Amazing gaming experience
Written: Nov 14 '00 (Updated Nov 22 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 32MB buffer, 32-bit true color 3D acceleration, not very expensive
Cons: not top of the line
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| bnita's Full Review: ATI Rage Fury Pro |
Being in the process of upgrading my computer, I decided to buy a new graphics card. My original system was a 300 MHZ PowerSpec (Celeron, 32MB of RAM, AGP port) that had a graphics card that didn't support most of the games (for example for Unreal Tournament I had to use the software rendering option).
After looking around at several stores I decided to go with ATI Rage Fury Pro which seemed to give me the best performance for the money. I bought it from Best Buy and after the $40 rebate I paid around $90. As soon as I got home I installed it and I start playing games immediately. The difference could be easily observable: the colors were better, the image was perfect and I was able to play Quake III using the highest possible definition and number of colors and the computer didn't hang for a second. I was very pleased by it's performance. I will give you a few details about it's features and the installation. If you need more information take a look at this web page:
http://www.ati.com/na/pages/products/pc/fury_pro/index.html
Features: Some of the features that made me buy it are
-32MB frame buffer;
-32-bit true color 3D acceleration (16.7 million colors) up to 1920x1200;
-Full OpenGL ICD, Direct3D and DirectX acceleration;
-Hardware DVD for full-frame rate, full-screen DVD;
-AGP 4X (AGP 2X compatible);
-digital display support
-video-in/video-out support.
The box comes with 2 cables (Video-in/Video-out and DVI connector for Digital Flat Panel displays) and two games on cds which are not top of the line but are not the worst on the market (Need for Speed High Stakes and Heavy Gear II).
Installation: After you physically install the card (which is quite easy), Windows doesn't recognized it (of course) so you will be left with a huge monster screen which has the lowest possible resolution. At this point all you have to do is to pop in the cd-rom provided and click Install and wait for 5 minutes and you're done. Now you can set 32bit true color and the highest possible resolution for the screen.
On the box it says that Windows ME is not supported and you need to check out thir website for the latest driver update. I have installed Windows ME last week on my computer and I didn't have a problem with my card. I didn't need the above mentioned driver although probably I will do it sometime this week.
Linux advice: after everything was working properly in Windows, I was curious to see how Linux behaves regarding this installation. I run RedHat 6.1 with the kernel upgraded to the latest release. I was very pleased to see that it detected that I have new hardware and it told me what server I needed to install in order for the XWindows to work. I tried installing it from the cd and it didn't recognize it and it was asking me about the location of the file. I didn't know it so I skipped this step.I realized soon after that I forgot to tell Linux to boot in text mode rather than in graphical mode. So I was getting a loop back and forth and couldn't see anything on the screen. I know, that was a stupid mistake. One of the solutions is to put back the old card and change the boot mode;another one (which is probably the worst) is to reinstall Linux. Anyway be advised and ask the damn machine to boot in text mode in case you have Linux and change the graphics card.
Conclusions: While this is not the most performant graphics card on the market, it is a good value for the money. It has 5 years warranty and features that you don't get from other cards from the same generation. And most important, it makes me very happy!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 90
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Epinions.com ID:
bnita
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Location: Houston, TX
Reviews written: 39
Trusted by: 68 members
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