be 1998 card. It is not. It's 1997 technology.
Something similiar, as Virge, and Trio3D issue. Trio3D and Trio3D/2X is just Virge GX with some improvements (particulary in compatibility).

Both companies S3 and Ati somehow improved their old primary 3d accelerator card (Virge serie, and Ati Rage Pro serie), to look better than it actually is, but they kept is as budget solution, to their primary one in 1998 (S3 primary was Savage3D, and they renamed Virge to Trio3D, because Virge had bad reputation. Ati primary was Ati Rage 128 for 1998. They tried that thing with Rage Pro Turbo, as to decieve public it is somehow mainstream card, while Rage XL (dieshrunk Rage Pro) is budget card. But I would say, they are same budget card, just Rage Pro Turbo has 75/100 clocks, while XL has 60/80).
Nvidia kept Riva 128 / ZX as budget card , without some renaming, after TNT. They didn't confused buyers by renaming stuff. And 3dfx kept voodoo1, and later released banshee, as mainstream card.

So as you can see, all problem is, you need to consider Rage Pro Turbo 1997 card, it was only 1998 renaming non-sense from Ati, it's not 1998 card. So you need to run only 1996-1997 games on it considering it high-end, and whose games are handled good.

I just tested Tomb Raider 2 on Rage Pro Turbo 8MB and it runs superb for year 1997. - 640x480 x 16bit fluently, -640x480 x32 bit fluently -800x600x16 bit fluently, only choppy resolution is 800x600x32-bit. But still somehow playable, particulary after overclock. I was impressed, for 1997 card, it handled even 800x600x32bit in TR2. It was much better than Voodoo1 I would said, while cheaper, and also 2d/3d solution (so even cheaper for people doesn't have 2D card, and buying first computer).
Overclock results are somehow impressive too.. I was able overclock from 75/100 to 98/116. At that speed, 800x600x32-bit was even less choppy. I have SGR -8ns version, so memories would go probably higher, but from some reason, card refuse to go over 116, and just sets clocks to 60 , when I try going 117 and more.

W.x. wrote on 2022-08-27, 14:32:

I was able overclock from 75/100 to 98/116. At that speed, 800x600x32-bit was even less choppy. I have SGR -8ns version, so memories would go probably higher, but from some reason, card refuse to go over 116, and just sets clocks to 60 , when I try going 117 and more.

What are you using to overclock the Rage Pros? When I use Powerstrip or the ATI 128 Tweaker, the clocks are often misreported or go haywire. Perhaps I need to use a specific version of Powerstrip or are you using something else?