The ATI Rage 128 Pro / Ultra Revisited — Was It Really That Bad? (1998–1999 Benchmarks)

🎮 The late 1990s were a turning point for PC graphics, with NVIDIA, 3dfx, and ATI all fighting for dominance as 3D acceleration became essential for gaming.

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In this video, I take a look back at the ATI Rage Pro, one of ATI’s most common graphics cards from 1998–1999, and a GPU that ended up in countless OEM systems from the era. While often criticised for its drivers and gaming performance, the Rage Pro played an important role in ATI’s history — especially before the arrival of Radeon.

🧠 In this video we cover:
📜 The PC graphics card landscape of 1998–1999
🧩 A brief history of the ATI Rage lineup
🏭 ATI’s heavy focus on the OEM market
🖥️ Benchmarking the Rage Pro in a Pentium III 500MHz system
📊 How it performs in real late-90s games
✅ Final thoughts on the card’s performance in its time and place
🧪 Benchmarks & Games Tested:
📈 3DMark 2000
🚓 Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
🔫 Quake III Arena
💥 Unreal Tournament
🚗 POD
🌀 Unreal Gold

00:00 Intro
02:43 Ati Rage history
05:32 3DMark 2000
06:40 Need for speed hot pursuit
08:22 Quake 3
10:55 Unreal Tournament
13:54 POD
15:28 Unreal Gold
16:52 Conclusions

🔍 The results might surprise you. While the ATI Rage Pro was never a top-tier gaming card, when placed in a period-correct system, it proves to be far more capable than its reputation suggests.

💬 Did you ever own an ATI Rage card, or were you running Voodoo or NVIDIA back then? Let me know in the comments!

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