New ATI Rage 128 drivers

[oldfart]

I dont have a Rage 128, and know nothing about them or this release. I think I once read a post somewhere about ATI driver support 😉, so I thought I'd put this up for the Rage 128 guys.
Drivers

 

[Hawk]

Good eye sir. Use to own a couple of these, cousins still have them. =)

 

[BFG10K]

I really feel sorry for anybody still using these boards. 🙁

 

[hans007]

me and hawk , who have known each other since middle school both had them when they came out. I can say that for the first 2 months of my owning a rage128 card, it was horrible. Learning experience on how to mess with drivers i suppose. Of course i haven't learned my lesson and i've spent the last 2 days finally getting my radeon working in win2k. ATI is soooo fun... hours and hours of boredom gone , replaced by hours of reinstalling drivers.

 

[Workin']

<< I really feel sorry for anybody still using these boards >>

Don't cry for me, BFG10K. I have a Rage Fury and a Rage Fury Pro. Both work flawlessly and cost next to nothing. I'll have to check out the new drivers, although I don't have any problems with the current ones.

The Rage Fury works great for playing games on my TV - the TV-out looks great and since the resolution is limited to 800x600 for TV-out, 3D performance is more than adequate.

The Rage Fury Pro is even better. I can play any game at 1024x768 on my monitor, or I can watch DVD's on my other TV with excellent results.

And both cards combined cost less than a SINGLE GeForce MX. Although I can certainly afford to be able to buy a new $400 graphics card every 3 months, that seems pretty damn dumb to me.

 

[Hawk]

Wow, that's some great value Workin'! I remember, 2 years ago, got the Fury for 140-30 rebate...<sigh> those were the days. Though my cousins find Diablo 2 pretty slow on the Rage 128s for some reason...

 

[Workin']

Haven't played Diablo, but for Quake II/III, Half-Life, and Unreal, they have worked out well for me (I must confess I am not a hard-core gamer but I don't like getting fragged). The great DVD support and TV-out was the main reson I bought them, though.

Got the Fury Pro for $80 after rebate from Best Buy a few months ago, got the Fury for somewhat less ($60? I can't remember exactly, but it was a steal at the time) from a local shop maybe 16 months ago.

 

[Hawk]

Heh, in a few more months you can get a 64 MB Radeon for like 130, then you can upgrade...=)

 

[BFG10K]

Don't cry for me, BFG10K. I have a Rage Fury and a Rage Fury Pro.

Your experiences seem to go directly against the general trend. I tried both a Rage 128 and a Rage Fury MAXX and they were both abysmal cards.

 

[Taz4158]

<< Your experiences seem to go directly against the general trend. I tried both a Rage 128 and a Rage Fury MAXX and they were both abysmal cards. >>


As much as everyone knows I love my Radeon you're right about the 128 and MAXX. It's a good thing they got things together with the Radeon.......

 

[Workin']

<< Your experiences seem to go directly against the general trend. I tried both a Rage 128 and a Rage Fury MAXX and they were both abysmal cards. >>

They do indeed. But I've never been one to follow trends, especially bad ones. 😉 I didn't say it was easy. But now that I have concocted my own special driver set for the Rage 128 cards, life has been good. But I wouldn't take a MAXX if someone gave it to me. OK, well, maybe if they gave it to me. And I agree that it is totally bogus that there is not a single driver set (haven't tried these new ones yet) released by ATi that allows all the features of these cards (particularly the ViVo version of the Fury Pro) to work correctly. You shouldn't have to take parts of 3 different driver releases and cobble them together yourself to make it all work. But having done that, I have no other complaints.

 

[WildDreamer]

I picked up an Xpert128 about a year and a half ago, and it seemed to play UT and Half-Life fairly well. Of course it only cost me $24 after rebate for a retail boxed one, so that made the decision a little easier 🙂

 

[Aboroth]

Sweet, Dell put up updated drivers for the Mobility 128 which my laptop has. They are actually much better than the previous version. OpenGL seems improved, but D3D still kinda sucks in comparison.
Now if only I actually played 3d games on my laptop at other times than when I am benchmarking it...

 

[pidge]

Aboroth
Dell laptops have upgradable video cards so you can later on replace it with a Geforce 2 GO mobile chip (if Dell chooses to make one for their laptops). You should contact them to see if they will indeed provide one.

 

[BFG10K]

Workin'

I didn't say it was easy. But now that I have concocted my own special driver set for the Rage 128 cards,

Well the fact you had to do this proves my point.

Also the 16 bit 3D image quality of the Rage based cards was awful (like the Radeon) but they were too slow to run at decent speeds in 32 bit mode.

 

[Hawk]

Naw, the Rage 128, especially the Pro, can do 800x600 32 bit fairly well still, even today. I am not saying 23903847309478937 fps, but it can do maybe 40 or something.