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Radeon 32 SDR vs Kyro 64 MB vs G400 16 MB
My quest for a replacement for my G400 first led me to a Evil Kyro 64 MB, and now to a Radeon 32 SDR. I though I would post benchmarks and impressions of the two as some of you might be in the same position.
Test system:
Duron 650@866(133)
512 MB CAS 3 ram @133
Win98SE
UT 4.36 Thunder demo:
D3D 1024x768x16:
Kyro min 43,34 max 114,04 avg 72,52
Radeon min 36,52 max 145,49 avg 64,28
G400 min 20,89 max 84,96 avg 41,17
D3D 1024x768x32:
Kyro min 25,58 max 93,20 avg 52,69
Radeon min 21,60 max 104,30 avg 46,78
G400 didn't bother, the 16 MB is too big a limitation.
I then installed the new OpenGL renderer and the compressed textures from CD2, only the Radeon supports S3TC, although I believe that the Kyro will eventually.
OGL 1024x768x32:
Radeon min 27,34 max 78,49 avg 55,27
This looks awesome and is faster than the 32 bit D3D score
3DMark2001 - 1024x768x32:
Radeon - 2279 (Hardware T&L)
Radeon - 1682 (Software T&L)
Kyro - 1570
G400 - 1257
The Kyro should do better, but due to a bug in DX8 (which will be fixed in the next release according to MS) Tile Based Renderers suffer under 3DMark2001. This is according to Pottsey (Kyro guru from the Beyond3D forum).
2D quality:
Nothing surpricing, Matrox is the best, the Radeon is close behind (1600x1200 is almost usable on my screen, but not quite), and the Kyro lacks far behind.
General impressions:
The Kyro card is the most interesting, as far as technology and potential goes. With new drivers and BIOS releases this card might become quite a bit faster still, I've seen good improvements from the driver/BIOS upgrades I've done. The 2D is not that good, the Powercolor card I have might be worse than the other Kyros out there, who knows ?
The Radeon is pretty darned good. About the same speed as the Kyro, better drivers (disregarding Win2K) and T&L engine. The 2D is as good as it gets when it doesn't say Matrox on the card I guess.
My conclusion ... well, if I had saved the money I spent on the two cards and bought a faster Thunderbird (an AXIA perhaps), I bet my performance would be comparable (not in 1024x768x32 however), my 2D would be better, and I would get a bigger performance gain whenever Matrox releases a new card
As for now, the Radeon stays in my gaming machine, the G400 stays in the secondary machine, and the Kyro waits for BIOS/driver updates
Test system:
Duron 650@866(133)
512 MB CAS 3 ram @133
Win98SE
UT 4.36 Thunder demo:
D3D 1024x768x16:
Kyro min 43,34 max 114,04 avg 72,52
Radeon min 36,52 max 145,49 avg 64,28
G400 min 20,89 max 84,96 avg 41,17
D3D 1024x768x32:
Kyro min 25,58 max 93,20 avg 52,69
Radeon min 21,60 max 104,30 avg 46,78
G400 didn't bother, the 16 MB is too big a limitation.
I then installed the new OpenGL renderer and the compressed textures from CD2, only the Radeon supports S3TC, although I believe that the Kyro will eventually.
OGL 1024x768x32:
Radeon min 27,34 max 78,49 avg 55,27
This looks awesome and is faster than the 32 bit D3D score
3DMark2001 - 1024x768x32:
Radeon - 2279 (Hardware T&L)
Radeon - 1682 (Software T&L)
Kyro - 1570
G400 - 1257
The Kyro should do better, but due to a bug in DX8 (which will be fixed in the next release according to MS) Tile Based Renderers suffer under 3DMark2001. This is according to Pottsey (Kyro guru from the Beyond3D forum).
2D quality:
Nothing surpricing, Matrox is the best, the Radeon is close behind (1600x1200 is almost usable on my screen, but not quite), and the Kyro lacks far behind.
General impressions:
The Kyro card is the most interesting, as far as technology and potential goes. With new drivers and BIOS releases this card might become quite a bit faster still, I've seen good improvements from the driver/BIOS upgrades I've done. The 2D is not that good, the Powercolor card I have might be worse than the other Kyros out there, who knows ?
The Radeon is pretty darned good. About the same speed as the Kyro, better drivers (disregarding Win2K) and T&L engine. The 2D is as good as it gets when it doesn't say Matrox on the card I guess.
My conclusion ... well, if I had saved the money I spent on the two cards and bought a faster Thunderbird (an AXIA perhaps), I bet my performance would be comparable (not in 1024x768x32 however), my 2D would be better, and I would get a bigger performance gain whenever Matrox releases a new card
As for now, the Radeon stays in my gaming machine, the G400 stays in the secondary machine, and the Kyro waits for BIOS/driver updates
, it just has less work to do! 
I'm sure you know how tile-based rendering works, so I won't get into details... However, I didn't keep it because of the 2D quality (I have a Sony E400 runnning 1600x1200x32bits) BTW, the Kyro 3 (4 pixel piepelines -can do 4 x 1texel pixels or 2 x 2texels pixels per cycle-, a programmable T&L engine and a 300 MHz RAMDAC) is scheduled for Q3-Q4 2001, so it looks like the GeForce 4, GeFOrce 3 MX, Radeon 2, G550, G800 andCOlumbia will get a run for their money... Don't you just love competition ?
, and sometimes bests it!!!
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