ATI Rage
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The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of chips (See list of major graphics chipsets released by ATI).
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[edit] 3D Rage (I)
The original Rage chip was based upon a Mach64 2D core with new 3D functionality and MPEG-1 acceleration. The 3D Rage was used at least on ATI's Xpression video board (a board that previously used a Mach64).
[edit] 3D Rage II (IIC, II+, II+DVD)
The second generation Rage offered roughly two times greater 3D performance. Its graphics processor was based again on a re-engineered Mach64 GUI engine that provided optimal 2D performance with either single-cycle EDO memory or high-speed SGRAM. The 3D RAGE II chip was an enhanced, pin compatible version of the 3D RAGE accelerator. The second-generation PCI-bus compatible chip boosted 2D performance by 20 percent and added support for MPEG-2 (DVD) playback. The chip also had driver support for Microsoft Direct3D and Reality Lab, QuickDraw 3D Rave, Criterion RenderWare, and Argonaut BRender. OpenGL drivers are available for the professional 3D and CAD community and Heidi drivers are available for AutoCAD users. Drivers are also provided in operating systems including Windows 95, Windows NT, the Mac OS, and OS/2. ATI also shipped a TV encoder companion chip for RAGE II, the ImpacTV chip.
Rage II was integrated into Macintosh G3 and Power Mac 6500 computers, PC motherboards, and several video cards including: the 3D Xpression+, the 3D Pro Turbo, and the original All-in-Wonder.
- Specifications for the Rage II+DVD:
- 60 MHz core
- 60 MHz memory
- 480 MB/s memory bandwidth
- DirectX 5.0
[edit] 3D Rage Pro
ATI made a number of changes over the 3D Rage II: a new triangle setup engine, perspective correction improvements, fog support and transparency implementations, specular lighting support, and enhanced video playback and DVD support. The 3D Rage Pro chip was designed for Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), taking advantage of execute-mode texturing, command pipelining, sideband addressing, and full 2x-mode protocols. Initial versions relied on standard graphics memory configurations: up to 8 MiB of SGRAM or 16 MiB of WRAM, depending on the model.
Rage Pro offered performance in the range of NVIDIA's RIVA 128 and 3dfx's Voodoo accelerator, but generally failed to match or exceed its competitors. This, in addition to its (early) lack of OpenGL support, hurt sales for what was touted to be a solid gaming solution. In February 1998, ATI attempted to "reinvent" the Rage Pro by simultaneously renaming the chip to "Rage Pro Turbo," and releasing a new "Rage Pro Turbo" driver-set (4.10.2312) that supposedly increased performance by 40%. In reality, the drivers only delivered increased performance in benchmarks such as Ziff-Davis' 3D Winbench 98 and Final Reality. In games, the performance actually suffered. Despite the poor introduction, the name Rage Pro Turbo stuck, and eventually ATI was able to release updated drivers without the performance hit in games. Still, there was no tangible gaming performance improvement following the debacle.
The 3D Rage Pro was mainly sold as the Xpert@Work or the Xpert@Play, with the only difference being a TV-out port on the Xpert@Play version.
[edit] Rage LT
Rage LT was often implemented on motherboards and in mobile applications like notebook computers. This chip was very similar to the Rage Pro and supported the same application coding. It integrated a Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) transmitter for notebook LCDs and advanced power management (block-by-block power control). The Rage LT PRO also offered "Filtered Ratiometric Expansion," which automatically adjusted images to full-screen size. ATI's ImpacTV2+ is integrated with the Rage LT PRO chip to support multi-screen viewing, i.e. simultaneous outputs to TV, CRT and LCD. In addition, the Rage LT PRO can drive two displays with different images and/or refresh rates with the use of integrated dual, independent CRT controllers.
A Rage LT Pro chip also existed which was a slightly faster variant.
[edit] Rage XL
Rage XL was a low-cost Rage Pro-based solution. As a low-power solution with capable 2D-acceleration, the chip was used on many low-end graphics cards. It was also seen on Intel motherboards, as recently as 2004, and was still used in 2006 for server motherboards. The Rage XL has been succeeded by the ATI ES1000 for server use[1].
The chip was basically a die-shrunk Rage Pro, optimized to be very inexpensive for solutions where only basic graphics output was necessary.
[edit] Rage 128
In the continuing struggle to create the fastest and most advanced 3D accelerator, ATI came up with the Rage 128. The chip was announced in two flavors, the Rage 128 GL and the Rage 128 VR. Aside from the VR chip's lower price-point, the main difference was that the former was a full 128-bit design, while the VR -- still a 128-bit processor internally -- used a 64-bit external memory interface.
- Magnum - A workstation board for OEMs with 32 MiB SDRAM.
- Rage Fury - 32 MiB SDRAM memory and same performance as the Magnum, this add-in card was targeted at PC gamers.
- Xpert 128 - 16 MiB SDRAM memory and, like the others, used the Rage 128 GL chip.
- Xpert 2000 - Rage 128 VR design using 64-bit memory interface.
Rage 128 was ATI's Direct3D 6.0-compliant accelerator. It supported many features from the previous Rage chips, such as triangle setup, DVD acceleration, and a capable VGA/GUI accelerator core. Rage 128 added inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) acceleration to the DVD repertoire. It was ATI's first dual texturing renderer, in that it could output two pixels per clock (two pixel pipelines). The processor was known for its well-performing 32-bit color mode, but also its poorly dithered 16-bit mode; strangely, the Rage 128 was not much faster in 16-bit color despite the lower bandwidth requirements. In 32-bit mode, Rage 128 was more than a match for the RIVA TNT, and the Voodoo 3 did not support 32-bit at all. The chip was meant to compete with the NVIDIA RIVA TNT, Matrox G200 and G400, and 3dfx Voodoo 3.
ATI implemented a caching technique it called "Twin Cache Architecture" with Rage 128. The Rage 128 used an 8 KiB buffer to store texels that were used by the 3D engine. In order to improve performance even more, ATI engineers also incorporated an 8 KiB pixel cache used to write pixels back to the frame buffer.
- 8 million transistors, 0.25 micrometer fabrication
- 3D Feature Set
- Hardware support for vertex arrays, Fog and fog table support
- Alpha blending, vertex and Z-based fog, video textures, texture lighting
- Single clock bilinear and trilinear texture filtering and texture compositing
- Perspective-correct mip-mapped texturing with chroma-key support
- Vertex and Z-based reflections, shadows, spotlights, 1.00 biasing
- Hidden surface removal using 16, 24, or 32-bit Z-buffering
- Gouraud and specular shaded polygons
- Line and edge anti-aliasing, bump mapping, 8-bit stencil buffer
- 250 MHz RAMDAC, AGP 2x and 4x
Later, ATI developed a successor to the original Rage 128, called the Rage 128 Pro. This chip carried several enhancements, including an enhanced triangle setup engine that doubled geometry throughput to 8 million triangles/sec, better texture filtering, DirectX 6 texture compression, AGP 4X, DVI support, and a Rage Theater chip for better video encoding/decoding. This chip was used on the gamer-oriented Rage Fury Pro boards and the business-oriented Xpert 2000 PRO. Rage 128 Pro was generally an even match for Voodoo 3 3500, RIVA TNT2 Ultra, and Matrox G400 MAX.
The Rage 128 graphics accelerator was the final revision of the Rage architecture.
[edit] Alternate Frame Rendering
The Rage Fury MAXX board held dual Rage 128 Pro chips in an alternate frame rendering (AFR) configuration to allow a near-double increase in performance. As the name says, AFR renders each frame on an independent graphics processor. This board was meant to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce 256 and 3dfx Voodoo 5. While it performed well, it was not really a match for those cards due to feature disparity (especially with GeForce). It was later discovered by ATI that Windows NT 5.x operating systems (Windows 2000, XP) did not support dual AGP GPUs in the way ATI had implemented them, and so the board could only operate as a single Rage 128 Pro with the performance of a Rage Fury card. The optimal OS for the Rage Fury MAXX is Windows 98/Me. Windows 95 was not supported.
[edit] Trivia
- The ATI Radeon 256 was codenamed Rage 6. This was later changed to "R100".
[edit] References
- "ATI Rage Fury Pro Review" by Silvino Orozco and Thomas Pabst, Tom's Hardware, October 8, 1999, retrieved January 15, 2006
- "ATI's RAGE™ LT PRO Press Release" by ATI Technologies, January 25, 1999
- "XPERT™ 2000 PRO" by ATI Technologies, retrieved January 15, 2006
- "3D Winbench 98 - Only a Misleading Benchmark or the Best Target for Cheating ?" by Thomas Pabst, Tom's Hardware, February 15, 1998, retrieved June 1, 2006
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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