KyroII and no T&L. What does that really mean?

Vaquero · Jun 21, 2001

I am trying to decide between two cards: the KyroII and the GeForce Pro 64. I am leaning toward the KyroII based on performance reviews and cost. I only have one concern, the lack of on-board T&L support. This has given me several questions?

1) If there is no on-board T&L supoort, do you just lost the functionality of T&L or is the lighting and effects simulated through other means, like through software simulation?

2) The performance of games requiring T&L take a hit on the KyroII, but is the hit enough to slow it to non-playable levels? I mean, as long as you're getting a decent frame rate an extra 10-20 fps don't really matter.

3) Do games really use it that much? I've read places where games really do not take advantage of on-board T&L and future boards are actually moving away from it.

4) Is the lack of T&L a big enough deal to make be buy another card? There are a lot of factors, but is this one factor enough to make a difference in the purchase of a video card?

Thanks ahead of time for any help.

jobberd · Jun 21, 2001

TnL as of now is not being used that much, and the only mainstream game that really shows any siginficant difference with it is MDK2. But you are right, if the card has no TnL engine, it can still do it through software emulation. So if you have a strong CPU and wont mind changing your card within the next 2 years, go for the Kyro II. Games are slowly starting to come out with TnL, and the extra power it provides will be a great benefit.

rickn · Jun 21, 2001

1. no. cpu can pick up and do those functions thru software. It does free up the cpu to offload it to the gpu though

2. yes, there is a performance hit. I still manage to pull in 70fps in MDK2 at 1024x768 32bbp, Trilinear, full detail on a Kyro 2 with T&L turned on. This is on a P3 961mhz. Performance will scale with a higher spec'd cpu

3. Not many games offload T&L. Giants does, and it still manages to run very slow on most cards at 1024x768 32bbp with full detail.

4. I wouldn't let it turn you off. This christmas you will see many new T&L enabled games, but there will also be a whole new generation of videocards out. Also, programmable T&L is the future, the hardwired T&L units on the GF2 and Radeon will be short-lived. They will be supported, but it won't be anything that a fast cpu wouldnt be able to handle

jbirney · Jun 21, 2001

Another thing is your res that you play at. People brought up MDK2. At lower res, 800x600 the k2 is far behind the GF2 cards. Heck its behind an MX. But as your res increases the K2 will catch up and pass the other cards on a fast CPU.

Here is some MDK2 on a k2, mx, gts and radeon cards:
MDK2 Results

Lookie at the 3dmark 2000 results
3Dmark 2000 scores

So you can see in some cases the lack of the k2 is holding it back. But once you get to high res/32bit color the TnL is not longer the bottle neck and memory bandwidth chokes the other cards while the K2 keeps pumping out the fps.

Either card is nice. I personally am goning to keep the k2 till this late fall and see what else there is...Maybe a k3? Radeon2? GF3/MX/Ultra?

TravisBickle · Jun 21, 2001

(sigh) why do I sense a sh!t stirrer around here?... what cowboy english LOL
you're almost answering your own question Vaquero. I answer it differently.
T+L might not have turned out practically often useful because of programming for the lowest common denominator in video cards. but I'd still pick the 64Mb GTS pro. it's all about industry support. industry recognizes GTS as the gold standard, nvidia supports their cards really well.
I don't want to hack drivers for each new game, I'm not really on the lookout for a video card with erratic performance.

PotNoodle · Jun 21, 2001

"I don't want to hack drivers for each new game, I'm not really on the lookout for a video card with erratic performance."

Who's hacking drivers???

BFG10K · Jun 21, 2001

T&L enhanced games will run slower in CPU limited situations and in some cases they will have lower image quality (eg MDK2).

Not many games offload T&L.

There are quite a lot of games that have T&L support.

Archknight · Jun 21, 2001

1. CPU will do the job.
2. Unless is at some ultra high resolution, it would be far more than what you called playable.
3. Not really, most advantage taken is a fps increase rather than effects. Most games had not exploit it yet and they are moving to programmable T&L already.
4. Depends if like the sound of T&L is on your card, to me NO. And you doesn't look like running the games at high res.

<<There are quite a lot of games that have T&L support.>>

True, but how many of them is exploiting it? Only a few games will give you a decent increase of fps, most games claimed to support T&L just use it to increase the fps slightly.

bananaboy · Jun 22, 2001

I think the simple answer is no. You don't need TnL, the only hardware TnL you might find useful someday is programmable which only the geforce3 has. But even if you look at its FPS in the DX8 game Aquanox it even brings the geforce3 to its knees quickly. Either one is fine but I'm planning on getting a geforce2pro myself, but im checking into some other cards that have some video editing features i want.

even though kyro is promising technology and im on their side for the future because i think they are going to be major players soon (their technology has a much greater impact on the video world than anything nvidia has), but right now the geforce2pro is a better buy for the money.

BFG10K · Jun 22, 2001

True, but how many of them is exploiting it?

Huh? In what way do you differentiate between support and exploit?

PotNoodle · Jun 22, 2001

"Huh? In what way do you differentiate between support and exploit?"

Personnally I would differentiate those two by whether or not there is actiually any detail difference - 'supporting T&L' would indicate that it uses the hardware T&L if there, but doesn't bring any noticable IQ improvement from runing it in software; 'exploit' would suggest large polygon count increases and noticable IQ improvement on hardware T&L over the software version.

Archknight · Jun 23, 2001

PotNoodle : a good answer to that, just what the way how I differentiate it.

I would say support is when the game will use it to rise a few fps or just for marketing. While exploit is when the game actually use it to increase the polygons count to bring a better visual that do not need a well trained eye to see.

Isn't that is what T&L is about in the first place to bring better visual effects?

BFG10K · Jun 23, 2001

T&L is supposed to provide higher speeds and higher visuals. If it only provides one of the two, it's still worth having it since you're essentially getting one of those features for free.

In the case of performance, who would pass over the opportunity for free speed gains? Not me, that's for sure.

Leon · Jun 24, 2001

If you want to play this, you will need fully hardware T&L compliant graphics card (required).

If you want to play Unreal II, you will need T&L card.

If you want to play Morrowmind, you will need T&L card.

If you want to play Giants, you need T&L card, otherwise you get 10fps in the game...

Hardware T&L is the future, and the support is growing.

Leon

Leon · Jun 24, 2001

<< . But even if you look at its FPS in the DX8 game Aquanox it even brings the geforce3 to its knees quic >>

So? In OpenGL based game Dronez that use nv_vetex_program and textures shaders (equivalent of DX8 pixel/vertex shaders but better GeForce 3 gets 60fps +

The low GeForce3 results in Aquanox is the result of current DX8 limitations, not hardware limitations. Also, Aquanox is it's current state is just a stress test, not a game (I have the demo).

Leon

powervr2 · Jun 24, 2001

remember beyond3d kyro 2 review...

kyro 2 was getting with vertex shaders in software (with no pixel shaders) close to 60 fps with a "lausy" cpu with droneZ ... (beyond3d is down so I can't give the link)

they didn't saw any improvement in quality with pixel shaders on with georce 3...

powervr2 · Jun 24, 2001

of those games that you mentioned I actually have giants I put the beta patch for it and play with it (with my kyro)... (even with dot3 bumpmapping)

gorgeous more than 30 fps every time (in 1024x768x16 with texture compression on, I use 16 bit because I get better performance and the quality is equal to 32 bits everything at the maximum settings even the models and shadows)
(it is smooth so I think it getting better than 30 fps I don't know how to bench it) (smooth at least 99% of the time) and I have a lausy duron 900...
unreal 2 will be out in 2002, so no problem here...

the others games I don't know I never heard about them.

PotNoodle · Jun 24, 2001

BFG10K,

?T&L is supposed to provide higher speeds and higher visuals. If it only provides one of the two, it's still worth having it since you're essentially getting one of those features for free.

In the case of performance, who would pass over the opportunity for free speed gains? Not me, that's for sure.?

Personally I would say it?s a question of whether the increased cost reaps the rewards.

Look at KYROII and MX; both similar sized chips (in fact KYROII is smaller) and hence they cost about the same ? which is more worth it? With MX those ?free speed gains? can only be had at low res and/or 16bit. At that point it comes down to the individual which they would prefer?

Leon,

Perhaps we ought to wait for some of those games to be released before we go around stating exactly what they will or won?t need. Point of fact though you won?t ?need? hardware T&L to run any of them since they will all run in software, the question is whether there is any kind of acceptable performance ? even if they did check DX caps for the hardware T&L flag there is no reason why hardware T&L can?t be emulated as 3dfx did with their drivers.

By the time some of those games are released its quite possible that the polygon performance of newer CPU?s could well exceed that of lower end T&L enabled cards. Even having said that there is still a vast quantity of PC that are not equipped with T&L cards and many developers will not want to risk loosing huge portions of potential customers.

As for the Giants benchmark you appear to be looking at only the extreme case. However, Giants uses Render To Textures extensively, which currently is not implemented in DirectX properly, and harms KYRO?s performance because of it; once resolved Giants benchmarks should be much more favourable towards KYRO.

"The low GeForce3 results in Aquanox is the result of current DX8 limitations, not hardware limitations. Also, Aquanox is it's current state is just a stress test, not a game (I have the demo)."

Isn't that a little two faced? With one hand you are telling us without a shadow of a doubt that your list of, mostly not even close to release, games - for which we haven't even seen any type of performance figures - will fail to operate on a non-T&L board, but the one we have seen performance figures from are to be brushed aside???

Where did you get the Aquanox demo BTW? I thought it was only available to press...

powervr2 · Jun 24, 2001

I have directx8.1 beta build 620 and giants looks great with kyro

PotNoodle · Jun 24, 2001

I'm also running 620, to no noticable improvement in performance (can't say for Giants as I don't play it) - however, my understanding on the 'render to textures' is that PowerVR also need to create DX8 specific drivers, which they haven't done so so far. The current 7 series drivers are DX7 specific.

Leon · Jun 24, 2001

<< Where did you get the Aquanox demo BTW? I thought it was only available to press... >>

Yes, and that's how I got it

BFG10K · Jun 25, 2001

Look at KYROII and MX; both similar sized chips (in fact KYROII is smaller) and hence they cost about the same ? which is more worth it? With MX those ?free speed gains? can only be had at low res and/or 16bit.

Yeah but you really need to be looking at something like the GTS (or faster) these days. The MX is severely crippled by a lack of memory bandwidth and it's already largely obsolete. With a GTS, T&L speeds up most games even at 800 x 600 x 32, which is a nice bonus.

Patgod · Jun 25, 2001

<<

<< Where did you get the Aquanox demo BTW? I thought it was only available to press... >>

Yes, and that's how I got it >>

hey i have pressed stuff, give me a copy

PotNoodle · Jun 25, 2001

BFK10K,

?Yeah but you really need to be looking at something like the GTS (or faster) these days. The MX is severely crippled by a lack of memory bandwidth and it's already largely obsolete. With a GTS, T&L speeds up most games even at 800 x 600 x 32, which is a nice bonus.?

But that?s half the point isn?t it?

In the case of GTS /Pro/Ultra to get the benefits of T&L you need increase the number of pixel pipes, thus significantly increasing the size of the chip (to 25Mill transistors) and also use more expensive DDR RAM ? this makes the overall cost of the chipset much more expensive, and even then the rewards over something such as KYRO are margin in many cases, as all these reviews that are flying around show (most definitely in the case of GTS).

Admittedly with the current retail pricing of both GTS and KYRO you are not really seeing much of the benefits of this because board vendors (and NVIDIA?) are running the margins very slim on GTS, whereas Hercules aren?t on KYRO. Its easier to see it with UK pricing.

Leon,

?Yes, and that's how I got it?

Well, that coupled with the type of commentary I?ve seen from you in this thread would lead me to believe you are part of an NVIDIA fan site? If so its easy to see why your comments are a, errrr? little one sided.

BFG10K · Jun 26, 2001

PotNoodle:

In the case of GTS /Pro/Ultra to get the benefits of T&L you need increase the number of pixel pipes, thus significantly increasing the size of the chip (to 25Mill transistors) and also use more expensive DDR RAM ?

It's mainly only the RAM that's the issue. If you overclock an MX's RAM, you see a boost in T&L situations.

this makes the overall cost of the chipset much more expensive, and even then the rewards over something such as KYRO are margin in many cases, as all these reviews that are flying around show (most definitely in the case of GTS).

The retail pricing of the Kyro2 is around ~$150, right? That's about the same as the GTS.

KyroII and no T&L. What does that really mean?

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