ATI Rage 128

If the past 3 pages was all there is to say about the Rage 128 then ATI would have the perfect chipset on their hands, unfortunately that isn't the case.  As AnandTech explained in the Number 9 Revolution IV Review:

Since its release, nVidia's TNT chipset has become a little more than a 2D/3D card for gamers.  It seems as if the TNT is being crammed down everyone's throat, even if they have no intention of touching a frame of Quake 2 or even picking up the crowbar in Half-Life.  Now, the TNT is a fairly affordable graphics solution considering it is a 2D/3D combo card, and its success is good news for nVidia.  Being a successful chipset isn't a bad thing, where the TNT does get a bad reputation is when someone with a 21" monitor unravels the TNT's dark secret and tries to run their card at 1600 x 1200 x 32bpp under Windows.  Look around the newsgroups, ask TNT owners, or try it for yourself, the TNT as well as many other 2D/3D combo cards don't provide the best 2D image quality when it comes to driving large monitors (i.e. 21") at high resolutions.  The most common occurrence being that when viewing black text on a white background (or vise versa), the characters will begin to seem a bit fuzzy, and, especially after hours of staring at the screen, your eyes will begin to feel the wrath of a poorly constructed card. 

Keep in mind that this scenario only really affects those with larger monitors running at resolutions above 1024 x 768 (most likely above 1280 x 1024).  The assumption being made here by most manufacturers is that their customers won't use their products for professional purposes (i.e. intensive image editing, publishing, etc...) and as long as their 2D quality and performance is top notch at resolutions under 1280 x 1024 (which most users do tend to stay under, simply due to monitor sizes), they'll be perfectly fine.  This holds true in a great percentage of the cases, which is why you'll hear people saying that the 2D image quality on the TNT or on the Savage3D is "top-notch" or "beautiful."  However, when you happen to push your TNT card to the limits at 1600 x 1200, or when you give the Savage3D a run for its money at the same resolution, and you see some "fuzzy" text, it's quite difficult to believe that just about every single TNT/Savage3D owner out there could be wrong in saying that the 2D image quality is astounding...but in your case, they are. 

Unfortunately, at 1600 x 1200 at 32-bit color, the Rage 128 didn't seem to produce as sharp of an image as the simply amazing Matrox G200 or the reigning champ, the Revolution IV.  In fact, the 2D image quality of the Rage 128 at higher resolutions isn't much better than that of the Riva TNT, so those of you interested in professional 2D applications where every pixel counts may want to take a pass on the Rage 128.

The 3D image quality of the Rage 128 is comparable to that of the TNT and Savage3D products, but still behind that of the G200.  The Rage 128 will ship with a full OpenGL ICD, and AnandTech was provided with a beta version of the OpenGL ICD for testing.  The performance of the ICD is most likely at its full potential, and the only real difference between what the Rage 128 can do now and what it'll be able to do in the future is with 3D image quality.   Currently, Half-Life works sluggish at best using the OpenGL renderer, although Direct3D seems to work fine.  There are hints of artifacts and other visual imperfections with the current drivers, however there is nothing that would lead AnandTech to believe that the drivers can't be perfected by the release of the retail product.

Performance

A note about V-Sync:  At the last minute ATI provided AnandTech with a way to disable an option that has almost become a household term, wait for v-sync.   Basically this feature, when enabled, synchronizes memory buffer swaps to the refresh rate of your monitor.  Performance wise, enabling wait for v-sync (or enabling v-sync for short) will limit your video performance to the value of your monitor's refresh rate, however the visual quality will be at its peak and you won't notice any "tearing" of the textures appearing on your screen.  Disabling v-sync removes all performance barriers and lets your video card run at its top speed, the only downside to this being that image quality may be sacrificed, and the screen itself may appear to "tear" or fracture in certain areas during gameplay.  From the testing with the Rage 128, there isn't a problem of excessive tearing with v-sync disabled, so the tests were conducted with it disabled as have all other video card tests on AnandTech been conducted.