ATI Rage 128GL / Rage Fury
Also referred to as Rage 128 GL or Rage 128 Pro GL, these cards used the new Rage 128 chipset.
 |
Released | 1998 |
| Bus | AGP 2x | |
| Chipset | Rage 128 | |
| Standards | VGA and SVGA | |
| Memory | 16 MB DDR (64-bit bus) or 32 MB SDR (128-bit bus) | |
| Ports | 15-pin DSUB (RGB analogue) | |
| Part # | ||
| FCC ID | ||
| Price | Dec 1999: £135 ex.VAT (All-in-Wonder 128), £62 ex.VAT (Rage Fury 16 MB), £95 ex.VAT (Rage Fury 32 TV-Out 32 MB), May 1999: $140 street price (Rage Fury GL) | |
| See Also | Rage 128 Pro |
The standard Rage 128GL ran with both core and memory clocks at 108 MHz.
16 MB cards support resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 in 65,000 colours, or 1280 x 1024 in 16.7M colours. In 2D modes, these cards support resolutions up to 1920 x 1200. The chipset included iDCT hardware acceleration, which takes the load away from the CPU when playing DVD movies. Cards based on the Rage 128GL usually came with bundled software including ATI's DVD player which used the Cinemaster engine, known for its great MPEG2 playback results.
Models with this chipset include:
- Xpert 2000 32 MB
- Xpert 128 16 MB
- Rage Fury 16 MB
- Rage Fury 32 MB
- ATI All-in-Wonder 128 16 MB
- ATI All-in-Wonder 128 32 MB
WARNING: The drivers for this card as well as the ATI Rage 128 were pretty bad.
All Rage 128 Pro versions are compatible with DirectX 6.0 and OpenGL 1.2.
Board Revisions
Competition
In the Media
"The ATI Rage Fury graphics card has finally arrived - but is it too little, too late?
The wait has been long, but ATI's Rage Fury graphics card ($140 street), based on the Rage 128 accelerator, is finally here. This card is targeted primarily at high-end entertainment and gaming applications and secondarily at low-end OpenGL workstations. But though this card is indeed flexible, it faces serious challenges from competitors, particularly with 3-D.
The Rage 128 chip comes in two flavors: the GL (tested for this review), which supports 32MB of memory with a 128-bit memory interface, and the VR, a lower-cost chip, which supports 16MB of memory with a 64-bit memory interface and is intended to be integrated on motherboards of mainstream PCs.
Both versions have a 128-bit 2-D/3-D graphics engine and support all functions of 2X AGP including texturing, pipelining, and sideband signaling. They use ATI's Twin Cache Architecture, which comprises an 8K texture cache plus an 8K pixel cache. The Rage 128 also supports single-pass multi-texturing (or single-pass trilinear filtering), and various special effects including alpha blending, video textures, reflection maps, and bump mapping.
This product is also the first graphics chip with both DVD motion compensation and iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) support for DVD decode assistance. This feature allows for much lower CPU utiilization when playing DVD movies.
The Rage Fury GL incorporates the Rage 128 GL chip and 32MB of SDRAM; it supercedes cards based on the company's Rage Pro Turbo chip. Beyond 2-D, 3-D, and DVD features supported by the Rage 128 chip, the card integrates composite NTSC and S-Video-out jacks to connect to a TV, as well as the ATI Media Channel, which can be used to connect ATI's optional TV tuner and capture cards (including the new ATI TV Wonder).
The Rage Fury GL supports Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3) and includes an OpenGL client driver. With 32MB of frame-buffer memory, the card also handles very high 2-D and 3-D resolutions and color depths. Its maximum rated 3-D setting is 1,920-by-1,200 at 32 bits per pixel, double-buffered, with a 32-bit Z-buffer.
We tested on a 500 MHz Pentium III-based Dell Dimension XPS T500. Surprisingly, the Rage Fury GL wasn't as fast as the STB Velocity 4400 RIVA TNT using nVidia's new Detonator reference drivers (Version 1.09, available for download at www.nvidia.com). On our ZD 3D WinMark 99 tests at multiple resolutions and color depths the Rage Fury trailed Velocity 4400 card by as much as 20 percent.
We also compared the Rage Fury performance with that of a preproduction version of a Diamond Viper V770 card, based on nVidia's forthcoming TNT-2 Ultra chip, which was clocked at an incredibly high 175 MHz for the core and 200 MHz for memory; we tested it with nVidia's new Detonator driver, which is still in beta (Version 1.72). The Viper card's scores on our 3D WinMark tests were more than 70 percent higher than the Rage Fury's. On the Quake II Crusher multiplayer demo running at 1,024-by-768 32bpp using OpenGL drivers, the Rage Fury outperformed the Velocity 4400 card but wasn't as fast as the Viper 770.
The Rage Fury GL exhibited stunning 3-D visual quality. Game scenes were vivid, colorful, and artifact-free. We were unable to run our 3D WinBench quality tests with a 24-bit Z-buffer, though, and one of our texture-heavy scenes locked the system once, but we couldn't duplicate the problem.
On our DVD playback tests, we couldn't tell the difference between a top-notch dedicated hardware decoder card based on C-Cube's ZivaPC chip and the Rage Fury assisted software DVD decoding - a first in our labs. On the ZD CPU Utilization test, we measured approximately 20 to 25 percent CPU usage while watching DVD movies on our test system.
If this review had been conducted four months ago, we would have been astounded by the Rage Fury; at this late date, you should also consider cards based on the upcoming Voodoo3, TNT-2, Savage4, and Permedia 3 chips. But if you want great 2-D/3-D performer with excellent visual quality, TV connectivity, and built-in DVD decoding, you'll still get plenty of satisfaction out of the ATI Rage Fury."
PC Magazine, 25 May 1999
The wait has been long, but ATI's Rage Fury graphics card ($140 street), based on the Rage 128 accelerator, is finally here. This card is targeted primarily at high-end entertainment and gaming applications and secondarily at low-end OpenGL workstations. But though this card is indeed flexible, it faces serious challenges from competitors, particularly with 3-D.
The Rage 128 chip comes in two flavors: the GL (tested for this review), which supports 32MB of memory with a 128-bit memory interface, and the VR, a lower-cost chip, which supports 16MB of memory with a 64-bit memory interface and is intended to be integrated on motherboards of mainstream PCs.
Both versions have a 128-bit 2-D/3-D graphics engine and support all functions of 2X AGP including texturing, pipelining, and sideband signaling. They use ATI's Twin Cache Architecture, which comprises an 8K texture cache plus an 8K pixel cache. The Rage 128 also supports single-pass multi-texturing (or single-pass trilinear filtering), and various special effects including alpha blending, video textures, reflection maps, and bump mapping.
This product is also the first graphics chip with both DVD motion compensation and iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) support for DVD decode assistance. This feature allows for much lower CPU utiilization when playing DVD movies.
The Rage Fury GL incorporates the Rage 128 GL chip and 32MB of SDRAM; it supercedes cards based on the company's Rage Pro Turbo chip. Beyond 2-D, 3-D, and DVD features supported by the Rage 128 chip, the card integrates composite NTSC and S-Video-out jacks to connect to a TV, as well as the ATI Media Channel, which can be used to connect ATI's optional TV tuner and capture cards (including the new ATI TV Wonder).
The Rage Fury GL supports Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3) and includes an OpenGL client driver. With 32MB of frame-buffer memory, the card also handles very high 2-D and 3-D resolutions and color depths. Its maximum rated 3-D setting is 1,920-by-1,200 at 32 bits per pixel, double-buffered, with a 32-bit Z-buffer.
We tested on a 500 MHz Pentium III-based Dell Dimension XPS T500. Surprisingly, the Rage Fury GL wasn't as fast as the STB Velocity 4400 RIVA TNT using nVidia's new Detonator reference drivers (Version 1.09, available for download at www.nvidia.com). On our ZD 3D WinMark 99 tests at multiple resolutions and color depths the Rage Fury trailed Velocity 4400 card by as much as 20 percent.
We also compared the Rage Fury performance with that of a preproduction version of a Diamond Viper V770 card, based on nVidia's forthcoming TNT-2 Ultra chip, which was clocked at an incredibly high 175 MHz for the core and 200 MHz for memory; we tested it with nVidia's new Detonator driver, which is still in beta (Version 1.72). The Viper card's scores on our 3D WinMark tests were more than 70 percent higher than the Rage Fury's. On the Quake II Crusher multiplayer demo running at 1,024-by-768 32bpp using OpenGL drivers, the Rage Fury outperformed the Velocity 4400 card but wasn't as fast as the Viper 770.
The Rage Fury GL exhibited stunning 3-D visual quality. Game scenes were vivid, colorful, and artifact-free. We were unable to run our 3D WinBench quality tests with a 24-bit Z-buffer, though, and one of our texture-heavy scenes locked the system once, but we couldn't duplicate the problem.
On our DVD playback tests, we couldn't tell the difference between a top-notch dedicated hardware decoder card based on C-Cube's ZivaPC chip and the Rage Fury assisted software DVD decoding - a first in our labs. On the ZD CPU Utilization test, we measured approximately 20 to 25 percent CPU usage while watching DVD movies on our test system.
If this review had been conducted four months ago, we would have been astounded by the Rage Fury; at this late date, you should also consider cards based on the upcoming Voodoo3, TNT-2, Savage4, and Permedia 3 chips. But if you want great 2-D/3-D performer with excellent visual quality, TV connectivity, and built-in DVD decoding, you'll still get plenty of satisfaction out of the ATI Rage Fury."
PC Magazine, 25 May 1999
Setting it Up
There is no hardware configuration required for the Rage 128GL or Rage Fury.
Downloads
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Original Utility Disk Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
VGA BIOS ROM Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
Rage 128 VESA Driver ATI-provided 64vbe - similar to UniVBE- to provide VESA VBE compliance for some legacy cards like Mach 64 and Rage 128. This is the latest version v2.21. |
Rage 128 Windows 2000 Driver Windows 2000 driver for the ATI Rage 128 32MB SDR card |
Rage 128 Windows XP Driver Windows XP driver for the Rage 128 Ultra 32 MB A08 card. From the Dell support website. |
