Most gamers care about one thing and one thing only: Speed. The ATi Rage Fury seemed very fast to us two months ago, when the Voodoo3 and TNT2 were farther away from their respective debuts (April 1st for TNT2 products, Last week of March for the STB V3-2000).
Now it's nearly March, and the rest of the field is catching up to ATi's new flagship rather quickly. ATi won't confirm it, but sources inside the company have indicated that the Rage Fury's 128GL graphics core runs at a speed that's between "95 and 105MHz". Even though the Rage 128GL graphics chip is manufactured at a .25 micron level, apparently the need for profitable yields knocked the Rage Fury's speed down slightly from what other .25mu parts are capable of.
In the face of the S3 Savage4, Voodoo3-2000, and nVidia TNT2, all of which run at a baseline core speed of 143MHz, the Rage Fury will struggle to fend off the performance oriented wolves very soon. (Btw, that's exclusive information on the TNT2's new baseline speed, don't tell anyone we told ya ok?)
But where the Rage Fury's performance level does assert itself is against the currently available competition. In our benchmarks the Fury turned in numbers that beat the high scores we've recorded for the TNT, the Voodoo2, the Savage3D as well as the Banshee and G200. The Fury does this while also adding the high resolutions and color depth support that 32MB of on-card dram gives.
Rage Fury Performance Verdict:
Strong, currently the fastest available…but not for long. Still a good pick though to tide a buyer over until the nVidia NV20 or 3Dfx .18mu mega-parts arrive in Winter/99.
