Kahenraz wrote on 2025-09-26, 15:12:

That's fabulous. So, there is a driver that supported turning off 16-bit dithering. That's my biggest complaint about ATI cards around this generation and later. Ordered/pattern dithering is just terrible. It's too bad that it's it's not possible to disable it on the later drivers.

I have new 5.40.x Rage2/Rage Pro/RageXL driver and Software bundle out there.
Here some settings for Rage2/Rage3 with tweakers, havent have time test them.
Re: ATi RagePro drivers and software

Edit: Just tested, Rage2 tweaker settings changes are working, reduce dithering effect just tested with Turok and RageXL,
also it works original ATi Rage Pro, so all Rage3 cards. 😀

Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures & EMBM ist the reason why I bought a FX5600 AGP and use it with 45.23 driver on Win98SE.
I m reading now this thread as I have never read deep dive like the details and reasons why.

eliot_new wrote on 2025-11-04, 19:26:

Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures & EMBM ist the reason why I bought a FX5600 AGP and use it with 45.23 driver on Win98SE.
I m reading now this thread as I have never read deep dive like the details and reasons why.

Geforce 3 supports all those same things and can be used with older drivers and lower CPU.

FX5xxx cards are good cards for RetroPC with 45.23 driver.

I always believed that the GeForce 2 series GPU should have been capable of environmental bump mapping. It was kind of a moot feature by the time the GeForce 3 rolled around, with its early support for pixel shaders.

I was testing Daikatana for some unrelated things, and saw this when I opened the console:

Notice the EXT_paletted_texture and EXT_shared_texture_palette lines? Yeah, Daikatana can use paletted textures, just like other games based on the Quake 2 engine. From the brief testing that I did, it looks like these are only used for improving performance, and don't affect the visuals in Daikatana.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-11-17, 16:51:

I was testing Daikatana for some unrelated things, and saw this when I opened the console:

The attachment Daikatana_Voodoo3.jpg is no longer available

Notice the EXT_paletted_texture and EXT_shared_texture_palette lines? Yeah, Daikatana can use paletted textures, just like other games based on the Quake 2 engine. From the brief testing that I did, it looks like these are only used for improving performance, and don't affect the visuals in Daikatana.

RagePro / XL has better chances with paletted textures @ OldGL
MiniGL 1005 up to 1036 and OpenGL 1045 shows some promise.
I use GL Direct 3.00 if i want RagePro OpenGL paletted texture. 😀

Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files

Older OpenGL files may work better with older drivers, even Rage3 DX6 drivers like OpenGL from 1068 up to 1107 and not very old (1005 up to 1065).

Metal Gear Solid (2000) game uses 8-bit paletted textures?
Re: Metal Gear Solid PC
Re: ATi RagePro supported games

------------------------------------------------

New way to use 8bit paletted texutres with Rage3 8MB cards:
Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files

Its new Glide2CIF wrapper for 3Dfx games.
Glide/CIF wrapper

Just wanted to note that "Table fog function" is probably called :

GL_EXT_fog_coord

^I'm not sure if there is more needed for all of it, but this was main thing I found.

As mentioned earlier, palletted texture stuff is called :

EXT_paletted_texture
EXT_shared_texture_palette

If someone just wants to check OpenGL driver of his GPU for supported extensions using program like Everest or AIDA64 😉

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-04-25, 13:13:

Just wanted to note that "Table fog function" is probably called :

GL_EXT_fog_coord

Based on the description of that function, it seems more akin to Vertex Fog. But I'm not a programmer, so maybe someone else can clarify that further.

agent_x007 wrote on 2026-04-25, 13:13:

If someone just wants to check OpenGL driver of his GPU for supported extensions using program like Everest or AIDA64 😉

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. During my testing, I found that some graphics cards (e.g. ATi Radeon 9250) do tick the table fog checkbox in Everest, indicating that they support the feature. But if you play a game which uses table fog on such a card (e.g. Thief 2 or Shadows of the Empire) the fog doesn't render at all. I'm guessing the programmers put a "supported" flag in the drivers to prevent games which require that functionality from crashing, even though the effect won't be rendered. That's just my theory though, and it could be something else instead.

The fact is, games from that time period don't render table fog on Radeon cards by default under Win9x (Vertex Fog is a different thing). ATi did introduce proper table fog rendering with Catalyst 7.11 and onward. But that driver version only works on R300 based cards and newer, and isn't compatible with Win9x (needs WinXP).

In this post, I will provide step by step instructions for testing table fog and paletted texture support, in case someone wants to test a graphics card which hasn't been validated yet.

Paletted texture testing:

1. Download the Final Fantasy 8 demo from here and install it
2. Run the FF8 Configuration utility (FF8Config.exe)
3. Click on the "Graphics" tab and check if the "8-bit Paletted Textures" feature has a "Pass" next to it. If not supported, this feature will display a "Fail" instead

The screenshot above was taken on a Voodoo 3 graphics card, which properly supports paletted textures.

Table Fog testing:

1. Install the retail CD version of Thief II: The Metal Age (the GOG/Steam release is unsuitable for this test since it includes fan-made fixes)
2. Apply the official patch 1.18
3. Start the game, go to Options > Video, and ensure that Sky Detail is set to High, Fogging is set to On, Weather is set to On, then quit the game
4. Download the savegame attached here and copy the contents of the archive to your Thief2\SAVES folder
5. Start Thief 2 once again and load the savegame titled "Fog"
6. If table fog is supported, the scene should look as in the screenshot below

Note that some graphics cards have incomplete (broken) table fog support, in which case the scene may have some fog effects, but won't look the same as in the screenshot above. For reference, that screenshot was taken on a Voodoo 3 graphics card, which properly supports table fog.

BTW, here's Thief 2 (retail CD version + official patch 1.18, no fan fixes at all) running at 1600x1200 under WinXP on a GTX970 using 355.98 drivers. This is with 8xSGSSAA and 16xAF forced on top.

Table fog still renders correctly, but the lack of 16-bit dithering causes color banding, which is a separate and expected issue. To get Thief 2 to run natively on my system, I had to set CPU affinity to one core only, and also to uncomment safe_texture_manager in the game's USER.CFG file (by removing the semi colon in front of that line).

There is a game Metro-Police. If I remember well, supporting Palleted textures give you transparent water and not supporting it gives you scrambled color water? Any experience with it?

This was my experience: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/issues … ssue-2568541721

You can verify if its correct

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2026-05-21, 17:32:

There is a game Metro-Police. If I remember well, supporting Palleted textures give you transparent water and not supporting it gives you scrambled color water? Any experience with it?

This was my experience: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/issues … ssue-2568541721

You can verify if its correct

I think you already reported that game here.

It's been added to the Vogons wiki since then.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-05-21, 17:55:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2026-05-21, 17:32:

There is a game Metro-Police. If I remember well, supporting Palleted textures give you transparent water and not supporting it gives you scrambled color water? Any experience with it?

This was my experience: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/issues … ssue-2568541721

You can verify if its correct

I think you already reported that game here.

It's been added to the Vogons wiki since then.

Thanks, I forgot about it

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-05, 06:37:

Alright then, I will base the Rage 128 Pro compatibility tests on the video that Ancient Electronics posted. He begins testing t […]
Show full quote

Alright then, I will base the Rage 128 Pro compatibility tests on the video that Ancient Electronics posted. He begins testing that card around the 35 minute mark and seems to be using the latest reference drivers version 4.13.7192 from October of 2001. All screenshots are taken directly from that video.

Rage 128 Pro driver control panel

The attachment Rage128_Drivers.jpg is no longer available

Evidently, the Rage 128 Pro drivers offer dedicated settings for utilizing paletted textures and table fog. These settings were properly turned on during the tests (he clarifies this in the video comments).

Final Fantasy VIII configuration program

The attachment Rage128_FF8_Config.jpg is no longer available

The Rage 128 Pro fails the paletted texture check on the graphics configuration screen.

Final Fantasy VIII options menu

The attachment Rage128_FF8_Menu.jpg is no longer available

The menu colors look washed put on the Rage 128 Pro, indicating no paletted texture support.

Shadows of the Empire Mission 2: Escape from Echo base

The attachment Rage128_SOTE.jpg is no longer available

I think I may see some very faint fogging in this screenshot, but it's hard to tell. In any case, this looks significantly different compared to how table fog renders on 3DFX, Nvidia and Matrox cards.

Thief II Mission 11: Precious Cargo

The attachment Rage128_Thief2.jpg is no longer available

The Rage 128 Pro is attempting to render table fog in Thief 2, but it ends up distorting the textures on objects that were supposed to be covered by it. Again, this looks significantly different compared to how table fog renders on 3DFX, Nvidia and Matrox cards.

EDIT - The Rage 128 Pro does not support paletted textures when driver version 4.13.7192 is used. However, further research by @marxveix indicated that paltted textures are supported with older drivers from the 4.11.xxxx and 4.12.xxxx range. Additionally, this card may have some sort of partial support for table fog, but it renders the effect inaccurately, at least when driver version 4.13.7192 is used.

Addon to my finding about palleted textures and also table fog seems similar to Radeon with the fog fix/tweak with older 4.11 and 4.12 drivers as well. Not 100 accurate fog, but better than nothing?
First ATi cards that try tabel fog to get going are Rage XL/XC and Rage128/Rage128 Pro, all older Rage3 cards like Rage Pro / Rage Pro Turbo / Rage LT Pro are no go. Mobility cards are unknown to me.
Still i am not sure about findings about palleted textures on retrohardware site, i have the oposite, palleted texture works and works very well on 4.11 and 4.12 drivers and very late 4.13.8002 / 8006.
For that clean install with one driver install needed, still safe to say that older drivers are faster and good for palleted textures and partially for fog +OpenGL 1274 is faster than any of the others here.

Read retrohardware site topics, most complete, still much to figure out about newer Rage 4 chips.
Never heard before Rage128Pro2 name and you have to choose older driver to get perfomance up.
Here it does not have all Rage 4 OpenGL versions, i know that older 1274 runs fast for Rage128Pro.
https://www.retrohardware-reviews.de/ati-rage … -of-the-series/
https://www.retrohardware-reviews.de/ati-rage … e-right-driver/
https://www.retrohardware-reviews.de/category/gpu-database/

marxveix wrote on Today, 07:01:

Addon to my finding about palleted textures and also table fog seems similar to Radeon with the fog fix/tweak with older 4.11 and 4.12 drivers as well. Not 100 accurate fog, but better than nothing?

Good point.

I think I should adjust the wiki and split table fog support into: proper (fully accurate), partial (inaccurate) and none. There are some cards from that time period which tried to implement some sort of table fog support (possibly by emulating it via Vertex Fog) but the end result doesn't match the 3DFX standard. Only a few cards implemented table fog properly, being virtually indistinguishable from what Voodoo provided.

Intel i810 Windows 98 latest driver.
FF8 demo indicates paletted textures will work.
Thief 2 requires the safe texture mode setting to even start on this chip (black screen otherwise).
The screenshot came out a lot darker than it was displayed on the monitor, I used Fraps to grab it. But even so you can see there is no fog.
Also included SOTE shot. This one came out closer to the correct brightness, no fog.

Spark wrote on Today, 17:02:

Intel i810 Windows 98 latest driver. FF8 demo indicates paletted textures will work. Thief 2 requires the safe texture mode se […]
Show full quote

Intel i810 Windows 98 latest driver.
FF8 demo indicates paletted textures will work.
Thief 2 requires the safe texture mode setting to even start on this chip (black screen otherwise).
The screenshot came out a lot darker than it was displayed on the monitor, I used Fraps to grab it. But even so you can see there is no fog.
Also included SOTE shot. This one came out closer to the correct brightness, no fog.

Thanks! I've added the info to the relevant Vogons Wiki pages and cited your post as reference.

Nice work with the tests!