Included in the Package

One notable addition to the card itself is a small heatsink. I suppose we have Mr. Thomas Pabst of Tom's Hardware to thank for that, but I for one think it's about time. After all, today's new video chips are approaching the transistor count and complexity of a Pentium II-and you wouldn't think of running a P2 without a heatsink or fan, would you?

The card is of a remarkably compact design, sporting only four ram chips for a total of 32mb memory. That's an astonishing eight megabytes per chip! Subtract the TV-out circuitry, and you could probably create the world's smallest video card. Here's where you begin to get some idea why ATI does so well on the OEM side!

The Rage Fury also includes the world's tiniest daughtercard, for the sole purpose of providing the RCA and s-video TV outputs, so you'll also get two TV interface cables: one for each output type.

Following the unfortunate trend of recent Diamond and Creative video card releases, there is no DVD player included with the board. Instead, you'll find a "coupon" for a DVD player that you have to return with proof of purchase. Can anyone tell me what's so difficult about shipping DVD software in the box in this day and age? We inquired about this, and received a reply from ATI's Raymond Spencer, stating that ATI is working to get it into the box by the end of the month.

The software bundle that is included isn't bad at all. It includes Half-Life Day One, Moto Racer 2 (full version), and the as yet unreleased Expendable Lite. In my opinion most bundles are a waste of time since I already have the games by the time they become bundleware, but Expendable is interesting since it won't be available until late April. It is also quite cutting edge by DirectX 6 standards, supporting all the latest industry buzzwords, including bump mapping.