Well, I finally got it in and fired up UT.
Here's some frame rate comparisons between the RAGE 128 Pro and the Radeon.

Computer: PMG4 400, 256 MB RAM. Completely up-to-date OS and video drivers.

Deck 16, 16 bots, full settings on detail:

With RAGE 128 pro :
600x800: Average 20s, low of about 12 in open areas with action.
1024x768: Average teens, with lows of 4 to 8 in open areas.

Radeon:
1024x768: Average 30s to 40s, with lows of low 20s.

Radeon made the level highly playable with settings on full. Impressive. I'm interested in seeing what ATI and Apple can do with refinements to the drivers...will we see even better frame rates, or is the G4 chip the limiting factor?

Aside from that, the control panel for Radeon needs work. The 3d memory display seems to be useless--I tried using it while playing UT and it didn't show any textures in memory! The menu bar icon is annoying and I can't figure out how to remove it. Finally, the ATI offscreen memory manager extension never loads and I tried installing twice. All in all, not bad for version 1.0.




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Remove the annoying ATi logo from your menu bar by trashing the ATi Extension from your extensions folder. Of course, this also renders your ATI control panel useless, but I think the acceleration is still there. Haven't tried it, because I'm used to the stupid logo having seen it with my Rage 3D card on my Performa 6400/180...

[Ruddigger]

I take it you're referring to the retail version, and not the OEM one that comes from the Apple Store?


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-Ruddigger
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Have you had your
gigaflop today?

[This message has been edited by Ruddigger (edited 11-10-2000).]

Yeah, its the retail version. I thought about trashing the extension, I actually don't need the ATI display panel, it doesn't do anything at all as far as I can see.

I've been checking out more maps with Radeon, and I must say that my first impressions were more positive than now. It's an improvement over the Rage 128 pro, but the difference isn't night and day. With resolution, color depth, and detail maxed out, I get fps in the mid-20s, but they drop into the teens often. Not very impressive. More evolutionary than revolutionary. I think its not really worth $224...but definantly worth the $100 BTO option. Just IMHO. Hopefully this is just a jump-platform, and when the drivers are more refined it will be a bitchin' card.


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UT is possibly the _worst_ game to benchmark this card. That being said, I'm getting a solid 30-40 fps on all maps with a similar setup. I have a G4/400 also, but I've got 512MB RAM and I give 350 to UT. The problem with lots of bots is that it hits the CPU so hard, that your framerate suffers even with the best video card out there. If you want to see night and day comparisons, use Quake III Arena, or the new Demo of F.A.K.K. 2. The OpenGL renderer supports more hardware in the ATI cards, and is AltiVec enhanced

I'm awaiting receipt of Quake III as I type this, for precisely that reason I used a large number of bots just to mimic online play. I don't quite understand about the RAM, though. It seems that no matter how much RAM I allocate to UT, it never uses more than 60-70MB for a map (depending on the size of the map). I've never noticed any difference between giving it 100MB or 200MB, either. That said, I understand that Quake's engine is much more advanced, so I'm hoping for some impressive Quake III gameplay.



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I tried decreasing the number of bots to 4, and then to 1, but my frame rates didn't improve much at all. During action, they still dip into the low teens. That's with 200MB RAM allocated to UT.

Do you think that I have something misconfigured? Is there something I need to do with UT so that it uses the new Radeon drivers?



Here's the Rave settings from the UT ini file:

[RaveDrv.RaveRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=True
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=True
NonATI=False
LightModify=0.000000
TextureComposite=True
VertexLighting=False
DisableVSync=True
PageFlip=False
DetailBias=0.000000
MipMapping=True
DetailTextures=True



[This message has been edited by Phaedrus (edited 11-11-2000).]

[RWoelk]

Quick question for those of you with the ATI Radeon AGP Mac Edition. My G4-450 single is nearly silent. I still have the stock AGP ATI video card without any fan on board before the release of the ATI RAGE 128 Pro. Is the Radeon's fan appreciably noisy and have you noticed any improvement in QuickTime and DVD playback with the ATI Radeon AGP Mac Edition? Gaming is really secondary to me, but I might start playing a few like Quake111 ectera. My lady friend wants this mostly for the s-video out feature.

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Rocke "Why yes, I have brought our
network down." Woelk

Only the educated are free!-Epictetus

The retail Radeon's fan is extremely noisy. I don't normally mind fan noise, in fact I keep a fan going 24-7 for my tinitus, but my powermac is one loud mother right now. That Radeon fan makes a higher pitched noise than the other fans, which to me is more annoying. I wish I could have kept my Rage 128 pro in there so I could turn the Radeon off when I don't need it.

[This message has been edited by Phaedrus (edited 11-12-2000).]

Phaedrus -

Just noticed your unreal.ini file. You should turn disable detail textures. This option is supposed to paint better looking textures on closer polygons, but it's buggy, and should be disabled. Follow this link to download a .PDF of the Unreal.ini file from Westlake Interactive with comments as to what settings do what. There's a place to increase the RAM cache Unreal uses, which can drastically speed performance. I'm getting a consistant average of 30-40 fps at 1024 x 768. I'll post my .ini file when I get home...

<http://homepage.mac.com/westlake/Sample_UT.ini_1.1.pdf>

Wow, thanks emattheis, that was very helpful. I turned off the Detail Textures, and my framerates definantly went up a bit. I saw the setting for ram cache in the ut ini file, but I didn't know how much RAM I could give it...I've got 256MB RAM so there's plenty of wiggle-room. How big do you set the RAM cache? I noticed the Westlake Interactive link suggests 12-14 MB...have you tried setting it any larger? Is there a point of diminishing returns, or should I set it as large as possible given the amount of RAM I have?



[This message has been edited by Phaedrus (edited 11-14-2000).]