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To follow up on our earlier review of the Rage 128 powered Rage Fury, we conducted an interview with ATi regarding several concerns we felt needed to be addressed. What follows is a small Q & A session with ATi PR Manager, Raymond Spencer.
With products like the Matrox Marvel G200 gaining in popularity and
sales, will the next generation of ATi's "All-In-Wonder-Pro" line
incorporate additional features and abilities to compete at that level?
"The next version of the All-in-Wonder, based on the RAGE 128 chip, will
not only match the G200 in all features, but will provide faster 2D and
3D
graphics acceleration and far higher quality DVD decoding. We can say no
more about this product until it is officially announced January 25th,
1999."
The Rage128GL seems like a perfect fit for ATi's growing
mobile/notebook OEM market, yet the part hasn't been officially
considered
for this role. When can "travelling gamers" look forward to a mobile
version of the Rage128GL, or another similarly powerful part?
"No timeframe has been announced for the introduction of the RAGE
Mobility
family of notebook accelerators based on the RAGE 128 chip."
Much has been made of the decision by 3Dfx to omit support for 32bpp
final color rendering in their upcoming Voodoo3 part. How does ATi view
the importance of 32 bpp's impact on gaming visual quality?
"True Color or 32 bpp color rendering will be one of the more significant
new technologies used in upcoming games. It allows for smooth color
gradations and highly realistic blending and lighting effects. Many
existing 3D games, and nearly all-upcoming ones, are making use of
multitexturing. This involves blending two or more textures on a single
surface. The greater the number of textures that get blended on a
surface, the more important 32 bpp color becomes. With 16 bpp color,
blending produces unsightly artifacts such as color banding or flat
washed
out colors."
What improvements have been made in the Rage128GL pro and the boards
that the chip is mounted on towards the goal of improving Win95/98's 2D
desktop visual quality?
"RAGE 128 GL Pro refers to an unannounced product, about which we cannot
comment. With RAGE 128 GL and VR, we have provided exceptional display
quality at high refresh rates, a powerful 128-bit 2D engine, which
includes a 250MHz DAC and support for resolutions up to 1920x1200. Other
important 2D features include enhanced driver sets for Windows 98 and
Windows NT 5.0."
"Forsaken98 Demo" corruption. In the most recent and very popular
Forsaken98 demo, the option screens (green) display no text whatsoever
when used with the Rage Fury eval card. Therefore no frame rate scores
can be measured. Otherwise Forsaken98 performs well graphically.
"It is a known problem that at resolutions higher than 800 x 600,
corruption problems can occur. This will be fixed with later drivers."
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