Kyro II or MX400?

[igowerf]

I'm in the market for a low end graphics card. I was to spend about 80 bucks at most. The Kyro II seems pretty good but the MX400 is even cheaper. I'm gonna run it with a 1.4 GHz TBird. The OCP review of the KYRO II showed that it had problems with 3DMark 2001. Does anyone have a Kryo II? How is it with Max Payne and 3DM2k1? I know that 3dmark2001 shouldn't be a factor in buying a video card, but I'm gonna be in a contest with a friend (we're seeing who can get the highest score by the end of two weeks). I'm running Win2k so the Radeon LE doesn't seem like a good option right now.

 

[BCompDude]

I have a Kyro 2 and it kicks ass in Max Payne and performs adequately in 3dmark 2001. The Kyro 2 will beat the MX in almost any benchmark known to man, including 3dmark 2001. The problem you probably heard about was in the demo, it gives a warning. This however, is not the Kyro 2's fault at all, rather Direct X 8 and will be fixed in version 8.1. Heres the reasoning behind that. . .:

"This is a problem caused by DirectX 8.0 returning that KYRO and KYRO II cannot render to a texture. 3DMark2001 is asking if the hardware can render to a texture, but the DirectX 8.0 runtime is intercepting the call and answering on behalf of the driver and hardware. DirectX 8.1 enables render to a texture for the KYRO family (note that DirectX 8.1 Beta versions below build 620 do not fix this bug). When DX8.1 is released the Demo will be available to run on the KYRO family. If you feel brave you can install DX8.1 beta build 620 or newer and then use render to a texture, but there will be a few graphical errors until the final version of DirectX 8.1 comes out. "

Bottom line. . .if your choice is between those two cards. . .the Kyro 2 will slap the MX around like a red headed step child. If you really want to annihilate the MX, just turn the resolution up and up the graphics to 32 bit color. *evil grin*

Hope this helps.

 

[Poncherelli]

on a 1.4 athlon, get the kyro 2, i dont have either card, but i've seen both and the kyro 2 is amazing for its price.

 

[Athlon4all]

Kyro II, but if u have an 'xtra $50, get a GF2 Pro

 

[Boonesmi]

i just upgraded from an mx400(well actually i had a plain mx, but as you probably know the old mx is basically the same as the new mx400)but i upgraded to a kyroII, 3d is quite a bit faster, and also better quality 2d