Kyro beating geforce2 pro and Ultra in new review

[ThExorcist]

AH HAAA!!!
Looks like this just keeps getting better and better

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1291.1/

Look at those Mercedes benchmarks... Looks like the drivers have fixed the problems that were shown on anandtechs review and increased the performance beyond geforce ultra.... DAMMMMMMMMMnnnnnnn
Also notice the possibility of the card being cpu limited not fillrate limited at the lower resolutions. (800x600 and below). Even in 16bit the kyro is dominating.
What you need to keep in mind is that the Kyro 2 is newer then the Geforce2 pro and has alot more performance that can be pulled out of it. Ge2pro has already had extensive driver releases which have pulled alot of performance out of it from its initial release.

If you are a kyro owner I would be very excited because the drivers can only get better not worse...

Also in this review he says something about cpu scaling that is very interesting...

"We wanted to determine what kind of CPU horsepower was necessary to drive the Kyro II, and as the graphs both illustrate, the Kyro II scales well at low to moderate clockspeeds. It does, however, begin to taper off after about 1000 MHz, while the GeForce 2 line continues to scale well beyond that point.

What does that mean to you? Simply this -- if you're planning on purchasing a new CPU in excess of 1.2 GHz, you'll probably see much less of a performance delta between the two cards than we did in our testing. That is, beyond 1 GHz, the GeForce 2 will steadily increase in performance, while the Kyro II will begin to flatten out.

For a Duron or Pentium 3-equipped budget gaming system, for example, you can expect results similar to what we observed here. If you were to pair both cards with a 1.4 GHz Athlon, however, we suspect the GeForce 2 (especially the Pro) would begin to look much more attractive."

From what you all have been saying this should be the other way around with the Kyro doing better as the cpu gets more powerful.

Seems to be excellent card. Unless you do alot of professional work.

 

[cool]

"It does, however, begin to taper off after about 1000 MHz, while the GeForce 2 line continues to scale well beyond that point."

BS, the KyroII really starts to shine with a 1GHz+ CPU. It scales damn well and a lot better than any GF2 card! And it'll scale better in games that support T&L which the KII has not. GeForce cards (especially the MX series) reach their fill-rate limit much faster in these games than a KII...
Watch this one:
http://www.3dconcept.ch/cgi-bin/show.cgi?show=2428

 

[optimistic]

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1291.1/

 

[ThExorcist]

"BS, the KyroII really starts to shine with a 1GHz+ CPU. It scales damn well and a lot better than any GF2 card! And it'll scale better in games that support T&L which the KII has not. GeForce cards (especially the MX series) reach their fill-rate limit much faster in these games than a KII.."

That is what i thought. I had been reading here in the forums and from other reviews that a strong processor paired with the Kyro II would be best. Still seems like dollar for dollar the Kyro II is still king...

Also I have been thinking that if you needed a video card now a Kyro II would be best. Here are some reasons:

1. Kyro II gives best bang for the buck right now. Prices range from $108-$159 depending on where you purchase it. With future drivers this will just get better.
2. You can now say Kyro II gives at the minimum Geforce 2 GTS performance and can surpass Geforce Ultra in an unspecified amount of games.
3. If you purchase a Geforce 3 you will have the card to beat temporarily, but will have to pay for it anywhere from $320-$450 depending on who you buy from.
4. Kyro III is to be released October-November and Imagination Technologies have stated that they want to bring down the price for performance on video cards meaning that it may be safe to say the Kyro III may cost anywhere from $200-$250.
5. Early assumptions from many sites and reviews state Kyro III will be the card to beat and that Nvidia's next card might not be enough.
6. If you bought a Kyro II for $108-$159 now and decide to update to Kyro III assuming costs of $200-$250 the most you would pay for both cards originally would be $308-$409. Compare that to cost of Geforce 3 today and you may pay less for Kyro II today and an upgrade to Kyro III later.
7. If you do buy Geforce 3 today which is fine and decide to update later to Kyro III since it is very possible that Nvidia's next card may not be capable of competing either then you are looking at spending $520-$700 for Geforce 3 today and Kyro III later.
8. Last but not least is support. I have to say that so far PowerVR and Hercules have been doing a great job releasing drivers. Actually I don't think I can remember one week that has gone by which a new driver hadn't been posted. To tell you the truth the only other company I know that releases drivers more frequently if not equal to this is... yep Nvidia.

So depending on how you like to spend your money, which only you can decide, here is some stuff to think about...

This just in...
http://www.aceshardware.com/#N50000289

This just keeps getting better and better!!!

 

[vedin]

Bump...

 

[Trevelyan]

another one: http://www.hardwarepub.com/reviews/prophet4500

 

[Archknight]

Cool :
I have a question? First of all I not saying Kyro2 does not scale well on a fast CPU, because it does especially in heavy T&L games like MDK2. Now my question is the 3Dconcept CPU scaling graph, something odd is about the Geforce. It partically stays the same from a 500 to 1100Mhz CPU. The two CPU scaling from hardwareanalysis and 3dconcept both used the Q3 although not sure is the same demo, but the major difference is the 3dconcept uses the MX400 at 200/200Mhz while hardwareanalysis uses the GF2. Is it safe to assume that something else is hindering the MX400 to take advantage of a faster CPU like the memory bandwidth?

 

[ThExorcist]

ArchKnight,

Actually in most situations if you have a video card and upgrade the the processor and do not realize a gain in frames then this basically means that you are limited by your video card at the color depth and resolution you are attempting to play at. Either the card is fillrate limited (ex. 1200 Athlon with a Voodoo3, TnT2 or any older card that gains more framerates from simply overclocking the video core and not having to worry about memory overclocking) or the card is starving for more memory bandwidth (ex. 1200 Athlon with Radeon, or any card in the Geforce family). In the 3dconcept article the Geforce2 mx400 is obviously limited by memory bandwidth since we all know none of the cards in the Geforce family are even close to exhausting their fillrate. (Shame too, since even the G2 mx400 would be pretty competitive if you could remove its memory bandwidth bottleneck).

So basically the Kyro 2 will continue to scale with the cpu until it is limited by its fillrate...

 

[bananaboy]

Oh yeah Kyro3 with programmable pixel and vertex shaders baby..that card is going to be a whole new level in performance. ta ta nvidia i never did like you anyway. all hype. now we know why they decided to diversify into motherboards. with all your eggs in one basket they were bound to get caught with their pants down.

 

[cool]

<< Cool :
I have a question? First of all I not saying Kyro2 does not scale well on a fast CPU, because it does especially in heavy T&amp;L games like MDK2. Now my question is the 3Dconcept CPU scaling graph, something odd is about the Geforce. It partically stays the same from a 500 to 1100Mhz CPU. The two CPU scaling from hardwareanalysis and 3dconcept both used the Q3 although not sure is the same demo, but the major difference is the 3dconcept uses the MX400 at 200/200Mhz while hardwareanalysis uses the GF2. Is it safe to assume that something else is hindering the MX400 to take advantage of a faster CPU like the memory bandwidth? >>



ArchKnight, you're right. The MX400 IS memory bandwidth-limited but aren't the GF2 cards either? Just at a higher level!
I was a little bit too &quot;quick&quot; in comparing both cards. But comparing the KyroII with GF2MX400 (it is clocked @ 200/200) is not really wrong since both are &quot;low budget cards&quot;. And the KyroII simply rules in this area.

 

[Archknight]

&quot;I was a little bit too &quot;quick&quot; in comparing both cards. But comparing the KyroII with GF2MX400 (it is clocked @ 200/200) is not really wrong since both are &quot;low budget cards&quot;. And the KyroII simply rules in this area.&quot;

I agree with that, the KyroII simply rules in this area.

It is amazing to see that the Kyro2 just scale up with higher CPU, I think this doesn't mean that Kyro2 need a good CPU to perform, (not in heavy T&amp;L situation) but rather you will get a better performance with a better CPU.

I wonder what kind of settings they used in those CPU scaling graph. It maybe be biased. The MX400 may scale as well as the Kyro2 if lower the res to let say 640X480 or 800X600 and color depth to 16bits.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[ThExorcist]

&quot;I wonder what kind of settings they used in those CPU scaling graph. It maybe be biased. The MX400 may scale as well as the kyro2 if lower the res to let say 640X480 or 800X600 and color depth to 16bits.

Correct me if I'm wrong. &quot;

You are correct... but then the previous question comes into play here. Why would you want to accept 16bit as well as lowering your resolution when you can have 32bit with hardly any penalty at same resolution. In framerates, quality ranks over excessive as long as quality is playable. But if you can get both, that would be best. Kyro can accomplish this.

 

[Archknight]

No doubt Kyro2 can do the job. What I getting at is that was a CPU scaling graph can show both results for the MX. It can climb like the Kyro2 or it can just stays at the same place. It can be biased.

I didn't say I would take 16bits over 32bits, who would do that. And you seems to be a Kryo advocate. But then again I too would buy a Kyro2 over the GF2 anyday, I have my reasons of course.

 

[Taz4158]

Anybody notice something &quot;funny&quot; in this dialogue or is it just me?

 

[ThExorcist]

&quot;No doubt kyro2 can do the job. What I getting at is that was a CPU scaling graph can show both results for the MX. It can climb like the kyro2 or it can just stays at the same place. It can be biased.

I didn't say I would take 16bits over 32bits, who would do that. And you seems to be a Kryo advocate. But then again I too would buy a kyro2 over the GF2 anyday, I have my reasons of course. &quot;

Apologize about any insinuations. Also not really an advocate of Kyro just very impressed in what they offer and the price. I like Nvidia and ATI as well.

 

[Def]

The KryoII is definitely a good performer, but it will get destroyed in a situation where brute force is required(a la GeForce2 series). A good example is fog, or smoke in games. You just can't remove enough overdraw because of the transparency of the effect. The Radeon gets hit pretty hard here as well because it also tries to reduce the bandwidth requirement by removing hidden polygons(not quite the same as the TBR of the KryoII though).

I wouldn't really compare a KryoII's power to a GF2 Ultra though. While it might match it in some games, on a whole, it usually falls around a regular GF2's performance, and sometimes below. Very good performance for a &quot;budget minded&quot; card though.

 

[powervr2]

even with fog there will be always overdraw..
it's with fog that kyro can excels (like if the game exploits many texture layers ,multitexturing)

kyro is the only card right now that support 8 layers in a single pass (without the need to resend the geometry, geforce 3 can only do 4 and geforce 2 can only do 2 with a single pass)

Fog is no problem with kyro if the game supports multitexturing...
like in Serious sam... (we can expose 4 layers multitexturing with kyro in serious sam, kyro can do better than 4 layers)

if the game does not take advantage of the multitexturing capabilitys of kyro that does not mean bad results with kyro there will be always overdraw, and the brute force aproach also have to render that fog...

 

[k0w]

&quot;Kyro beating geforce2 pro and Ultra in new review&quot;

To be honest, in the link you sent us: Here

Where does it say anything about beating the Ultra ?
I see GeForce II GTS, and a GeForce II Pro ..

Does anyone else see Ultra anywhere ?

Thanks,

-k0w

 

[BFG10K]

The Kyro2 was winning in two benchmarks: MTBR and UT. In the other benchmarks it was usually on the same level as a GTS, except in SPECviewperf where it got absolutely crushed:

&quot;If you're involved in CAD/CAM/CAE work, there's no question that you'll want to stick to the GeForce line of cards. Even an 80-dollar GeForce 2 MX would be better than the Kyro II.&quot;

MTBR has a high amount of overdraw, so I can accept those results. But UT? Something's fishy there especially with this comment:

&quot;It's possible that there is an above average amount of overdraw in Unreal Tournament&quot;.

Wrong, the UT engine removes overdraw in software, ie the CPU. Therefore I'm interested to know why the Kyro2 is pulling so far ahead.

And finally as K0W pointed out, there is no GF2 Ultra in those tests.

 

[k0w]

Tell it like it is BFG10k !

-k0w (no work, so im spending it drunk ...)

EDIT: Dont forget the 3d Mark score ... talk about eating cowpatties ... :disgust:

 

[Teasy]

If you guys read through the review then you'll see the comment he was refering to:

&quot;Well, what have we here? We have a $120 Kyro II defeating, and very soundly defeating, a GeForce 2 Pro across the board, particularly in 32-bit color, where the 3D Prophet 4500 performs as much as 20% faster than the GeForce 2 Pro. In fact, it's reasonable to assume the Kyro II would very probably defeat a GeForce 2 Ultra as well.&quot;

 

[powervr2]

&quot;Wrong, the UT engine removes overdraw in software, ie the CPU. Therefore I'm interested to know why the Kyro2 is pulling so far ahead.&quot;

maybe it's because there are lots of textures there .
we all know that nvidia cards sucks (beginning with tnt) when there are lots of textures or non static textures.

Bad texture management from nvidia cards!!!
that might be the answer why unreal tournament is better with kyro 2...

look at ultima IX:

http://www.3dconcepts.de/reviews/3dprophet4500/ultima9all.gif

 

[lsd]

What UT benchmark was used???.......
I don't know what wrong with some of you people. I would think the k2 would be faster than a pro or ultra in any game.

BUT..
IT ISN'T

 

[gygheyzeus]

ThExorcist.. I really liked some of the points you made. I have a KyroII 64MB right now. If I can pick up a top of the line card this winter for $200-250, I'll be more than happy.

 

[powervr2]

to LSD:

it isn't

those number mine and yours where from a review (anandtech review) that used prebeta kyro drivers

you better believe that kyro can actually do better than geforce 2 pro or even ultra sometimes because it is the truth...

the more recent is the review the better kyro is... (drivers are getting better every time)