ATI Rage Fury MAXX Preview

Benchmarking at 640 x 480 is useful for figuring out two things: 1) CPU performance and 2) driver performance. The latter is what we're investigating as we look at the first set of benchmarks taken at this resolution. While playing Quake III Arena in 640 x 480 is a reality for many, for most that would purchase the Rage Fury MAXX, it's a reality that they are trying to escape from. The Rage Fury MAXX's still immature drivers is what is holding it back here, keeping its level of performance down to that of the single Rage 128 Pro found on the Rage Fury Pro. Better drivers will put the Rage Fury MAXX at the top of this chart with the Savage 2000, Voodoo3 3500 and the SDR GeForce

Moving to from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 is a jump into the realm of real world benchmarking. Right now 1024 x 768 is the sweet spot for performance with these cards and at the head of the pack is the Rage Fury MAXX. The performance advantage it offers over the cheaper Savage 2000 and the equivalently priced GeForce is negligible.

In 32-bit color the Rage Fury MAXX manages to outpace the SDR GeForce by over 10 fps while it falls less than 4 short of the Savage 2000. The reason behind it falling short of S3's card is because the Savage 2000 fails to supply the 32-bit Z-buffer that Quake III Arena requests, turning off 32-bit Z on the Rage Fury MAXX allows it to regain the lead over even the Savage 2000 in 32-bit color.

At 1600 x 1200 the increased memory bandwidth the Rage Fury MAXX offers over the competition propels it into first place edging out the SDR GeForce by no more than 2 fps in 16-bit color, but a fairly noticeable 5 fps in 32-bit color. The MAXX is once again beaten by the Savage 2000 in 32-bit color scores because of the same Z-buffer issue mentioned above.