When I was looking for a video card for my second pc [yes I said second pc] I wanted something decent and cheap. The second pc is made up of all my old parts. When I upgrade my new machine I throw the old parts into the second machine and use it as a server or if I have friends over we can hook them up and play games through IPX.

Unfortunately when I bought my Voodoo 5 [which I currently have in my new machine] my old card was toast. I was looking for a cheap card that could do games as well as office apps with little to no problem. Obviously a Voodoo or GeForce was out of the question since they run over $100 bucks a piece [the GeForce being $300]. I talked with my local shop and he recommended the ATI Rage Fury. It was only 70 bucks and was good enough to run most games and programs smoothly. There are 2 types of ATI Rage, one with TV out and one without. I picked the one without since I have no use for a TV jack.

Boring Specs

The card features a 32-bit processor with 16megs of onboard memory at 2x AGP, which at the time was quite good. Most cards were featuring 8megs onboard and 1x AGP or PCI.

Resolutions are supported up to 1280x1024 @ 32bpp.

The card is pretty old now, almost 2 years, so you should be able to pick it up pretty cheap. Mine was brand new and it only cost 65 + tax.

Installation

Was a breeze, pop the card into the slot, hope plug and p(r)(l)ay works. If not use the installation cd it comes with. Either way I was up and running in only a few minutes.

Coincidently my Win98 OS did find the cards and install the appropriate drivers for me. So did Win Me when I upgraded.

But Does it Work?

The card works great for what I need it for. Games such as, Starcraft, Unreal, Quake, Age of Empires, Thief 2 etc. work without problems. Albeit you cannot raise the graphic levels too much, but on most games 640x480 resolution was best and in low intensity games 800x600 does work as well.

I have had no problems running office apps or any other software either. One thing however is I read a few Epinions about this card and some people claim it will do 3d graphics [Bryce 3d, Truespace, Autocad] with ease, but I beg to differ. I tried Bryce 3d and Autocad with this card and it handles 3d tasks with less than stellar results. Trying to rotate the objects 180 degrees was a chore in itself. Lots of textures were jagged and rough when they were supposed to be smooth and it took forever to render.

This could be due to my processor speed as well, but my friend has only a slightly faster pc than the one I used and his works a lot better with the TNT 16 meg card.

Who can use it?

Pretty much anyone can use this card without much trouble. Gamers will find it adequate for their needs and typical office app users will have no complaints at all.

Gamers may find it a bit too slow for their needs depending on what type of games you play. If fast paced high graphic games are your style this card may have trouble keeping up [at least at higher resolutions]. Other games such as strategy games this card is perfect for.

This is a slightly above typical card. While it isn’t as good as the GeForce or the Voodoo it is much better than a lot of the other cards on the market.

If you are looking for a cheap but effective upgrade from your old card give this one a shot.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 65