ATI Rage Fury Maxx Crashes System when playing 3d games

[Ty75]

Help. I have a computer with a Asus P3V4X, Apollo Pro 133A Chipset, motherboard and a Rage Fury Maxx video card. OS is Windows ME. But the system also crashed under Windows 98.
I update the OS, since the original OS was the first 98 version. I updated the video drivers to Windows ME. I updated the VIA Drivers.
THe system boots up fine. The device manager is clean, not conflicts. Whenever we try to load a 3d game,ie: wolfenstein, the system crashes.
We have Directx 8 on the machine.
Any ideas?
The system seems stable. The system only crashes when we attempt to play the 3d, 3rd person games.
Thanks. Tony

 

[DClark]

I used a very similar system (Rage Fury Maxx with an Abit VH6 (Apollo Pro 133A chipset) running Win98First Edition), but never had any serious problems with the Maxx in any games. I bought a Radeon LE early in 2001 so it's been sitting on my shelf since all the true Dx8 games started coming out, but I do know that the most current driver for the Maxx is a Dx7 driver (the Maxx is classified by ATi as a "discontinued product", so don't expect any new drivers).

I'm trying to remember if any actual games caused any problems when running with Dx8, but I do remember having a problem in the High Detail Lobby scene of 3DMark2001. At the time I think that was the only Dx8 benchmark or game available, so the Maxx driver may have problems with Dx8. Installing Dx8.1 may exacerbate the problem or fix the problem, but with WinMe you may want to make sure you can do one of those "Restore to a previous date" things before installing Dx8.1. That way you could try it out, then uninstall DirectX if it doesn't work.

I know you may not want to hear this, but if you're playing games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you may want to consider upgrading to a graphics card with Hardware T&L. I never regretted my upgrade to the Radeon LE from the Maxx, even though the Maxx was faster in some instances. The Radeon had enough new features (Hardware T&L, FSAA, less CPU usage from the DVD playback, EMBM) to warrant the change for me.

I wouldn't recommend a mid-grade card right now to tell you the truth, as in my opinion the two best ways to go with graphics card purchases right now is either low end (Radeon 7200, Radeon LE, or at most an inexpensive non- MX GeForce2 card), or fork out the money for a Radeon 8500 series or GeForce3 series card. The low end cards would allow you to play games just fine for the next 8 months or so, and will allow you to have enough money left in your pocket so that you can get a Dx9 card when they start getting released sometime in mid 2002. By the end of 2002, I think every gamer should have at least a Dx8.1 card in their computer.

 

[Ty75]

thanks for the reply. I might look into the low end graphic cards.

 

[AA0]

I've never had a problem with my maxx, been using it for a while and games never crashed. I didn't use it on too many new games, but the few I tried (demos mostly) all worked with no problems.