Remember PowerVR ? Well, it's back !

[Cloudy]

PowerVR is back with what seems to be a very nice and cost effective solution.

Check this out:
http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidca...ro/refbordrev/

Seems to me as a rather nice option compared with Nvidia. I'm still waiting for Matrox but once this baby hits the street I'll sure recommend it to those of my friends with a tight budget.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 192Mb Ram, SB Live! Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 111.1%).

[Bacardi_breezer]

They've designed the graphics chip in the playstation 2 didn't they?

[Cloudy]

You mean SEGA Dreamcast
PS2 uses the emotion engine.

The PowerVR on the dreamcast isn't as strong as this one though.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 192Mb Ram, SB Live! Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 111.1%).

[YoKoMo [1]]

For a chip that runs slower then the clockspeed of todays chips and being able to keep up with them on nearly all the games we've seen benchmarked indeed does show how it can be done without having to break the bank on DDR ram and insane clock speeds. I think they did an excellent job and should commend spraise throughout the industry.

[MadCat]

The chip used in the Dreamcast is a PowerVR2 (AKA: PVRSG) running at 100MHz. The PC version was delayed a year because out of the blue SEGA dropped from chipset negotiations with 3Dfx and went to NEC/PVR, thus the PRV2 PC was released a year later (Neon 250) @ 125MHz.

The KYRO is based directly off the PVR2, only it has an added pipeline and twice the memory bandwidth.

This chipset has tons of potential, and if you read the fine print, these review boards are clocked at 110 core and memory...the retail ones will be clocked at 125MHz core and mem, and the memory shipping with those cards is rated for 143MHz. Can you imagine the gains to be had from overclocking this thing a lousy few MHz?

This looks to be my next board unless Matrox can come up with something even remotely as good.

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This Signature Space FOR SALE / RENT

[Nuno]

I am (was?) a big powerVR fan. I even owned a m3D.
It´s a much clever way of doing thing (why the heck has the video card to spend time rendering things that aren´t vivible?), but it has serious compatibility issues. It´s understandable, nobody does it the way these guys do. And Imagination (previous videologic) did a terrible work releasing drivers for the Neon250.
So I see no reasons for it being different this time.

[Joel]

Yeah and we saw the same thing from the previews before the Neon250 came out. They even pulled the same hype with the first generation chip. You know how the old saying goes, Fool me once (as they did with the m3D) shame on you, fool me twice (as they are trying to do with these last two generation chips) shame on me. Not again NEC.

Joel

[MadCat]

Actually, the Neon 250 did suck because it was late to market, but unlike the KYRO it performed rather terribly in previews. It could keep up with other major cards at 640x480, but anything higher and its tragic flaw was brazenly revealed: the 64-bit memory bus. There were also a lot more reported bugs with the Neon 250 preview board than with this one, if thats any consolation. Now that theyre not hurried by console projects, I expect they have some time to build solid drivers.

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This Signature Space FOR SALE / RENT

[Cloudy]

Joel, you're unfair...
Matrox fooled us once with G200 and we're still here.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 192Mb Ram, SB Live! Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 111.1%).

[Strider]

I see similarities between Videologic (or whatever they're called now) and Matrox.

Remember the g200? Very good hardware but held back by the drivers (who can forget the lack of an ICD). With the g400 Matrox delivered anther great piece of hardware, this time with drivers to support it. Peformance wise they were right up there.

PowerVR2 was also good hardware, but came late and the drivers flat out sucked. Now KYRO is more powerfull version of this hardware, with full ICD (so they say) and hopefully all the driver bugs ironed out. And they are keeping close with the big boys.

The g400 realy put Matrox on the right track, and KYRO might have the same effect.

[franksch3]

The problem of the Neon 250 was that it didn't supply a z-buffer, as a tile based architecture doesn't need one.

However a very few STUPID applications wan't to examine the z-buffer values, and that's were the chip failed.

Also some games, although they don'y access the z-buffer, simply fail if they see that no z-buffer is available.

That's why this new chip does create an external z-buffer which is filled with the final z-values calculated by the rendering process.

[Himself]

I think the main thing to consider is the cost of the thing, $150 is nothing compared to the $300 to $600 offerings from NVIDIA and 3DFX. You really can't go too wrong with a $150 video card, if it sucks, sell it and get a G800. But let's all wait for final reviews of the thing before buying shall we?

[Cloudy]

I hope tile beased rendering will become a standard since it really pumps up your fillrate and fps with no cost whatsoever.
It's a great idea that shouldn't be wasted.
And Iagree that the price is very tempting compared with the great visuals PowerVR is known for and the speed you get from this card.

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Cloudy
Asus P2B-DS, 2 x Celeron 400@75Mhz, 192Mb Ram, SB Live! Platinum,
2 x IBM 4.3Gb scsi,IBM 22GB IDE, Pioneer DVD ROM scsi, G400 32MB DH (Oc to 111.1%).

[Joel]

I think I remember hearing something about that (tile-based rendering) being supported fully in the next release of DirectX 8.0. I've also heard rumors of Matrox is looking into doing tile based rendering. There is also rumors that the G800 will not be released until DirectX 8.0 is out due to supported features in DirectX 8.0. So if you put 2 + 2 together one might conclude that the G800 might support tile-based rendering. Of course I could be wrong but this is my 2 cents worth.

Joel