So what's the verdict - MX / MX400 / Radeon LE / KyroII - No Wars!

[wolf550e]

Thats for a budget low-end gaming card, with good 2d (very important. if its ugly i dont need it) for running at 1024x768x32 or if not fast enough than 800x600x32 OGL and D3D.
Naturaly it will be overclocked if its possible and usefull, and the Radeon LE as i understant can be turned into a real Radeon DDR.

So what is it going to be?

 

[statix]

No regret for my Radeon LE, flashed it with Radeon DDR Retail and overclocked to 190MHz. The most important is I can play all my fav games smooth and fast at 1024x768x32.

 

[wolf550e]

any benchmarks which include an MX a Radeon and KyroII?

 

[Athlon4all]

I'll just say unless you have under $50 to spend, eliminate MX and MX400, their day has passed when there's Radeon LE and Kyro II and out there. I'd first suggest reading Anandtech's article on Radeon LE, and if you are comfortable with ocing it then it may be your best choice. I think Kyro II has a lot of promise so I think a overclocked LE and Kyro II are good choices, but I just to let you know you may want to get a GeForce2 Pro, it's unbeliveably cheap right now (see below). Below is the lowest prices for these 5 cards from Pricewatch.

MX: $46
MX400: $62
Radeon LE: $67
Kyro II: $107
GeForce2 Pro: $139

P.S 3D Accellerators are pretty much the same when it comes to 2D performance, the only extreme ones are Matrox's Video Cards are designed for 2D and good at it, and S3's Savage4 had terrible 2D performance.

 

[ThExorcist]

I believe if you need 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. Proof
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. Of course this would be less if you substituted a GF2Pro,GTS, or MX but again why purchase any Geforce 2 type card when naturally Kyro II has more performance to give through new drivers. (Ex. Kyro II=new card/Geforce2 family=old card)
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.

Actually since you have a Celeron 733 right now the kyro would be best because the Kyro is the only video card that will show more performance if you where to upgrade your processor later. The other two cards would most likely stay the same since they are memory bandwidth limited. So in reality the Kyro is more "futureproof." And for those that say he can't get the performance to beat a Geforce2 Pro with his Celeron 733, your right, but he originally stated he was deciding between GF MX and Radeon LE which a Kyro II would easily always stay ahead unless you are in 16bit (which I still don't understand why people use if 32bit is hardly any slower on kyro). Even if he overclocked his Radeon LE which would make it a Radeon DDR, Kyro would still equal if not beat it. Heres Proof. (By the way, this review is using old beta drivers for Kyro and is old Apr. 24 so in actuality the Kyro 2 performs mush much better now).
And don't forget, he gets all this and the ability to later increase his Kyro performance way beyond the reach of these two cards with a processor upgrade.

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

 

[nortexoid]

either radeon LE or Kyro II, depending if u wanna save a few bucks or not...

generally, the kyro will give u better performance than a hacked LE in 32-bit color, but on a relatively fast machine...your machine should cut it...u also have to pay and extra 40 bucks for it.

i consider the LE the best/bang/buck right now, but if u're not concerned w/ the 40 extra bucks (that could give u another 256MB pc133, etc.) and want a bit more performance, then go w/ the kyro II...

they shoudl have roughly the same 2D quality, all but the MX that is....

I wouldn't even consider an MX in the equation unless u can't spend more than 45 bucks.

 

[bjc112]

Kyro 2... i will beat everyone of those cards, in MOST tst... plus it's CHEAP!

Bryan

edit: Grinch has a good point also !

 

[Modus]

I would go with the LE (essentially a Radeon 32 DDR). The Kyro II is also a good buy, because its added cost does translate into a comparable performance boost in a lot of games, but the LE is cheaper and will run all of today's games more than satisfactorily. As always with computer hardware, your money is better spent on many smaller, high value purchases, than on a few large purchases in a futile attempt to stay ahead of the curve.

The LE is the GF2MX or Velocity 100 of the day -- it's probably the best bang for your buck in a video card. The only downside is the difficulty finding one with TV Out.

Modus

 

[agg123456789]

kyro II if you dont want to overclock....they can beat an ULTRA!!!! WHOO HOO go Kyro II


lol



hope that helps

agg123456789

 

[ThExorcist]

"i consider the LE the best/bang/buck right now, but if u're not concerned w/ the 40 extra bucks (that could give u another 256MB pc133, etc.) and want a bit more performance, then go w/ the kyro II..."

I would agree with you only if the Radeon LE or overclocked Radeon LE scaled well with cpus. They are still limited by memory bandwidth so his Radeon will have less of a future, overclocked or not. Meanwhile that extra 40 bucks will give him a more versatile Kyro 2 which will increase in performance with a processor upgrade later down the road, which also extends the life of his Kyro 2 and makes me believe the Kyro is best bang for the buck. And if he likes overclocking he can get his kyro up to 190mhz-195mhz which will provide better results in games where the Kyro becomes fillrate limited.(Just like the old days of overclocking TNTs and Voodoos)

P.S. Who knows you might get lucky and get it over 200mhz. I believe when beyond3d was up and running there was mention of them being able to overclock their kyro very well. Might have to ask Dave....

 

[Noriaki]

I bought a Kyro2 based on Anand's reviews and I found that I was getting 2/3s of the Q3 scores in 1024x768 he's getting.

He's using an Athlon 1Ghz, I'm using a Duron 1Ghz, both 133Mhz FSB.
Same hard drive, but I have twice the amount of RAM.

My system is probably a bit more loaded in that it had 5 PCI cards at the time, instead of Anand's usual 2.

But overall I lost 35FPS in Q3 10x7x32...that's a little steep

The only major difference is I'm Win2000 and Anand was Win98SE....I have to believe that indicates the Kyro2's Win2k drivers are a bit lacking

 

[wolf550e]

I have a Pentium III, not a Celeron, and more important i have a VIVO GeForce DDR, I dont need to upgrade my video card, not a for a low end card anyway.
the prices here are much higher than those in the US, i read all the articles on anandtech for about 2 years now so i am familiar with the Radeon LE overclocking thing, and have no problem with it. the kyro looks nice but i will wait for it to have better support. and from the T3D article i see there's no point overclocking it.
i think i'll got for the Radeon LE, since its better than the MX and i trust it more than Kyro, although i know ATI's drivers suck.

 

[Deeko]

The Kyro II is the fastest out of that group, followed by the LE. Stay away from the MX's, they just aren't anything special anymore.

 

[rickn]

Kyro 2's drivers are very solid

 

[nortexoid]

i agree, the kyro's drivers are excellent...at least as good as ATI's...

as for scaling w/ cpus - i tend to find that my video cards don't hang around that long, at least not longer than my cpu...so if i'm upgrading my cpu, i'll be upgrading my video card as well...thus, scalability isn't a factor...
also, i'm not sure if the kyro scales better than the radeon - the kyro simply lacks w/ slower cpus and offers acceptable performance with faster cpus...the way it scales w/ "faster" cpus (i.e. 1ghz+) is probably close to that of the Radeon