wassup people....

[Spliffstarr]

I was looking for a few recomendations and some advice here. I currently have a geforce 2mx and i was thinking of upgrading to either the kryo2 or the radeon 64mb ddr vivo withine the next three days. I am sort of confused and i don't really know what card to go with. The kryo2 looks good but it has no tnl which i feel is important cause though not many game use it now future games will, but tnl aside it looks like a solid card, hell it even gives the geforce 3 a run for it's money. Or on the other hand i could get the radeon 64mb ddr vivo which is also a good all around performer... Which one should i pick......

 

[Door Knob]

Are you sure the Kyro II doesn't have T and L. That really doesn't sound right. I would go with the Kyro myself. The Radion will not give you a real big boost over your MX card. You might want to hold off just a little longer. Geforce2 prices are still gunna drop a bit more with the Geforce3 out and a pro or ultra will give you awsome performance at around the $200 price range. That would give you a lot more performance at not too much more money.

 

[AKDUDE]

The KRyo does not have hardware T&L but instead it uses your cpu to do it.

Kinda makes sense really. Which do you think is faster, your graphics chip running around 250mhz, or your Main CPU pushing over a gig? Its a cheap way to do the same thing when you do T&L in software.

HOwever, it may hurt those with lowerspeed cpu's. Of course this is just speculation on my part, and ive been known to be wrong a few times (disclaimer)

AKDUDE

 

[PowerProtein]

AKDUDE (May 17, 2001 12:20 p.m.):
The KRyo does not have hardware T&L but instead it uses your cpu to do it.

Kinda makes sense really. Which do you think is faster, your graphics chip running around 250mhz, or your Main CPU pushing over a gig? Its a cheap way to do the same thing when you do T&L in software.

HOwever, it may hurt those with lowerspeed cpu's. Of course this is just speculation on my part, and ive been known to be wrong a few times (disclaimer)

AKDUDE

Believe me that graphics chip running at 250MHz is much faster than a 1 Gig cpu when it comes to running complex geometry and graphics. Your gig cpu will probably give you 500 Mega Flops of performance, where as the graphics card could give you 3 or 4 Giga Flops of performance. These are just numbers to give you an idea that MHz don't always matter. Why do you think a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 is slower than a 1.3 GHz Thunderbird? (maybe not in all cases, but in most) Because the Athlon is much better designed and therefore can process more information at a lower frequency. And why are powerful servers and workstations using Mips, Alpha, and UltraSparc processors running at 300-800MHz? And not P4 1.7GHz or Thunderbirds 1.33GHz which have a much higher frequency. Because those slower frequecy cpu's are much much more powerful than what we have at home. What i'm trying to say is that those low clocked vid cards are much more capable at handling 3D than your high clocked cpu's.

 

[AKDUDE]

Found this blurb at Anandtech's review of the Kryo 2

Missing from the Kyro II feature set is a T&L engine. Claiming that the current generation of CPUs are far superior at T&L calculations than any graphics part can be, STMicroelectronics choose to leave T&L off the Kyro II. Perhaps STMicroelectronics is referring to the fact that the non-programmable T&L we've seen on GeForce2 and Radeon cards has not been taken much advantage of, but the programmable unit of the GeForce3 will be much more useful and much more powerful. Whether or not this will hurt the Kyro, we will see in our CPU scaling tests, but it certainly would not hurt to put a T&L engine on the chip. Look for the next PowerVR chip to feature such an engine.



ALso, read this webpage, to understand a little more what T&L is, and why sometimes its better to have it in software than hardware.

3dpulpit.com

This domain may be for sale!

www.3dpulpit.com

Yes, I understand your point on the P4 vs the TBIRD. However, having T&L in software (using the main CPU) does not mean that your CPU is taking over the graphics processing.
AKDUDE

 

[PowerProtein]

Ok maybe in today's games the T&L engine isn't that much effective. But i did mention complex geometry. And when Unreal 2 comes out with it's massive outdoor levels that are supposed to have 100x more polygons for the levels and 10x for the characters. That's when the cpu will crawl under the mat and squeel for mecry, and if we don't have hardware T&L than were all gonna crawl under the mat along with our Gig cpu.
**** i better get my mat ready, LOL.