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When we removed the heatsink we saw that... it was none other but ATI Rage Mobility-P (one of ATI Rage Mobility 128 versions).
We decided to test this piece and to compare its performance in Quake3 with that of ASUS V3800 32MB (TNT2). The test system included:
- ASUS CUSL2 mainboard;
- Intel Pentium III 866 CPU;
- 128MB PC133 SDRAM;
- Windows98.
| 16bit | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA TNT2 32MB | 53.7 | 47.6 | 37.7 | 24.6 | 15.6 |
| ATI Rage Mobility-P 8MB | 17.8 | 12.2 | 7.8 | 4.8 | - |
| 32bit | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| NVIDIA TNT2 32MB | 49.4 | 36.7 | 26.7 | 15.5 | 11 |
| ATI Rage Mobility-P 8MB | 17.8 | 12.2 | 7.8 | 4.8 | - |
Well, as you can see, there is hardly any competition at all. The amount of onboard graphics memory, 8MB, doesn’t allow getting high performance rates in "heavy" 3D games. Moreover, the lack of texturing memory eliminates the difference between the 16bit and 32bit color.
All in all this graphics card is destined to work only in 2D and simple 3D games, i.e. to occupy the niche, which used to be held by S3 chips. So, the mobile chipsets from ATI ousted from their market turn out capable of getting a new life in desktop graphics cards.







