Specifications

The List

64MB SDRAM Memory
Dual ATI RAGE 128 Pro
500Mpixels/s fill rate
Alternate Frame Rendering Technology
Dual engine acceleration for full-screen 3D
Single engine acceleration for windowed 3D
Twin Cache Architecture
Superscalar Rendering
Single-Pass Multitexturing
32-bit True Color Rendering
Triangle Setup Engine
Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
Line & Edge Anti-aliasing
Texture compression
Specular Highlights
Z-buffering and Double-buffering
Bump mapping
Fog effects, texture lighting, video textures, reflections, shadows, spotlights, LOD biasing and texture morphing
Hardware DVD support
AGP 4X/2X compatible
Windows 98
OpenGL ICD for Windows 98
DirectX, Direct3D, DirectDraw

Notes

The Rage Fury MAXX card uses two Rage Fury 128 Pro chips in parallel to get the new advertised 500Mpixels/s frame rate. The new Rage 128 Pro chip has a 125MHz core clock and 143 MHz memory clock as compared to the 103/103 of the original retail Rage Fury. Each 125MHz chip is capable of pushing out 250Mpixels/s. Double the chips and you have 500Mpixels/s.

The MAXX card has the supports the same features as the regular Rage Fury Pro, which means the card has fast 32-bit color and ATI's famous hardware DVD support. While other graphics chips still rely on software DVD players to do all the work, ATI offers nearly a complete set of MPEG-2 acceleration features including iDCT, Motion compensation, and hardware subpicture blending. The GeForce and Savage2000, for example, do not offer iDCT in hardware and so the Rage 128 Pro chip can offload most of the work from the CPU and onto the video card.

ATI has also taken measures to improve the 3D image quality. On top of improved bilinear filtering and 16-bith dithering, the card also features support for DirectX Texture Compression, developed originally by S3. Not only is DXTC supported, but ATI also licensed S3TC for use in OpenGL games such as Quake III.

Notice that the card only currently supports Windows 98. ATI has assured us that they are working hard on Windows NT and 2000 support. The Rage Fury MAXX will not work properly in Win2K even in a single chip 2D-only mode at this time.