Need opinion quick! Which card, Savage4 or Rage Fury Pro?

[AMDnut]

I managed to pop my CL Savage4 32mb vid card. I have an ATI Rage Fury Pro 32mb card that I didn't use on another system. Instead, I installed a Savage4.
My question is, should I put the Savage4 card from the system I'm building in my machine, or should I use the ATI Rage Fury Pro? Which is faster? My system is an AMD K6/2-550 overclocked to 600mhz. The only real gaming I do is Microsoft Motocross Madness I & II. The rest of the work is all WinApps. I want very good image quality so I need opinions on the 2 cards quality as well. I need to have the system I'm building done tonight so I'm in a hurry for an answer!
Thanks in advance for the help!

[Stoffie]

As far as I know the ATI Rage Fury Pro would be as good as a TNT 2 Ultra or something in that range. And that Savage 4 sucks in comparison. So I would think the ATI to be the better choice. Image quality should be really good on both cards. Don't stumble over ATI's less than stellar drivers though.

[This message has been edited by Stoffie (edited 06-29-2000).]

[AMDnut]

Stoffie - Thanks!

Where should I get drivers? Should I go to ATI or someplace like Reactor Critical?

[Stoffie]

AMDnut, another reason to stay away from the Savage 4, I read today that CL will be unable to release any new drivers for it unless S3/Diamond give out the source code and stuff, so that card wouldn't exactly be a futureproof choice. And as far as I know, the ATI is better optimised for DirectX, and now OpenGL is pretty good as well, as where the S3 chipsets just suck in their driver support and driver quality overall.

As for drivers, go to Rage 3D they usually have all the latest drivers, listed in an orderly fashion, so you don't have to crawl through ATI's untransparent drivers' section (IMHO).



[This message has been edited by Stoffie (edited 06-29-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Stoffie (edited 06-29-2000).]

[AMDnut]

Thanks Stoffie! Your info is a big help!

[dfgsd]

as for a rage fury or a pro being close to a tnt2 that is not so. the tnt2 is much faster but between the 2 the fury is better. but i did have problems with drivers on my socket 7 board which is what you have. I still think that the rage fury pro is probaly better for you and it does have video capture doesn't it?

[Stoffie]

dfgsd, I think you haven't been paying attention. The original Rage Fury indeed had sub par performance compared to a TNT2, but, check out any Fury Pro review and you will see that it is on a TNT2's heels and overtaking it in some cases...

Here is one example and here's one more...

Btw, here is a little exerpt:
ATI has certainly done a good job with their latest drivers, as the ATI Rage Pro outperformed consitantly the more expensive TNT2 based solutions. As this card cost only 110 bucks, features a standard TVout and excellent DVD acceleration, we believe its one of the best budget solutions for the home user, together with the Savage 2000.

[This message has been edited by Stoffie (edited 06-29-2000).]

[dfgsd]

i was talking about the rage fury pro actually i had just seen bench marks and i was just ahead of the original fury and it was well below the tnt2. It was using one of those 3dmarks programs or something like that i don't remeber the name. It could be wrong considering you found two sources that say that and i have found that drivers make a huge difference on ati products maybe this had something to do with the test i saw.

also something is weird about one of those bench marks at least, the quake 3 numbers for a tnt2 on a k6-3 400 in normal-whatever that is, is about 10 fps less then mine at 800x600 at full quality levels. I think that they are not using the best drivers for the tnt2.

[This message has been edited by dfgsd (edited 06-29-2000).]

[moyukhums]

The ragepro smokes the tnt2 but can barely keep up with the ultra.