Star Wars Episode One Racer - 4MB Integrated ATI Graphics vs 16MB ATI Rage 128 PCI
Posted by ZealousidealCake8256@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 15 comments
berrmal64@reddit
After seeing the unreal tournament performance (still kind of low frame rate but very playable) of UT I'm surprised by how smooth pod racer looks, given they're both 1999 releases.
I love these videos though, keep them coming. I've got a rage 128 pro languishing in a half built win98 box in my office and a k6-2+ 450 still in the packaging on my desk and these are really giving me motivation to finish up the build.
What drivers are you using for the rage 128?
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
I will probably not be benchmarking this PC anymore because it was a bit of an ordeal to actually install the Rage 128, and now the PC has to go back to my friend who was the intended recipient of the upgrade in the first place.
However, if you like these style videos, I did have in mind to take my three 90s PCs (Pentium I + Voodoo 1, Pentium II + Voodoo Banshee, and Pentium 3 + Voodoo 3) and benchmark various games working or not working on them. The performance delta can be downright staggering!
Off the top of my head I'm not sure which Rage 128 drivers I used. I just googled for that card's drivers and when the worked on the old PC I didn't muck around any further. I can check on the exact driver version if you're interested, though.
berrmal64@reddit
Ah, I see. Yeah I do think these are interesting. I watched the rage 128 pro bench videos from Phil's Computer Lab but they have more bar charts than side by sides.
If it isn't a lot of trouble, yeah I'd be interested to know what version driver you used. The first time I tried to set this system up last summer I had a lot of driver issues and irq conflicts, along with 10x better graphics performance randomly every 10th boot that I couldn't ever quite finger the cause, but for the most part my performance was atrocious compared to examples like yours and Phil's
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
My ATI Rage 128 driver is almost certainly Version. 4.13.7110
If you have specific games you'd like to see benchmarked on 3 generations of Pentium paired with 3 generations of Voodoo, let me know. I'll be getting it ready over the coming weeks.
emachanz@reddit
I played on n64 which is 4mb ram but with my nostalgia goggles it definitely looked better than that.
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
By my recollection the N64 version had worse draw distance. But it probably didn't have the broken graphical glitches seen on the Rage IIC.
Disc_Lord@reddit
Thankfully it supported the expansion pak which gave it a graphical bump.
NightmareJoker2@reddit
The game’s original system requirements called for 4MiB of VRAM and DirectX 6.1 compatibility, in addition to a 166Mhz Pentium with 32MiB (Pentium 200MHz and 64MiB recommended) of system memory and 340MiB of hard disk space.
So… graphical issues are most likely related to the ATi 3D Rage IIC not having the full DirectX 6.1 compatibility due to being only a DirectX 5.0 card from September 1996 without mip-mapped texture support.
The ATI Rage 128 is a DirectX 6.0 card from August 1998.
AppropriateCap8891@reddit
I think this is what a lot of people are missing when looking back at cards in this era.
Those "graphics on board" were never intended as a replacement for gamers, it was just to give a minimum capability. Could it play "Halo: Combat Evolved" in 2001? Sure, barely with minimum features. But it could also play Civilization III, where much of the performance issues did not really matter.
For the "gamers", those absolute minimum on-board graphics were never a consideration. Most of that group was already going to put in their own graphics card anyways. I know for the custom systems I was building in that era, the top of the line ones had no on-board graphics at all. Only the low end came with ATI on board, and those were overwhelmingly bought by people that had no interest in games other than Solitaire.
In our display area, we always had from 2-4 new computers assembled so people could see the differences. And yes, the minimum on-board could play the Halo demo I had installed on all of them. But the real selling point for gamers was our top of the line system with the top video card of the time. On that the game looked even better than it did on an XBox.
Is kinda strange thinking back to that time, and realizing that was over two decades ago.
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
Seeing the graphics break because the card fundamentally doesn't understand the protocols they're based on does interest me, though. It was a wild time for gaming back then.
Additional_Tone_2004@reddit
Came for the frate rate; stayed for the NEW LAP RECORD.
Disappointed.
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
I can hear your post in my mind and now I'm disappointed I didn't include that, too.
TxM_2404@reddit
Sure that the improvement doesn't just come from the extra vram? Except for the fact that the textures won't fully load on the integrated GPU it looks fine to me.
ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)
To be fair, this game ran WAY better than I expected it to. Some visuals are still broken, though. HUD elements don't display correctly, like the missing engine indicator, or the garbled speedometer. And on the lesser chip there's something weird going on with the shading of the polygons in the canyon.
PhotonicEmission@reddit
It also doesn't display the drop shadow under the pod racer with any transparency. I had the exact he same issues on an iMac with the Rage Pro Turbo vs the Rage 128.