DOS Days

ATI 3D Xpression+

The 3D Xpression Plus arrived in December 1996, just two months after the 3D Xpression. It was based around ATI's then-new Rage II chipset.

Released December 1996
Bus PCI
Chipset ATi 3DRage II
Standards VGA and SVGA
Memory 4 MB EDO
Ports 15-pin DSUB (RGB analogue)
Part #  
FCC ID  
Price At launch: $200 (4MB)
See Also  

This added support for 16-bit hardware Z-buffer and a lot more Direct3D features including support for 4-bit and 8-bit compressed textures, bilinear and trilinear filtering, MIP mapping, alpha-blended transparency, and fog.

Cards with the original Rage II chip were usually named 3D Xpression+. The GPU operated at a frequency of 60 MHz providing a theoretical performance of 60 MPixel/s pixel rate and 60 MTexel/s texture rate. Memory ran at 83 MHz with bandwidth of approximately 664 MB/s.

 

Board Revisions

 

Competition

3D Xpression+ competed with the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000XL and the Intergraph Reactor.

 

In the Media

According to a short review in PC Magazine in December 1996, the Xpression+ finished squarely in the middle of the pack on their WinMark 97, Winstone 97, and DirectDraw tests - roughly 30 percent slower than the top scorer, Diamond's Stealth 3D 2000XL. While its visual quality under Direct3D was good, performance was again lackluster: the Xpression+ was significantly slower than the roundup's top performer, Intergraph's Reactor, on every test.

 

Setting it Up

There is no hardware configuration required for the 3D Xpression+.


Downloads

Rage II+DVD User Guide

A simple 12-page user guide showing installation and loading of drivers for Windows 3.1, NT 3.51 and 4.0, and Windows 95.

Windows 95
Enhanced Display Driver
2 Aug 1996

Two floppy disks with the drivers for ATI Mach64/Mach64GT (Rage) cards

Windows 95
Utilities
19 Sep 1996

Two floppy disks with the ATI utilities for Mach64/Mach64GT (Rage) cards. Designed for Windows 3.1x, NT 3.5x, Windows 95, and OS/2

Mach64 Windows NT 3.51 Driver
Version 2.22

Windows NT 3.51 drivers for Mach64 cards

Mach64 MPEG/Video Player
Version 2.22

ATI Mach64 v2.22 MPEG/Video Player 1/1

Mach64 DirectDraw
Version 2.22

ATI Mach64 v2.22 DirectDraw for Win 1/1

Mach64 DOS/Win3.1/OS2 Disks
Version 2.22

ATI Mach64 DOS/Win 3.1x/OS2 disks

Mach64 Windows 95 Driver
Version 2.22

ATI Mach64 Win95 1/1

Mach64 Windows 95 Driver

ATI Mach64 Win95 disks


Driver Installation CD
v4.35, 12 Dec 1997

An ISO image of the Driver Installation CD for all ATI Rage-series cards. Works with Windows 3.1x, NT 3.51/4.0, and Windows 9x

Driver Installation CD
v5.24, 25 Aug 1998

An ISO image of the Driver Installation CD for all ATI Rage-series cards. Works with Windows 3.1x, NT 3.51/4.0, and Windows 9x

VGA BIOS ROM
(missing)

Get in touch if you can provide this missing item!

 

More Pictures