Press Release
- Archives 1996
ATI Technologies Inc. unveils next generation of 3D technology
3D RAGE II Chip doubles the 3D performance of competing solutions
September 5, 1996
Toronto, Ontario - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE:ATY) today unveiled its next generation of 3D technology -- the ATI 3D RAGE II chip, an enhanced and pin-compatible version of its successful 3D RAGE accelerator. 3D RAGE II improves 2D performance by 20%, adds support for MPEG2 playback and doubles the 3D performance of competing solutions now on the market.
The features and low price point of 3D RAGE II make the chip the clear industry price/performance leader for integrated 3D, video and 2D accelerators with many major original equipment manufacturers selecting 3D RAGE technology for their lines of multimedia products.
"Acer's commitment is to provide our customers with systems that feature the latest, and best technological solutions," said Robert Olstad, Director of Product Marketing, Consumer Systems Division, Acer America. "ATI's 3D RAGE II, with the best combination of 3D, 2D and video acceleration, represents the kind of quality our Aspire Ultimate Solution product line customers demand."
Stunning 3D Gaming
3D RAGE II delivers the critical features and performance required for stunning 3D gaming. Features like perspective correction, texture filtering, mip-mapping, Gouraud shading, Z-buffering and alpha-blending immerse game players in a highly realistic 3D world. In addition, ATI's texture compression techniques re-define realism with two to four times more texture detail and a dazzling palette of 65,000 colors. With performance rates of over 26 million perspectively correct texture mapped pixels per second, 3D RAGE II outperforms all other accelerators in its class.
The 3D RAGE family will be supported by over 50 gaming titles by Christmas '96. Current titles include mega-hit 3D games like Activision's MechWarrior 2, Psygnosis' Assault Rigs and WipEout and the WIRL 3D Web Browser from VREAM. Gamers will also appreciate the superior game play available on 3D RAGE II with the avalanche of upcoming Direct3D titles.
Best 2D Performance in its Class
The 3D RAGE II delivers 40 million Winmarks under WinBench96, making it the fastest 2D accelerator in its class. It is also the best accelerator for photo-realistic applications by providing great true color performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024. 3D RAGE II is also powerful enough for serious desktop publishing and CAD users who demand blazing performance at up to 1600x1200 resolution.
The source of this 'best of breed' performance is ATI's completely re-engineered mach64 GUI engine that provides optimal 2D performance with either single-cycle EDO memory or high-speed SGRAM.
Powerful Multimedia Capabilities
Designed as a video processor, the 3D RAGE II is capable of supporting full-screen, full motion TV-quality video such as MPEG and Video CD 2.0 movie disks, on computers, without the need for costly video decoder chips. To achieve TV-quality video images, the 3D RAGE II video scaler interpolates in both the horizontal and vertical directions, resulting in more natural and appealing motion video.
Most other video display components can accelerate only two of the four functions required to produce MPEG video, leaving the taxing task of MPEG decode and "planar data conversion" to the processor. The 3D RAGE II frees the CPU from the planar to packed data conversion process, allowing Pentium systems to play full 30fps video while providing high quality, 44KHz stereo audio. Other accelerators require the fastest Pentiums in order to hit 30fps and are limited to mono audio at 22KHz.
3D RAGE II has been designed to complement Intel's MMX multimedia technology and through the ATI Multimedia Channel (AMC), users can expand their PC to view cable TV, receive Intercast broadcasts, support video conferencing and decode MPEG-2 in hardware. With the addition of ATI's new ImpacTV chip, users can enjoy watching movies, playing games and browsing the Internet on their big screen televisions.
Extensive Driver Support
Support is provided for all major 3D API's including Microsoft Direct 3D and Reality Lab, QuickDraw 3D Rave, Criterion Renderware and Argonaut BRender. OpenGL and Heidi drivers are available for the professional and CAD community.Drivers are also provided for every main operating system including Windows 95, Windows NT, MacOS and OS/2.
Product Configurations
The 3D RAGE II is a PCI-based accelerator and can support 2, 4 and 8MB memory sizes using EDO, SDRAM or SGRAM memory.
Pricing and Availability
The 3D RAGE II has been sampling since August and has just entered volume production. The price for the 3D RAGE II is (USD)$35 for quantities of 10,000.
Copyright © ATI Technologies Inc., 1999. All company and/or product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.
Corporate Profile
ATI Technologies Inc., the world's largest
supplier of 3D graphics and multimedia technology, designs,
manufactures and markets innovative and award-winning multimedia
solutions and graphics components for the personal computer,
set-top box and consumer electronics appliance markets. An
ISO 9002 company, ATI is the world's leading supplier of video
and 2D/3D graphics accelerators to OEM and retail customers.
Founded in l985, ATI employs more than 1,700 people at headquarters
in Thornhill, Ontario, and in offices in the United States,
Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Barbados, Malaysia,
Japan and Hong Kong. ATI is a public company whose shares
trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
Contact Information
For more information on ATI's System Builder
Program, visit channel_programs for other ATI news releases
visit our web site at http://www.ati.com.
For further information contact
ATI Technologies Inc.
Brian Hentschel Media Relations
(905) 882-2600 x 8130
