150,00$ Kyro II beats Geforce2 Ultra!!!

[JellyBaby]

Oh, no doubt competition is good. But I'd like to see a sustained benefit to consumers rather than a brief period where you can get gf2's cheap, which kills off this pesky competitor, then another period of high-priced cards again.

But it's a bit early for any Doom and Gloom scenarios. The thing isn't even out yet. Just speculation to pass the time.

 

[Eug]

Since this is going after the lower end of 3D gaming, it would be nice to see some benches with our lowly Celerons, etc. While the PIV is common and everyone and their dog now owns a PIII 1000 or Athlon Gigger, I suspect a large portion of the Kyro II potential buyers will still have a Celeron 600 or 800 or a Duron 600 or something.

 

[Judgement]

I'd love to see an underdog give the geforce2 line of cards some competition...I always have rooted for the underdog I find myself cheering against my own sports teams sometimes if they are winning horribly ....dunno why lol.

For a card that has performance of the geforce2 gts 64mb or better at the price of the 32mb gts, I'm ready to hop on board as long as they drivers don't turn out to be horrible with games.

Anyone see a release date for the Kyro II? I read through the article and didn't see it but I could have missed it.

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

Scheduled release date is late march or early april according to the artical. Hurcules/Guillemot already has the card listed on its website.

 

[Slappy5]

Ok, reread anands benchies again... this card's the sh1t. lol TBR is a MUST as far as gaming is concerned, I didn't actually believe the statements on this board because I never got around to finishing the article. DAMN, out performing a GF2Ultra? nVidia still has my appreciation for the various reasons I had described previously, but holy hell I am truly impressed.

John

imagine TBR on a GF3... wowza 8D

 

[rickn]

<< imagine TBR on a GF3... wowza 8D >>



nVidia would have to buy them to get the patents


Imagine Kyro3 with 250mhz 4 pipeline T&amp;L device with DDR. Now that would rock

 

[Slappy5]

HSR,


Addendum: nVidia acquired 3DFX and their Hidden Surface Removal Technology, in light of the performance the Kyro II demonstrates this may explain their reasoning behind this maneuver. Huh. Anyhow, you can bet yer pants that NV is not far behind with this technology. BUt kudos to the Kyro people for bitting nvidia in the pants with this technology.

John

 

[jeffrey]

Go kyro II !!!!

It would have been nice for Anand to give us some Win2k benchmark results.

The Kyro II was competing with a Geforce 2 GTS 64mb... wow
Kyro II can probably be found for $100-130 street price and you'd have to pay DOUBLE that for a 64mb Geforce 2 according to the last Anandtech video card price guide

Hope more manufacturers sign up besides just Hercules!!!

Jeffrey

 

[Remnant2]

The Kyro2 has definitely got me excited. I'm still plugging along on a V3 3000, and have resisted getting a new card for multi-hundred dollars for a manytime too-small performance gain.

Things I'd like to see, most folks have already mentioned:

1) Professional OpenGL performance. This is an area where T&amp;L actually does wonders.

2) Drivers. How's the W2K performance/how stable &amp; reliable are they?

3) CPU scaling. Would it benefit me and my Athlon 500 at all?

4) 2d quality &amp; clarity

5) Overclocking?

 

[Biggs]

I was just wondering whether or not Carmack misquoted himself by mentioning a Matrox card that has &quot;cured&quot; the bandwidth problem instead of a Kyro II.

 

[Pocatello]

How does the Kyro II handle Giants? This is one of the most hardware-intensive game available.

 

[Leon]

<< How does the Kyro II handle Giants? This is one of the most hardware-intensive game available. >>



Giants takes heavy advantage of hardware T&amp;L. Also, DOT3 bumpmapping can only be activated on T&amp;L capable cards (aka Radeon/GeForce)

Leon

 

[Insane3D]

&quot;If it has Matrox and Ati-style 2D onboard, and consistently performs well for the end-user, then I might just sell my new GF2 GTS and hop on the bandwagon. My samsung 900NF is just itching to do 1600x1200.&quot;

My 32mb Radeon runs Undying smooth as silk at 1600 x 1200 x 32 @85hz on my AV-195TF. I have an Elsa Gladiac, but the Radeon 2D and 3D quality is just soooo much better, the Gladiac is in the closet gathering dust.

 

[Pocatello]

The game I'm waiting for is Tribes II, I hope someone would test all the videocard with this game.

 

[Judgement]

I just hope they're releasing it soon enough to get some of the video card marketshare. Their price is great for the card's performance, but the GeForce2 cards already have a dominant user-base because they have been out for awhile, and I don't think people will be buying a Kyro2 if they already have a GeForce2. Hopefully they will do well and earn a pretty penny so we can have some more competition to keep these insane prices down. Everytime I see a $400+ dollar video card it makes me sick to my stomache people pay that much, considering most of the newest cards' abilities aren't going to be utilized until that video card has dropped dramatically in price since its release.

 

[piku]

Now do you see why the Dreamcast wipes the floor with nearly everything?

 

[UKtaxman]

Anyone played on SEGA's NAOMI arcade board? Well that uses 2 Kyro1 chips in tandem with a t&amp;l unit. So they have the ability and technology now. Anyone care to imagine 2 Kyro2's in tandem with a proper t&amp;l unit? remember that Naomi uses the older Kyro1(or a very close version of it).
There are rumours that STM will be anouncing another new card at CEBIT.....god I hope it's a dual Kyro2 with t&amp;l .......please!........please!.......please!

 

[MGMorden]

This is getting very interesting. Anyone notice that Kyro is looking a lot like Nvidia did vs. 3dfx a few years ago? In a year or two we might be looking at a MAJOR player in the 3d chip market. Either way I'm just glad to see competition (for the cost reasons and for the sheer sake of variety). I hope ST/PowerVR does well w/ this chip.

 

[Katana]

<< Anyone played on SEGA's NAOMI arcade board? Well that uses 2 Kyro1 chips in tandem with a t&amp;l unit. So they have the ability and technology now. >>



It isn't the NAOMI that has the T&amp;L, it is the NAOMI2. It can do around 3 times what the NAOMI did and all they did was add hardware T&amp;L. I wonder if that is what the Kyro3 will be? If you want to read about the NAOMI2, go here.

 

[Howard]

Damn... If they did release a dual-chip KyroII with 64MB of memory...


*drool*

 

[gnoymyguy]

I have to say that the Kyro2 is the most exciting product for a long time, out of the blue, far exceeding the GF3 for me. It's just great that an alternative technology has emerged and what a price to emerge at! Doing it the intelligent way, now that's style. At least, like you guys say, it keeps everyone on their toes, so hopefully we don't see the dominant 3Dfx/intel days when technology rolled at a snail's pace. I hope ST have great drivers for win2k etc and sharp 2D too, as this is a great factor for many.

 

[DeathroweR]

Kyro 2 rocks!

This is FINALLY a real value: all the power with no overhyped and overpriced crap! Yee-haa!

Well I won't be getting one since I just got a V5500. It gives me FSAA in ANY 3D game (Kyro's only works in OGL for now).

But I still like it a LOT!

 

[skylark]

hmmm.. this is like de ja vu with riva 128 and tnt, when it first came out into the 3d gaming market dominated by 3dfx.

except the difference between the riva 128 and tnt is that the kyro II provides much more performance and power as a 3d vid card in its infancy.

kyro is definite eye-catcher.

 

[MGMorden]

Hopefully they'll have one of these cards available with a DVI connector. I'm wanting to get a flat-panel in a while and though my Radeon currently serves me well, it has no DVI output so it's gonna go. I'd love to put in one of these to replace it. Good cost and good performance.

 

[Soccerman]

my work is done! heh.. now that Kyro has been plugged enough to be this popular!

Hercules is not dumb...there is a ton of potential in the Kyro. I hear the next gen chip will feature a [fully programmable] T&amp;L engine.

that would be a VERY VERY smart move. they could literally waste nVidia and ATi in the OEMs, at least temporarily.. and you know what kind of money OEMs bring in!

I too fall into Eug's description. I'm running a V3 2K AGP. it was a TREMENDOUS deal when I bought it. it's still a great card!

however, I have been in search for a card with similar price performance ratios (I'm talking $150-$200 Canadian, able to play all current games), and this one is ever so close..

This is only just the beginning though guys, There will be a T&amp;L + 2 more pipeline enabled part out (don't know when though). As you noticed, Anandtech didn't go into very many specifics on it's features, so that we can confirm/deny if it was simply a die shrink or based on the new core with T&amp;L and extra pipes disabled.

I'm inclined to believe the former, even though they added something like 2 million transistors to the chip, I don't think that is enough to add T&amp;L as well as 2 more pipes, and possibly/probably more Geforce 3 type features.

Another thing I'd like to point out is the lack of support for DDR. the first Kyro didn't use DDR SDRAM either, however I suspect the REAL next gen Kyro will use low speed DDR SDRAM (I'm talking 110-130mhz) to help keep up with the extra fillrate that 2 more pipelines gives.

in any case, if I were to buy a card right now, I'd be very hard pressed to decide between the Radeon LE and this Kyro 2. Radeon LE, becuase it has some more features, and Kyro 2 becuase it is generally more powerful, and has Win2k support (God forbid that I run Win2k before converting to linux, which opens up a whole new can of worms).