Quakecon '99

AnandTech wasn't able to get a board in lab before Quakecon '99 but we were able to run a few benchmarks (literally a few) on the card while we were in ATI's suite waiting for a chance to get on the Athlon systems to have an AnandTech vs ATI Q3Test match (we won both rounds ;)...). On a Pentium II 450 the Rage Fury Pro comes away with 56 fps in Quake 3's Normal Image Quality setting (16-bit color, 16-bit Z) and 41 fps in Quake 3's High Image Quality setting (32-bit color, 32-bit Z). On a Pentium II 300 the scores were 38 fps and 22 fps respectively.

The Rage Fury Pro is going to be available in 4 distinct versions, the two we took a look at were distinguished by the presence of the Rage Theater chip, a multipurpose TV in/out controller that ATI has been working on. The top picture features VGA out, S-Video in/out, and composite out, however the final production board will only feature S-Video out and composite in/out in addition to the VGA out.

The bottom picture depicts the Rage Fury Pro with the DVI flat panel connector, which should be the way of the future as far as flat panel interface standards are concerned (Tom's Hardware has an excellent guide on Digital Flat Panels). Take a look at the traces going from the Rage 128 Pro chip to the DVI connector (the top connector), the digital interface will put an end to the subject of 2D image quality as there is no Digital/Analog conversion taking place, everything is digital.

Here (below) is a closer picture of the Rage Theater chip.

...and finally, a picture of the DVI flat panel connector sitting next to a standard analog VGA connector.

For those of you that are interested in the processor's performance, to tide you over until AnandTech's Athlon review debuts shortly, the Athlon systems performed just fine under Q3Test and with the exception of slight drops in frame rate at the "high" image quality setting (due to the video card) the systems handled the game with a level of finesse only the fastest overclocked Pentium III users have been able to experience...until now.