MacBench 5.0 benchmark results, a scrolling test in Photoshop 5.5, RaveBench tests and a comment on Quicktime 4 movie playback. A video card can improve the display of models with shading, but it can't speed up the calculations of 3D lighting, etc. needed for final scene rendering. The faster Rage128 PRO chip would likely show a large advantage over the original Rage128 at higher resolutions. I did run the graphics test at thousands and millions colors as shown in the graphs below.
All times are in seconds, lower numbers are faster.
For more information on this benchmark, see my Illustrated Guide to RaveBench published in 1998. As you can see from the results, some rates exceeded the benchmark's expected maximums for both cards so the performance bar is outside the grid. If I can find time, I'd be curious to see the results of higher resolutions which may show additional benefits from the faster Rage128 Pro chip. Based on what I've seen in limited tests, DVD movie performance is not really affected by the Pro upgrade, since the issue is not graphics card related. The latest Audio Update 1.3 along with disabling Virtual Memory seems to have improved the audio-sync issues here in limited testing, but the player's lack of Altivec support and very sluggish response are reasons why I much prefer the Wired4DVD PCI decoder card, which also offers TV out.