ATI Rage Fury MAXX

Final Words

The Rage Fury MAXX plays an interesting role in the video card market right now. Overall, especially in high-resolution/32-bit color scenarios, it has a nice time beating the SDR GeForce at an equal price. So for those of you that have a fast enough CPU (Pentium III 450 or above), the Rage Fury MAXX makes for an excellent GeForce alternative while adding excellent support for DVD playback.

Those of you with slower CPUs may want to opt to stay away from the MAXX/GeForce debate entirely and just go after one of the recently price-reduced Voodoo3's or TNT2 Ultras which are still very serious performers.

Athlon owners won't find the highest performing solution in the Rage Fury MAXX, but then again they won't be disappointed by the card. The Athlon's match still seems to be the TNT2 Ultra, as it consistently performs noticeably better on the Athlon than it does on any Intel platform.

The true question boils down to how long you will be able to go without upgrading. If you are going to upgrade in another 6 - 8 months then going with the Rage Fury MAXX over the competition won't be too big of a problem, simply because once games begin to take advantage of hardware T&L you will be ready to upgrade to the next generation of video cards with more advanced hardware T&L support. On the other hand, if you are determined on keeping your next video card for much longer than that 6 - 8 month period you may want to consider the GeForce or the Savage 2000, having hardware T&L support on your card will increase the longevity of your investment. While the Savage 2000 currently doesn't have an enabled hardware T&L engine, well before the end of Q1 2000 we will see hardware T&L support for the Savage 2000 under OpenGL making it a viable option for the longevity category.

Although ATI promised to match the price of the GeForce cards, a quick look around the internet shows the MAXX going for more than the SDR version of the GeForce and nearly matching the price of the DDR model. The DDR GeForce seems to be a better all around solution for just a bit more. If ATI could push the price of the MAXX down towards the level of the Savage 2000 or below the SDR GeForce, they would definitely have a winner on their hands. Unfortunately, the use of 64MB of RAM and multiple chips will make that feat a difficult one for ATI.