Star Wars Episode One Racer - 4MB Integrated ATI Graphics vs 16MB ATI Rage 128 PCI

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RichardGereHead@reddit

Number one, That was a great game. Very underrated at the time, and by history in my opinion. I had a thrustmaster steering wheel which worked awesome with that game. I spent way too much time in by basement...

I think I had just about the absolute minimum system spec for that game, which was a Pentium II/300 and the onboard ATI Rage something. It did run, but not nearly as good as your example. I upgraded that system to a Voodoo III PCI and then it ran great. The improvement in FPS and textures was incredible.

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crashprime@reddit

Rage 128. The Dreamcast of video cards. Coincidentally that game is an absolute banger on Dreamcast.

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valthonis_surion@reddit

How is the Rage 128 the Dreamcast of video cards? Wouldn't the Power VR2 Neon 250 be the Dreamcast of PC video cards since it was largely based of the same architecture?

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crashprime@reddit

Dreamcast was the first console offering true 32bit color depth, just like the Rage 128 was one of the first cards that offered that bump up from 16bit cards like the voodoo and tnt without a massive performance hit.

We look back at 16bit dithering with fondness and nostalgia for the vibes but 32bit color is just way cleaner in appearance.

Dreamcast came out right before Transform & Lighting took over. Rage 128 was peak pre-T&L (right before the GeForce 256).

Finally, they both did some coding magic with caching that let them run games very well, with twin cache architecture on the Rage and tile-based deferred rendering on Dreamcast.

On its simplest terms, performance was actually pretty close when you take the higher raw power of the Rage 128 and compare it to the “lesser” PowerVR and its more efficient TBDR.

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emuboy85@reddit

underrated by whom? people remember the game so well a remake is coming out...

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RichardGereHead@reddit

IDK. My recollection was that it was tainted by the movie as a "Kids Game" rather than a serious racing game. I was probably in my 20s when it came out, so that might be part of it. I thought the physics were really fun and the sound in that game was incredible.

I think the other racing game I played a ton of during that era was "Viper Racing". That game absolutely ruled, and had some of the best racing physics ever. Bargain Bin game that turned out to be one of my most played games ever. I still fire it up from time to time.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I tried running this on my Pentium 1 MMX 200 MHz + Voodoo 1 system and it was bad. Felt like 20-ish fps. I feel like that was a CPU bottleneck and not a 3D card one, though, because when I tried playing on my Pentium II underclocked to 200 MHz, it ran like dookie on that, too.

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kleinmatic@reddit

What model is that ibm monitor?

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I think it is an IBM P96, model 6551-23N. A guy who did 3D advertising work in the early 2000s on it gave it to me for free close to the pandemic.

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kleinmatic@reddit

Really brings me back.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

It's beautiful! It probably cost a lot in its time, and now I get to play games on it. >:D

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Someguywhomakething@reddit

Thanks for reminding me I need to find the arcade cabinet for this.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I actually played the arcade cabinet of Ep1 Racer very recently. It's neat, but it's a lot harder to control than the PC version, which makes it less satisfying to play.

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j_kobrah@reddit

I actually ran this game on a celeron, no gpu. Game was super optimized and fun.

This and midtown madness were just basic fun.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I thought that EP1 Racer required a 3D accelerator, but I could be wrong about that.

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j_kobrah@reddit

I would run it on my hp pavilion using integrated graphics. It ran nice too.

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SubcommanderMarcos@reddit

Why do you make me want to play this again? I have stuff to do

This game was such a big part of my childhood... And it still looks good and fluid today, which is remarkable

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

Go get it on GOG or for the Nintendo Switch or something like that. It's still really fun.

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SubcommanderMarcos@reddit

Yeah lmao I got the Gog version and just spent the last 2 hours on it

33 year old me is having an easier time so far than 7 year old me, but still great

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

It's such a good game. It almost fills the F-Zero shaped hole in my heart.

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GreenFox1505@reddit

I don't know what my hardware was. But remember playing what I now would call a slide show. It was often at most a few frames per second. I got used to that. Well, I had only ever seen that. I thought that was what it was suppose to look like. I got pretty good, actually.

Then a friend came over and was confused why it was so slow. I didn't understand him.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I had a similar experience when I got used to gaming at triple digit framerates on my modern gaming PC. Then I was in the mood to play 007 Goldeneye on my N64 and the low frame rates melted my brain. I was like, "Why didn't kid me ever notice this was so choppy?"

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V64jr@reddit

My own 4MB Rage II card (original All-In-Wonder with 4MB upgrade) back in the day was so worthless and slow I had to run some Direct3D games in software… including games it was bundled with. How is it possibly doing that well on a much later game?

Granted, my original system had an IBM P150 CPU but my friend bought it off me and used it with his AMD K6 MMX 233. Specifically, I recall Monster Truck Madness and Mechwarrior 2: 3D Rage Edition were unplayable with hardware acceleration… probably because it was doing some hardware feature in software through the driver… like texture filtering, which the software render obviously skips (too CPU intensive for software… but tell that to the D3D driver). Of course, that theory doesn’t make sense for Mechwarrior II 3D Rage Edition since it was supposed to be for that exact hardware. I recall literally grabbing my standard edition and running in software because it was a slide-show on the Rage II.

Only reason I could see EP1 Racer running so much better is either because of the Pentium II or maybe it doesn’t try to use hardware acceleration for some unimplemented hardware feature.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

EP1 Racer runs like ass when it has a CPU bottleneck. Don't do it on anything less than 300 MHz.

In my collection I somehow ended up with a bunch of weirdly specific versions of Mechwarrior 2. Basically they're all 3D accelerated versions for various 3D cards. ATI Rage is one of them.

Seeing the "Mechwarrior 2 - ATI Rage Version" disc in my collection always made me wonder what it was like, but your story reassures me I probably wasn't missing out on anything. From what I hear, Mechwarrior 2 looks more beautiful in software mode, anyway.

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JabberwockRU@reddit

I always thought that ATI Rage is called Rage because it cannot run games without bugs.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

Hahaha that's great!

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Real-Leek-3764@reddit

such a fun multiplayer game

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randylush@reddit

Its pretty difficult to tell what difference is due to the card and what is due to the monitor

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SubcommanderMarcos@reddit

I mean the monitor wouldn't fail to load textures, misrender a model here or there, provoke that weird lagged glare on the cliffs in the map ahead, or break UI elements

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

My friend's monitor at his house is inferior to mine, but for the 4MB 3D accelerator I notice:

- The speedometer is garbled.
- The engine temp indicator has vanished.
- Anakin's pod racer is missing textures.
- The shadows beneath Anakin's pod racer have no transparency.
- The gourad shading of the polygons in the canyon has strange artifacts.

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BoysenberryFinal9113@reddit

I loved that game when it came out. The audio was absolutely amazing. The characters were great. It was fun and the controls were very responsive.

The only issue that I had was with the network play. It seemed that the fastest computer on the LAN would win the races by a large margin.

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Minute_Measurement_6@reddit

Aka me vs my friends houses 1998

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No_Transportation_77@reddit

I never had a Rage IIc, but I do recall some of that artifacting with a 3D Rage Pro Turbo. Heck of a 2D card but awfully wonky for 3D despite the name.

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-Outrageous-Vanilla-@reddit

There are no newer drivers for that Rage IIC to perform better?

I had the 8MB Rage IIC and I always thought that id didn't have DirectX support back in the day.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

I doubt the original owners of this PC ever updated the drivers. My agenda was to put a whole new 3D card in it and then return the upgraded system to my friend, the current owner. So, it is possible I left some untapped potential on the table by not updating the Rage IIC's drivers.

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-Outrageous-Vanilla-@reddit

I'm very eager to know if the latest driver made any difference because I upgraded to a "proper" graphics card because Rage IIC for me was only 2D.

I upgraded to a S3 Savage4 Pro+ (because it was the first with 32MB and I only knew that by then, no reviews like today and I didn't have internet to figure it out). If newer drivers could have helped maybe I could have waited for a TNT2 or Voodoo3

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TkachukMitts@reddit

I had the Rage II, and I recall that it had Direct3D support but the drivers (and probably missing rendering features) caused it not to work properly in virtually any Direct3D game. It also never received any OpenGL support whatsoever, which was kind of important even in 1997.

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ZealousidealCake8256@reddit (OP)

Rogue Squadron 3D would probably run okay for similar reasons.

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randylush@reddit

I remember rogue squadron 3d running great on contemporary computers. I had played it a lot on the n64, then on PC the resolution blew my mind

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TheTropiciel@reddit

It like PS1 lvl, just with higher res lol.