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**Double** · 16 April 2001, 12:55

Thanks for the reply Jammrock.

I have heard of the crappy drivers from ATI but thought that was all in the past (read: before Radeon), but guess not.....

Any other comments?

Best regards

Double

**Kosh Naranek** · 16 April 2001, 13:14

According to Tim Sweeney from Epic Games the Kyro II

It's a competent TNT2 class chip, and the sorting and alpha-testing artefacts of past generations seem to have been sorted out successfully. But, like every generation of PowerVR hardware before it, it's a day late and a dollar short. It lacks support for basic DirectX7 (yes, 7!) features like cube maps. The kyro developers are cool guys, so it pains me to say that this is just not a viable piece of hardware in the market it's trying to compete in.

The above quote was taken from www.guru3d.com

**Nuno** · 16 April 2001, 13:30

Tim Sweeney is behaving like the worst of Nvidiots. What he said is so biased that it almost hurts.

"competent TNT2 class chip" - Moron. What´s funny is that a KyroII runs Unreal tournment faster than a Ge-force. Plus it has EMBM, DOT-3 bump, anisotropic filtering, 8 texturing layer, FSAA, DXTC.

"it's a day late and a dollar short" No it´s not. It´s right on the same time as the MX400, it competes with it in
low-mid range, and it performs way better.

"It lacks support for basic DirectX7 (yes, 7!) features like cube maps" - The Geforce 1, Geforce 2, Geforce MX lack support for basic DirectX[b]6[/] (YES, 6!!!) features like EMBM. ´nuff said.

**Kosh Naranek** · 16 April 2001, 13:43

What's the Kyro II got to do with nVidia cards ?

**Kosh Naranek** · 16 April 2001, 13:44

BTW he does say it's a 'competent' chip...

**Double** · 16 April 2001, 16:51

I need a new gfx card, help plz.

Hi Guys.

I upgraded my PC system, and my G400 Max is now holding me a bit back, so I need a new gfx card.
Don't worry, the Max will stay in the old system, that I'm gonna keep as well

So what am I going to buy. Well, I kindda dislike the GeForce series because of (in my opinion) low gfx. quality - at least compared to the Matrox cards.

So I'm looking in the direction of ATI Radeon 64 DDR VIVo or perhaps the new Hercules Prophet 4500 based on the Kyro II GPU.

Do you guys have any recommendations for me? Do yoy know anything about the image quality of the Kyro II, cause as far as I'm informed, the image quality on the Radeon is very good.

I've been hearing some rumours about a Radeon Maxx coming soon, with 2 gpu's kindda like the old Rage Fury Maxx - anyone know if thats true, and the timeframe on that?

Well, drop a few lines - what should I do? Buy the Radeon now? Wait for the Kyro II or the *perhaps* new Radeon or even look into the GeForce series one more time.

------------------
Regards

Double

Specs:
Abit KT-7A Raid (bios ver. WZ)
T-Bird 1 Ghz
256 MB Apacer PC133 CAS2 RAM
G400 MAX
SB Live retail
97 GB of IBM HD (45+30+22)
Hitachi CM753ET 19"
FPS 2000 sound system
RB2000

[This message has been edited by Double (edited 16 April 2001).]

**jackzod** · 17 April 2001, 13:19

Hey

I happened to own a radeon for now, for those who think drivers suck... It's true in Win2000, but not true at all in win98/ME.

I'm using WinMe here and I have NO PROBLEM at all with the drivers. Some people are fast on their comment I guess. Go on some Radeon webboard, you'll see some problem, but also fix, just like here.

So if you're not planning to use win200 radeon is a good choice IMHO, but if you are, stay away.

As far as KYRO goes, we can only rely on reviewer...So there's probably some unknown bugs that will pop out at the beginning.

**Rags** · 17 April 2001, 23:26

The image quality is SUPERIOR to the 2 yr. obsolete G-400Max in 2D

Hmmm...either you have one spectacular card out of all the bunch, or your eyes are biased because of the chunk of cash you just plopped down. Because I know it's not your Max that has bad 2D I use to have an Elsa Gladiac 32MB DDR and it's image quality wasn't horrible, but it wasn't better than even my G450.

ELSA is world renown for their drivers and I doubt you can find better anywhere. ELSA provides all the tweaks built right in to their drivers as utilities. More tweaks than Matrox even

List the tweaks in the Elsa drivers that you can't do with Matrox's own software, and I will name 2 things the Elsa doesn't do for each one you name And as far as being world renown for their drivers, well they don't do anything special with them, they have the basic reference drivers from nvidia with their own properties pages. Nothing spectacular and nvidia is hardly known for stable driver releases.

whereas Matrox is still relatively new to 3D

Are you kidding me? The Millenium had 3D before Elsa, the G200 was out before the TNT, so it beats me where you get this from.

let alone that they DO NOT build PRO cards at all.

Do some research on that, you will see that Matrox makes more pro cards than they do consumer cards. I think you are confusing OpenGL CAD cards with the rest of the professional world.

No more changing drivers and settings every time you wanna switch games.

Hehehe, I have a V7700, and you just wait and see. If you play games, believe me you will still have to do the same thing eventually

The Max is just obsolete whether this group wants to admit it or not.

I don't think there is anyone here who wouldn't agree that the G400 is not a good choice for gaming right now, but just because of that, I wouldn't call it obsolete. It has more "Pro" features than that little jewel you just purchased

If you can wait... the Gladiac 920 will be out shortly and it offers a 300% improvement over the GeForce GTS 2 cards.

AAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

The image quality of a GTS or better version of the GeForce GPU is already better than Matrox anything.

Total FUD. The GPU has very little to do with the visual quality, but it is WELL KNOWN that your statement is false. Even Tom, nVidia lover, of tom's hardware agrees the Matrox cards have superior image quality in 2D.

You know, most of us here already own other cards (I own several different brands/makes of cards myself), so you can check the Fanatic Bashing at the door.

EDIT:

The GeForce is really a very nice design... though I agree some card manufacturers are better than others.

The GeForce/GeForce2 GTS/GeForce MX all suffer from the same problem, they are locked into using a T&L that has little (almost no) use in not only current games, but future games that will use DX8. The GeForce(2) was the warmer for the real product, the GF3 looks to be pretty sweet, but it will not get my approval unless it's text quality on my desktop is at least acceptable and has dualhead.
/EDIT

Rags

[This message has been edited by Rags (edited 18 April 2001).]

**mdhome** · 17 April 2001, 23:32

Turbo,
I take it that you dont work for Elsa . As for 2d Image quality, that can be very subjective. Personally I prefer the 2d of the Radeon to the G400. In 3d the G400 just glows.

As an aside I recently saw a friends Geforce ultra. Apart from its 3d speed, the card had absolutely nothing in its favour. A G400 running at 800*600 looked better than an Ultra at 1600*1200.

Flame me if you must

regards Michael
regards MD

**Six Of One** · 18 April 2001, 02:22

Is it just me or is this thread messed up? One seems to be about a question of Double what gfx card to buy and the other seems to be about a GF3/G400 discussion.

hmh

**Paulr** · 18 April 2001, 02:30

Ya see, the thing is, as I've just upgraded from my G400MAX to a GeForce II Ultra card I think I'm in a pretty good position to say which is better in what departments.
I take a look at my Gainward GF2 Ultra and it's sweet, no doubt about it.
I can play all my games in 1280x1024 in 32bit colour and still get more than acceptable frame rates.
I can look at the overall image quality and say 'Not too bad, not the complete nightmare that some people described'.
I'm currently running it under WinXP with the Detonator 12 drivers and it has been 100% stable, not one single issue at all.
However, when I think back to the Matrox card I've just removed, the quality it gave me on a Windows desktop or on a Microsoft Word document there is no competition.
The Matrox card wins hands down every single time.
Once I start examining the overall quality of the output on the GF2 Ultra I can see some lines are 'waving' some are slightly 'shimmering'.
I'm not going to sit here and bash any one company like so many other users like to do.
I have been more than happy with the GF2 Ultra card and I'm sure I shall continue to be happy with it in 12 months time when next I look at upgrading it.
But anybody who can say that the 2D quality on an NVidia based card is better than on a Matrox or the G4xx based cards are dead seriously needs their head looking at.

**Double** · 18 April 2001, 06:25

Thx for all the replies, though I can't figure out who Rags is quoting?!? Has anyone deleted their post after he posted his?

As for the Radeon, my OS right now is Win2k and I'm very happy with that OS and would like to keep it. I think its very stable compared to my experiences with win98se and win Me.
So perhaps I should just wait a while....but for how long ?

Best regards

Double

**Gurm** · 18 April 2001, 07:18

The Kyro2 is my stop-gap solution of choice.

Radeon is right out because I WILL NOT EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER AGAIN use a Win9x OS, and their Win2k driver support is poo.

nVidia is right out because they suck. If you like speed for gaming they're great, but if you want a nice crisp display they're not. Some are horrible beyond words, and some are just "not as nice as the ATI or Matrox". Either way I'm unhappy with their quality. Not to mention that nVidia breaks their drivers on a weekly basis.

The Kyro2 has acceptable image quality (on par with Radeon from all reports), is cheap, and runs many of today's games faster than a GeFarce.

- Gurm

P.S. As for "not supporting DX7 features...", I won't even go into the stuff that nVidia still doesn't support. Not to mention ATI (*cough* FOG *cough*).

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**Kosh Naranek** · 18 April 2001, 13:21

What's this image quality everybody is talking about ... i don't see it..and i have a G400 Max and a GF2 GTS ... i'm sorry but i don't see it.
It's true, that on some nVIDIA cards the bandwidth to the display is almost cut in half by some filters placed close to where you plug your monitor cable into the GFX card and on these cards the 2D quality is poor but on the cards where there is less filters -> larger bandwidth,the 2D image quality is great and i have no problems with it at all.
I can run it in 1600 x 1200 / 1920 x 1440 and it looks very good compared to a G400.
So once again i'm sorry but i don't see it !
BTW
On nVIDIA cards with a lot of these damn filter resistors (whatever) on them , you can actually remove some of them and thus get a good 2D quality.
And about performance take a look at the OpenGL scores posted by me in the benchmark section under Try this benchmark on for size and you will see, that the GF2 is a very good OpenGL performer.Another thing is, that where there is no T/L support the GF2 performs slighty better than a G400 max.
The only thing a GF2 needs is a proper Dualhead thing.

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I need a new gfx card, help plz.

I need a new gfx card, help plz.

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