Gfx reviews by amateurs

[isochar]

What's the point of running those cards at 1280 and 1600?

Neither of them put out "playable" frame rates. In any case, a person who has a 19 or 21 inch monitor should be able to afford a better gaming card. (Considering the GF2 GTS is selling for 130)

[Gurm]

Kyro2 cards are really not in competition with nVidia, in _my_ mind. I will NEVER buy an nVidia card for my machine, simply because my eyes can't handle it.

That leaves three cards:

G400
Radeon
Kyro2

The G400 is getting old and slow for a gaming rig. That leaves 2.

The Radeon has SERIOUS Win2k issues, and since I will NEVER run another Win9x machine, that leaves 1.

So I am interested in how the Kyro stacks up, at all resolutions, against similar cards... i.e. the 32meg Radeon and the 32meg GF2. I don't care how it stacks up against a GF3, because not only will I never buy one, but it's also $500. Show me how it performs against other $150 cards, clear across the board.

- GUrm

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

[isochar]

I know this was addressed in another thread, but I'll bring it up again.

Sweeney (Epic) mentioned that the Kyro 2 is lacking enough DX7 features to be considered a TNT2 class chip. Although he is not a Carmack, his word does have weight.

Especially for the Unreal engine fans, this should be big factor in deciding on this card.

[Maggi]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by isochar:
What's the point of running those cards at 1280 and 1600?

Neither of them put out "playable" frame rates. In any case, a person who has a 19 or 21 inch monitor should be able to afford a better gaming card. (Considering the GF2 GTS is selling for 130)</font>

better do a research, isochar ...

the KyroII was giving 50fps on average, running UT in 1600x1200 and that very is playable, not ?

[Maggi]

now have a close look, where exactly the MX is listed in those tests ...










Do you now understand ?

[Maggi]

<table BORDER BGCOLOR="#FFFFCC" >
<tr >
<td ALGN=LEFT><center>MDK2</center></td>
<td><center>Geforce 3 (200/460)</center></td>
<td><center>geforce 2 GTS (200/333)</center></td>
<td><center>geforce 2 MX (175/166)</center></td>
<td><center>Kyro II (175/175)</center></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td ALGN=LEFT><center>800x600x16</center></td>
<td><center>165.5</center></td>
<td><center>168.1</center></td>
<td><center>108</center></td>
<td><center>119.5</center></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td ALGN=LEFT><center>1280x1024x32</center></td>
<td><center>122.4</center></td>
<td><center>65.4</center></td>
<td><center>30</center></td>
<td><center>68.1</center></td>
</tr>
</table>

just found this one on www.aceshardware.com (April 9th)

[This message has been edited by Maggi (edited 25 April 2001).]

[Maggi]

http://www.ixbt-labs.com/articles/kyro2/index.html

has another one







Looks pretty impressive for a budget card, doesn't it ?

[Pace]

Well, besides a couple of inaccuracies, maybe just mentioning the limitations would be nice! I'll go and have a pop at your review though

P.

[dZeus]

isochar, you're actually proving that Sweeney almost is as biased towards nVidia as good old doctor Tom is.

The features the Kyro-2 is lacking, are the TnL features of DirectX7. Almost everyone agrees that those TnL features are not really useable at all... DirectX8 is the first DirectX with good, usable TnL features. Guess which card currently on the market support DirectX8 fully? Yep, _only_ the Geforce3. And which programs/games used DirectX8 features? Yep, _Only_ 3DFarq2001. So the Kyro-2 is just as useless towards TnL as all other socalled 'TnL' cards are (except the GF3). The benchmarks prove that those TnL features of DirectX7 are NOT needed, because the Kyro2 is just as fast or even faster without even having support for them!

[isochar]

Maggi, 60fps is the minimum requirement for "playable". So, Kyro2 is a viable solution for 19" monitors (1280x1024), but not for 21" (1600x1200).

dZeus, I would assume epic (and its employees) would be biased towards nVidia based cards due to the agreement they reached a few months back. We probably will see full optimizations for nvidia cards in the upcoming epic releases...

What I fail to see in all these tests are benchmarks of NEW games. (Other than Serious Sam)

Where's TRIBES 2?

[This message has been edited by isochar (edited 25 April 2001).]

[Nzaweird]

Maggi, thanks for the feedback.

I do imagine those scores are on a top end system, but their accurate never the less. My main focus of the benchmarking in my review was to test it on an avergae budget gamers pc. I, unfortunately, don't have the card anymore was sent back to Hercules Australia a few days back.

Gurm:
"So I am interested in how the Kyro stacks up, at all resolutions, against similar cards... i.e. the 32meg Radeon and the 32meg GF2. I don't care how it stacks up against a GF3, because not only will I never buy one, but it's also $500. Show me how it performs against other $150 cards, clear across the board"

I would have loved to have done so, but I really just do not have the resources. I do have a GTS around here, but it was and still is broken (long story :P). The reason I didn't benchmark it against a Kyro, a Radeon, A GTS etc is not because i was lazy, unskilled, dumb etc but because i just don't have access to these cards. My site isn't exactly new, but it isn't really that large either ( just cracked 50,000 page views this month with a little help from this review ). I guess thats what happens when your request for a new 3d card technology to review is accepted, and you aren't very prepaired. I apologize for this.

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Nathan "nza" Davison
Hardware Avenue
www.hardavenue.com

[This message has been edited by Nzaweird (edited 25 April 2001).]

[DuRaNgO]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Maggi, 60fps is the minimum requirement for "playable". </font>

ahh, yeah right, I typically run around 45-50 fps and few walk out of a room when I enter (UT)
and no, you can't tell it's not running at 60fps


[This message has been edited by DuRaNgO (edited 25 April 2001).]

[Nuno]

Nathan:

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">I don´t think he´s getting any money from anybody, he´s just lazy or plain dumb.</font>

First of all I want to apologize for this statement. You proved me wrong by showing up over here, with a very, very decent atitude. No hardfeelings?

Now, I would put my remarks on a more elaborated and polite way...

1 - Kyro 1 stock speed was 115 Mhz, not 125 Mhz. Actually these cards were poor overclockers (as the KII seems to be) and not many of them reached 125 Mhz.

2 - 3Dmark2000 and 2001 are useless as real world performance benchmark is concerned. That´s nothing wrong about include them on a review, but more Direct3d benchmarks (games, preferably) were disarable. 3dmark use certain code optimizations that no game ever used up to this date, and this since 3dmark 99 - they did a fine job about SIMD optimizations with that one, comparable only with AMD 3dnow patch for quake2. 3DM 2k and 2001 followed that line with HEAVY hardware T&L optimizations, drawing scenes with huge polygon counts, that no game is still using.

That´s why MX beated the Kyro in 3dmark2001. It hasn´t too much to do about drivers, but it was because that particular benchmark was designed to excel in T&L DX7 hardware It doesn´t do that (at least at 1024x768x32) in no other direct3d game. That could give people a wrong view about how KyroII performs in direct3d games.

There is another issue about KyroII and 3dmark2001, though. DirectX 8.0 had a bug that showed the Kyro as unable to render into textures, and the shadows in high-detail mode are redered by the cpu instead. It was fixed(?) in DirectX8.1b but it should require a KyroII driver update too. The performance gain in 3dmark 2001 is uncertain, because the really limiting factor is that heavy geometry calculations the cpu has to make.

[Nzaweird]

No hard feelings


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Nathan "nza" Davison
Hardware Avenue
www.hardavenue.com

[Maggi]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by isochar:
Maggi, 60fps is the minimum requirement for "playable". So, Kyro2 is a viable solution for 19" monitors (1280x1024), but not for 21" (1600x1200).</font>

might be your opinion, but that's ok for me and hence I understand your point.
Did you choose it because of that fact that it's the maximum a human eye can percieve in luminosity values ?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by Nzaweird:
Maggi, thanks for the feedback.

I do imagine those scores are on a top end system, but their accurate never the less. My main focus of the benchmarking in my review was to test it on an avergae budget gamers pc. I, unfortunately, don't have the card anymore was sent back to Hercules Australia a few days back.</font>

no no ... thank you for your feedback

Sorry to hear you couldn't keep the card for intense testing, but I really apreciate that you care about your readers ...

Makes you somewhat different to some particular other sites.

Thanx,
Maggi