ATI Rage Mobility 128

Pentium III 650E - Quake III Arena

At 640x480x16, the Mobility 128 with 16MB is capable of hitting the magical 60 fps mark under Quake 3. Performance is behind the desktop Rage 128 Pro, but this is expected due to the lower core and memory clocks. The performance hit going from 16-bit to 32-bit is larger than normal thanks to the low memory clock of the Mobility 128.

With only 8MB, the Mobility 128 is relegated to a 64-bit memory bus, which severely degrades performance. Further, 8MB is a fairly small amount of memory these days and texture thrashing may easily occur in conjested situations. Unfortunately, we'll probably mainly see the 8MB configuration. Nevertheless, 47.5 fps is still playable performance.

As we'll see throughout the tests, the Rage Pro Turbo falls so far behind the pack that it's not even funny. We also found for the most part that only the precise numbers varied from CPU speed to CPU speed, while the finishing order remained the same.

Performance at 800x600x16 is still quite respectable and playable for the Mobility128 with 16MB. But that 64-bit memory bus is back again to really hinder the 8MB version, which is far less acceptable at 32.4 fps.