No Fury here
Written: Dec 01 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great performance
Cons: Driver problems
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| rustyvic's Full Review: Hewlett-Packard Ati Rage Fury |
I had recently started to do some 3D modelling work just for the practice and whilst I'd been happy with the nVidia TNT2 M64 (32 Mb) card installed as a good all-round graphics card it was time for something better.
With the assistance of a couple of co-operative wholesalers I tested the Voodoo 5, Matrox G400 Max and the geForce MX cards as well as the ATI Rage Fury MAXX (64Mb)card. For performance benchmarking I used WinTune 2000 and Sysmark 99 as well as real world use of the main application (TurboCad 3D) and a couple of my favourite games.
Game performance was fairly similar for all of the cards with a slight advantage for the geForce card particularly in rendering shadows.
Sysmark 99 returned best scores for the Rage Fury MAXX with the Voodoo 5 close behind and then a slight gap to the geForce and a bigger gap to the G400.
Similar results were evident in WinTune 2000 although the 3D performance of both the Fury MAXX and the geForce were considerbaly higher than the others.
The best test, however, is the usage and it was here that I found a clear winner in the Rage Fury MAXX. It's 3D rendering performance was noticeably ahead of the other cards at almost any resolution up to it's (very high) maximum.
Installation into an AGP slot was straightforward and well described in the manual. Installation of the driver was a totally different matter as despite numerous attempts I couldn't get the driver to run in anything but basic VGA mode. The final fix was to download the latest supported driver from the ATI web site but even this took two or three attempts to get working correctly. A couple of local computer shops I've spoken to have the same story to tell so be warned! It's worth mentioning that I had exactly the same trouble after a Windows reinstallation and new motherboard so it's not just an isolated problem.
None-the-less it is well worth the hassle if you want outstanding performance particularly in 3D applications.
Highly recommended.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 255
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Epinions.com ID:
rustyvic
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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