Why does everyone diss the Kyro2?

[BCompDude]

Just a question. I have one in my machine and it still performs adequately. Hell in most games its as fast as a Parhelia. . .for under 50 dollars. Check it. .

I found this interesting

Are people just that unknowledgeable? I'm not saying the card is a "burner" but it certainly is "ok" for todays AND next gen games. It stands where the Geforce 2 MX's fail. For a budget card that doesn't have "T&L" (who cares) and wasn't supposed to run the "next" gen games I think it does fairly well. What are your opinons?

 

[Blurry]

The Kyro is a good card to have, if you have the processor to feed it. I really doubt it running next generation games and the Matrox Parhelia is way faster than a Kyro.

 

[TSDible]

I had a KyroII for quite some time and tried my best to defend it. When it worked, it worked great. When it didn't work, it sucked. There were just too many incompatibilites with games I was playing. I finally went to a more expensive card and sold the Kyro.

 

[Soldat]

TSbible says it all.......i just didn't have time for the incompatibilities so in my mind it sucked

 

[BCompDude]

In most games today, the Kyro 2 is faster or right next to the Matrox Parhelia. Didn't you read my link? Obviously not.

 

[TSDible]

I tried to read through your link, which you conveniently bookmarked to one of the only pages where the KyroII actually beat the Matrox card. But putting that aside, I give little credit to the article in question. What version of the drivers did they use? Are they the latest? It was difficult for me to follow since the english seemed to be rather broken.

Sure... I can show you where my kyroII was just as fast in some games as my GeForce 3 Ti200, but those benchmarks won't show all of the problems... my framrate will be great in Max Payne, but that doesn't show the obvious transparency problems. The raw numbers won't tell you anything about tons of various artifacts that I experienced in MANY games.

The idea of the card is great.... Use a weaker processor and only render the parts of the scene that should be visible to the gamer. Why render the back of a rock if you can't see the back of a rock? However, the way that the card determined what was visible seemed to have many flaws to me.

Don't get me wrong... I held on to my kyro as long as possible. I tried to justify the artifacts as just a result of a budget card. But some titles would just not run at all. And since the card has a "relatively" small presence, those issues were not addressed. You can bet that if there was a problem with an Nvidia or ATI card in a game, it would be resolved MUCH more quickly.

Check out this comparision using the new unreal engine...

AnandTech's GPU Shootout with Unreal Tournament 2003 - July 2002

As I see it, the PowerVR chip comes in with a score about half as good as the Matrox.

Just my thoughs...

 

[TheWart]

why does everyone curse under their breath when they step in bubble-gum?

joke aside, the noble endeavor of kyroII was plagued with too many incompatabilities, so eloquently put forth by TSDible that i won't add to it.

 

[Deeko]

For a budget card that doesn't have "T&L" (who cares)

lol I would have agreed with the T&L comment about 2 years ago, in the GTS vs. V5 debates, but nowadays? Heck yea you need T&L.

 

[holdencommodore]

When I bought my Kyro II half a year ago, it was around $140AU, which was about the price of a MX200. For this price, the Kyro is very good. The 15.XX have pretty much sorted out compatibility issues too. I'm perfectly happy with the Kyro at the moment.

Cheers

 

[nemesismk2]

I've owned 2 Videologic VividXS Kyro2's, one of which I purchased within a couple of weeks of it going on sale. I didn't experience any problems with either of them and they served me well for over a year.
I then started using software which made really heavy use of t&l so had to upgrade, if the Kyro3 gets released then I'll probably purchase it because I'm a big fan of TBR and it's performance would be amazing!

 

[BFG10K]

Hell in most games its as fast as a Parhelia.

Even if that were true that says more about the Parhelia's crappiness than it does about the Kyro2.

I never recommend a Kyro2 to anyone because there are far better alternatives available. For example, for $99 you can get a far better Radeon 8500.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Hell in most games its as fast as a Parhelia.

Even if that were true that says more about the Parhelia's crappiness than it does about the Kyro2.

I never recommend a Kyro2 to anyone because there are far better alternatives available. For example, for $99 you can get a far better Radeon 8500.

I wish that was true for the UK as well because that would make the Radeon 8500 only £62 which would be a bargain!

 

[Crapgame]

TSDible nailed it.

 

[Windogg]

Okay, I can finally let the cat out of the bag now that I have distanced myself far enough from STMicroelectronics. Internally the project was a mess. Those that did know what they were doing didn't care and those that had no clue was hyping stuff they didn't understand. Lots of other issues that I cannot get into publically but lets just say it was almost doomed from the start. Yes I was very enthusiastic in the beginning but all that changed one day.

Windogg

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Windogg
Okay, I can finally let the cat out of the bag now that I have distanced myself far enough from STMicroelectronics. Internally the project was a mess. Those that did know what they were doing didn't care and those that had no clue was hyping stuff they didn't understand. Lots of other issues that I cannot get into publically but lets just say it was almost doomed from the start. Yes I was very enthusiastic in the beginning but all that changed one day.

Windogg

Aren't you the person who visited some of the powervr forums a few months ago making exactly the same comments? When we asked for some proof to your claims you were unable to give any, in your statement above you also give no information at all.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yeah I'm afraid the link doesn't give a very full picture. The KyroII was very good in its time, but things have moved on now and GF3 and Rad8500 alternatives are far better in every way. Sure when it was priced at GF2MX levels it was a smart buy, those GF2GTS cards were very expensive. Now that CPUs are so fast it does help the KyroII out, it always did hit the CPU hard, it even gives GF2TI and Rad7500 perf on fast CPUs! The Parhelia wipes the floor with the KyroII in nearly all benchmarks, but if I had the choice between having a Parhelia for $400 or a KyroII for $40 I know what I'd go for (KII LOL).

 

[Windogg]

nemesismk2, I have not visited any PowerVR forums. I think you may have me mixed up with someone else. AnandTech is the only forum I participate in. Most intersting, if you can get some more info on this person, I might be able to coroborate or refute what he said.

Windogg

 

[FSUpaintball]

The problem with the Kyro II is it is the same price as cards that function much better.

The Kyro II is a very old card. I think it's a very innovative and interesting way to render games, but it's got a couple problems.

First off, it has no hardware T&L, which is a BIG nono these days.

Secondly, it's largely incompatable with many games. And why bother having buying a new video card if it won't play the games?


Too incompatable, no T&L hardware, and too many superior cards for the same price.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Windogg
nemesismk2, I have not visited any PowerVR forums. I think you may have me mixed up with someone else. AnandTech is the only forum I participate in. Most intersting, if you can get some more info on this person, I might be able to coroborate or refute what he said.

Windogg

I'll try to find his original posts, failing that if he shows up again I'll try to get more information out of him this time. The no1 thing PowerVR fans want to know is if STM have any plans to produce Kyro3 chips? Can you make any comment on that?

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: FSUpaintball
The problem with the Kyro II is it is the same price as cards that function much better.

The Kyro II is a very old card. I think it's a very innovative and interesting way to render games, but it's got a couple problems.

First off, it has no hardware T&L, which is a BIG nono these days.

Secondly, it's largely incompatable with many games. And why bother having buying a new video card if it won't play the games?

Too incompatable, no T&L hardware, and too many superior cards for the same price.

What better video cards can you get for about $50? Yes there are better video cards than the Kyro2 but there aren't many which in it's price range. The lack of hardware t&l is a limiting feature of the Kyro2 however people who pay only $50 for a video card aren't exactly hardcore gamers are they.

I disagree with your comment about it being incompatable with many games, can you give examples of which games it's incompatable with?

Maybe PowerVR will allow all versions of the Kyro to use enhanced t&l and although obviously not as good as hardware t&l would atleast allow the Kyro/Kyro2 to run games which are hardware t&l only. A good example of this is Spiderman the movie, if you try to run it with a Kyro2 it detects that hardware t&l isn't present and willn't run. It was found that by using 3danalyzer to fool the game into thinking that the Kyro2 had hardware t&l and the game runs smooth and fast. With the Kyro2SE which uses enhanced t&l the game ran without any problems because it detected it as having hardware t&l.

 

[holdencommodore]

Maybe someone can hack the SE drivers to allow EnT&L on the Kyro & Kyro II .

Cheers

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: holdencommodore
Maybe someone can hack the SE drivers to allow EnT&L on the Kyro & Kyro II .

Cheers

PowerVR fans are working on it but hopefully PowerVR themselves will make EnT&L available to all Kyro owners not just for the Kyro2SE. Right now EnT&L only appears to be working with P4 cpu's however a more complete version of EnT&L is expected in the next driver release.

 

[FSUpaintball]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

What better video cards can you get for about $50? Yes there are better video cards than the Kyro2 but there aren't many which in it's price range. The lack of hardware t&l is a limiting feature of the Kyro2 however people who pay only $50 for a video card aren't exactly hardcore gamers are they.

I disagree with your comment about it being incompatable with many games, can you give examples of which games it's incompatable with?

Maybe PowerVR will allow all versions of the Kyro to use enhanced t&l and although obviously not as good as hardware t&l would atleast allow the Kyro/Kyro2 to run games which are hardware t&l only. A good example of this is Spiderman the movie, if you try to run it with a Kyro2 it detects that hardware t&l isn't present and willn't run. It was found that by using 3danalyzer to fool the game into thinking that the Kyro2 had hardware t&l and the game runs smooth and fast. With the Kyro2SE which uses enhanced t&l the game ran without any problems because it detected it as having hardware t&l.

well.... HERE's a $67 GeForce 3. But that's $17 more expensive

or here's a $48 GeForce 2 TI card

or even this $39 GeForce 2 GTS 64mb DDR.

As far as incompatable games, I haven't put a ton of research into which games don't work, but I know that the EA sports games don't work (2001 or 2002, I'm not sure which). They just plain won't run. And for games where hardware T&L is required but the Kyro still runs, performance can be drastically decreased. And I know there's other games that just won't plain run, too.

Anyways, if you have to use a 3rd party program (3danalyzer) to get your card to even run a video game, it's not a good card to buy.

I realize that some bargain shoppers don't need a card to be compatable with every game, and that they're looking for a $50 card, but think of this: do you think they'd rather have:
1. a $50 card which they'll PROBABLY not have any problems with, or
2. a $40 card which they'll definitely not have any problems with?

Like I said, the Kyro is alright, but not in the same price range as good GeForce 2s.




P.S. I may be mistaken, but I was sure that they WERE making a Kyro III. I hope so.

 

[sash1]

Why does everyone diss the Kyro2?

I don't.

I never recommend a Kyro2 to anyone because there are far better alternatives available. For example, for $99 you can get a far better Radeon 8500.

Yeah, but what about when the 8500 wasn't around? It was the Kyro II, the Radeon LE (and that GTS-V).

The Kyro II is a very old card.

No sh!t, coulda told ya that one. Not many probably buy the card anymore.

First off, it has no hardware T&L, which is a BIG nono these days.

Really? I don't have any problems with any of todays games, and I have all of them and play all of them.

Anyways, the card is pretty much dead. Ever since nVidia and ATi stepped it up with their better cards, they've been pushing down prices of the weaker cards. Kyro II is dead right now, but its still a great card, although I wouldn't recommend it anymore, there are much better alternatives. But back when I got the Kyro II, it was the best bet.

On another note, what do you all think of ATi's DirectX 9 cards? I think it's about time for an upgrade once those come out!

~Aunix

 

[Grimner]

I'd never "diss" such a nice little card. It has saved me from two generations of NVida and has both me and my bank account ready for ATI's latest.

It delievers perfectly good framerates, but it is definitly not a card for serious gamers who crave the best of the best of the best..., but if you sacrifice a litte resolution and details games are good.

And... the Kyro can run without a huge fan