Why does everyone diss the Kyro2?

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nemesismk2

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: BFG10K
Tom's VGA Charts.

That article was released shortly before the latest Kyro2 drivers were released which was unfortunate for the Kyro2 because the latest drivers are the best yet IMO.

The Max Payne and Quake3 results are about right, Star Wars Jedi Knight II had problems with the Kyro2 which is why the fps was so low. That was fixed in the last driver release and the Kyro2 now gets almost 60fps instead of 9fps which is pretty good.
 

nemesismk2

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: Kingofcomputer
For the US market, Kyro and Kyro2 is a total failure.
Their performance/price value is not better than ATI or Nvidia based cards at release time and even this moment. We have so many cheap imported ATI and Nvidia based cards available to buy, like the Radeon LE, GTS-V from Visiontek, Power Color made cards, and more.

For the other countries, ATI and Nvidia based cards could be highly over-priced, that makes Kyro and kyro2 a better buy.

That is so true, in the UK for example ATI video cards are usually way overpriced, for example:-

(prices from the pricewatch UK and US sites)

UK Radeon 8500=£167 which is $261
US Radeon 8500=$89 which is £56

That's a huge difference in price isn't it, rip off Britain is alive and well. :(

The Kyro2 was always much cheaper to purchase in the UK then the GTS which is why it was more popular over here than in the US. What most people don't realise is that powervr, videologic (now pure digital) and others are all divisions of Imagination Technologies who are are based in the UK. I mentioned all that because it's the reason why the Kyro2 was more competitive in the UK than in other parts of the world. IMO the BEST version of the Kyro2 is the Videologic VividXS Kyro2! :D
 

RobsTV

Platinum Member
Feb 11, 2000
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Originally posted by: nemesismk2
Originally posted by: Crapgame
and it's an OEM, lame!


What, you dont get MystIII and a driver CD that 99.9% of the time is worthless.

Yeah and you don't get a nice box which fits conviently under your bed or a decent warranty incase something goes wrong. ;)


Yep, I hate that I only get a brown box with my $47 OEM Visiontek, and that it only has "one" lifetime warranty.
How am I suppose to pass that card on to grandkids with a crap warranty like that!
Seriously though, they did not have to give a lifetime warranty like they did. Cards are outdated after 3 years anyways.

It also is lame that it only has 32megs.
But wait.
Upon further investigation, it seems that both 32meg and 64 meg GTS-V cards perform the same!
Yep, even the lame GTS-V 32meg card with a lifetime warranty, priced at $47, still beats the pants off a 64meg Kyro II.

 

nemesismk2

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: RobsTV
Originally posted by: nemesismk2
Originally posted by: Crapgame
and it's an OEM, lame!


What, you dont get MystIII and a driver CD that 99.9% of the time is worthless.

Yeah and you don't get a nice box which fits conviently under your bed or a decent warranty incase something goes wrong. ;)


Yep, I hate that I only get a brown box with my $47 OEM Visiontek, and that it only has "one" lifetime warranty.
How am I suppose to pass that card on to grandkids with a crap warranty like that!
Seriously though, they did not have to give a lifetime warranty like they did. Cards are outdated after 3 years anyways.

It also is lame that it only has 32megs.
But wait.
Upon further investigation, it seems that both 32meg and 64 meg GTS-V cards perform the same!
Yep, even the lame GTS-V 32meg card with a lifetime warranty, priced at $47, still beats the pants off a 64meg Kyro II.

Yeah ok it does seem like a great deal esp the warranty, is it available for purchase in the UK or is it US only? Some games will struggle with only 32mb though, try running return to castle wolfenstein at high quality setting for example. Although you could enable texture compression I suppose which would help store all those detailed textures in only 32mb.
 

vedin

Senior member
Mar 18, 2001
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Nemesis, dude, jsut give it up. Obviously some people like playing either old games, games in 16bit color, or 3dmark. Me? I like playing new games at decent resolutions in 32bit color. Granted, not all do great, (Morrowind again, but I already talked about that.), but it looks like my little, "Unreliable, unproven, crappy, cheaply made, POS" Kyro 2 is making a killing in Unreal 2003 when compared to the Geforce 2 GTS, and even matching the pro. But hey, what's one game's worth? I mean, just because a great many games in the near future will run on the same engine doesn't mean anything. ;)

I really don't mean to sound cocky about this, but RobsTV and others, get a freaking life. Spend some cheese. Buy a Radeon 9700 when it hits shelves. Be happy and frollic through 3dmark over and over, and leave people alone who think that 60fps at 1024x768 is enough, especially with what was at the time a very cheap vid board.
 

merlocka

Platinum Member
Nov 24, 1999
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This thread is still alive?

Kyro2 is a turd. Get over it. Ok - it's almost as fast as a Geforce2.

Geforce2 is so old, Samson slew the Philistines with one. Oh wait, that was with a Kyro fanboy's jawbone.
 

AdvancedRobotics

Senior member
Jul 30, 2002
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I don't see any problem with the Kyro II. There is no other video card without a T&L engine that has done/can do what the Kyro II has accomplished.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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Another problem with the Kyro2 is that it is unable to physically run some newer games that have hardware T&L as a mandatory requirement (Commanche4, Spider Man etc).
 

nemesismk2

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: BFG10K
Another problem with the Kyro2 is that it is unable to physically run some newer games that have hardware T&L as a mandatory requirement (Commanche4, Spider Man etc).

Spider Man does run really well with the Kyro2, it's just you need a program called 3danalyzer to play it. When/if the Kyro2 is allowed to use Enhanced t&l then Spider Man and other games which check for hardware t&l will run without 3danalyzer.

As for Comanche4 I didn't own it when I had my Kyro2 so I can't comment on it's performance. If the Kyro2's performance is anything like my GF4 MX then it will be awful.
 

nemesismk2

Diamond Member
Sep 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: vedin
Nemesis, dude, jsut give it up. Obviously some people like playing either old games, games in 16bit color, or 3dmark. Me? I like playing new games at decent resolutions in 32bit color. Granted, not all do great, (Morrowind again, but I already talked about that.), but it looks like my little, "Unreliable, unproven, crappy, cheaply made, POS" Kyro 2 is making a killing in Unreal 2003 when compared to the Geforce 2 GTS, and even matching the pro. But hey, what's one game's worth? I mean, just because a great many games in the near future will run on the same engine doesn't mean anything. ;)

I really don't mean to sound cocky about this, but RobsTV and others, get a freaking life. Spend some cheese. Buy a Radeon 9700 when it hits shelves. Be happy and frollic through 3dmark over and over, and leave people alone who think that 60fps at 1024x768 is enough, especially with what was at the time a very cheap vid board.

Hopefully we can find a way to enable Enhanced T&L with ALL Kyro video cards, that should give Kyro owners a nice performance boost at no extra cost.
 

HeXeDOSOK

Junior Member
Aug 4, 2002
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Ok...some of you people are forgetting about the subject at hand COMPLETELY...

First off...the Kyro II was introduced into the market to be a contender in the "budget" card area. With that said, it was of course going up head to head with the GeForce 2 MX. At the time (I think like 2nd Quarter 2001) the GeForce 2 MX 64m version was benching a bit fater than the Kyro in select game (hence the T&L processor and the slower CPU's of that time). But as CPU's got faster, the more the Kyra outperformed the GF2 MX. Now even with most recent CPU's the Kyro does not make a HUGE increase in performance over the GF2 MX..but it is a increase none the less. But at the time it cetainly was not the "BEST" in the market. The GF2 ULTRA was out (even before the Kyro) and was THE CARD TO HAVE..unless you were running a Radeon 64M DDR which was pretty fast as well. These 2 cards were hands down beating the Kyro II (but like I said...the price difference was signifcant due to the "budget card" idea.) One thing that did make a huge difference at the time (not quite sure how things are going with new drivers) was the fact that a large amount of users were having incompatability issues (whether it be game specific or OS specific issues). If you did not experience a driver issue with your brand new Kyro II then you were on of the lucky ones. The GF 2 MX actually had MUCH better drivers than the Kyro II at the time. So most people that I know that purchased the Hercules 4500 went right to the Geforce MX when they had graphic corruptions in games..and some system crashes as well.

If you want to talk about BUDGET cards of yesteryear, then you are correct..the Kyro II was an excellent alternative to an Nvidia solution. It had better image quality than the GF2's (made apparent through several screenshots) and with the tile-based rendering..was one of the most creative ideas of the time. Unfortunately..the drivers were a problem...if they didn't affect you..then the Kyro II was a very nice card to have. It's just a shame that the driver development team did not go full force into ironing out the kinks.

If you want to talk about budget cards of TODAY..then this is a completely different ballgame. We have cards that are in between 50-70$ that make the Kyro look like the outdated card that it is. A GF2 ti200 will do the trick...or go 20$ more and you got a GeForce 3 ti200. No matter what people say..80$ is still a great price...especially when you know for 30$ more you are getting a Directx 8 compatible card. If you are a serious gamer..then there is no reason why you cannot save up the extra 30$ to get something that is A) way faster and B) much more stable (remember that some of you don't have problem with stability..but understand that there are plenty of people who did.)

To the person that said the image quality of the Kyro II is way better than the GF4 ti4200, please do some research sir. First off, lets get some screenshots of Codecreatures benchmark..or the Nature scene in 3dMark 2001 (if I'm not mistaken you can't even run that part of the benchmark). the visual Quality in 3d improved dramatically with the introduction of the Geforce 3...but I would agree however that the Kyro II was significantly better than the GeForce 2 as far as image quality, but then again...the majority of people I know who got the Kyro preffered the MX's stability over the Kyro's visual quality.

1 more point.. Many people use the word "playable" like it's a defined word in the dictionary. In the world of video gaming that word is COMPLETELY relative and mean completely different thing. I personally think playable "to me" is when the FPS is matching my refresh rate. No dips below that please... If my FPS goes below 60fps I can definitely tell. Not only is the word playable related to frames persecond...but it (for me) is also related to visual quality (effects, detailed textures, 1024x768 etc..). If I have to get rid of all the "neat" graphical effects in a game..just to attain my required fps...then that is not very acceptable to me. But let me reiterate that I am Gaming junkie...and have the fundage to "go for the gold" when it comes to my selection in video cards and computer products. As For other people, the word "playable" means 30-40 fps (sometimes occasionally dipping close to 15) and moderate detail (enough to know that the person your shooting is an enemy). So when people say that the Kyro II or GeForce 2 MX will be able to "play" DOOM 3..you have to remember that other people might not agree with your "version" of playable. I can personally garauntee you that the Kyro II and GF2 MX is not playing modern games (SOF2, MAx Payne, RTCW, Medal of Honor, Morrowind, etc..) in a fashion that is "playable" by my standards.

Sorry for the novel..but too many people are arguing with each other regarding playability, and price vs. performance. Well all of these things mean completely different things to all people. Some people might think my views on video cards are correct...some might think their 3 year old comp is running moder games just fine. Well if thats the case then good for you...no need to down on people just because they have an older setup. And there is also no reason to tell someone with a brand new system that he/she has waisted their money because your card is "playable."