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I knew that ATI cards are supposed to work good with Microsoft's flight simulator, so decided to pick one up. Unpacking, and installation was easy for this hardware peabrain. Video cards fit right into place, where the old ones went. Naturally, I uninstalled the old drivers and made sure Windows was running in simple, in-house VGA mode before hand. The CD-ROM installed the latest drivers, and in minutes my machine was indeed running with the new card. In all honesty, as much as I did love the Voodoo 3DFx cards, they have the world's worst installs, where you have to manually search and select drivers. The whole process can take days. ATI's installs are all automatic, and work right, the first time!
Running FS2000 and FLY! work very well. It's proven itself to me over many months now. I have had not one lockup, or any video issues. In FLY!, I have to use the Direct-X 6 compatible listing, because there is no list that shows up for the Rage Fury Maxx, for some reason. But that doesn't matter. On my old PIII500, frame rates in FLY hit 18 steady, in most places, and would fall to 12 at night, with stormy weather. On my newer PIII850, FLY! runs at an "infinite" level of 25+, almost all the time. In the worst weather, at night, maybe 18 will be seen! Great fluidity. I'm not sure if it's true, but the sky and richness of colors with this card does not seem as rich as other people's screenshots show. But that's okay, it's not much of a difference. Clouds in 32-bit look great, and panels and aircraft are sharp. There are no graphical quality issues here.
FS2000 however, has some more problems. Landing light beams that are viewed externally, have weird rainbows of color extending from the lenses of each airplane, up into the sky, for infinity. It ruins all night, exterior views with landing lights enabled. I believe ATI is aware of this, but has done nothing to remedy it. I also have taxiway lights in the night sky, from the ground, up to about 3000 feet. Weird. Despite the 64 meg of onboard memory, loading times of complex aircraft external views, like the PSS 777 take a very long time. No explanation here, other people don't have these problems. Inside cockpit graphics, load much faster than they used to, on a 32 meg card. Aircraft externals are great, but blurry at a spot plane distance of greater than 200 feet. I have concluded that FS2000 looks far better with Mip Mapping disabled. Especially aircraft, look much sharper and more precise. The blurriness is gone. Frame rates remain the same with Mip Mapping off, in FS2000. Finally, frame rates are solid, but I don't feel quite as fast as with the Voodoo. But again, I just don't know for sure. On a PIII 500, I used to get 10 to 15 at complex default airports like Boston, in good weather. On a PIII850, about 15 to 25 now. Up at high altitudes over the ocean, I'll see 75 to 110 fps. I can run FS2000 in 1280x1024 without a problem. Images are sharp and brilliant. However, you'll loose about 5 fps doing so.
While my judgments are all based on months of use, I have no numerical data to back my findings on performance. I don't think it's quite as fast as all the other 32-bit cards out there, but I feel it's a heck of a lot more user friendly, stable, and adaptable for both civilian sims. (It works fine for FU3 also, but again, not quite as richly colored as the Voodoo). I am using a card, which for several months now, has been running both FLY!2K, and FS2000 perfectly. Perfectly reliable, that is. If you have ever had any lockup troubles with other cards, and want 32-bit graphics, I'll certainly recommend the ATI Rage Fury Maxx. If you have one of the powerful GEForce, and love it, then by all means, don't bother.
The ATI Rage Fury Maxx gets an 86 out of a possible 100 points.
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