What are the Kryo, and Kryo II? Do they compare to the GeForce 2/3?

[Supafly]

I was looking through a online stores catalog and i stumbled across these prices:

Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet Kyro 4000 XT 32MB $70
Guillemot Hercules 3D Prophet Kyro II 4500 64MB $120

I went to the hercules site and they are promoting these chipsets and it looks like they are new, after many visits to hardocp, and voodooextreme, i'm confused. Are these supposed to rival the geforce 2/3? if so, hows the preformance on these things and how well do they overclock. Thanks in advance everybody

 

[klosters64a]

AFAIK, the Kyro II is a very worthwhile Vidcard. It equals GF2 GTS performance in many benchmarks, and slightly beats the more expensive GF2 GTS's in a few game BM's.

Its only weak point is that it can't perform hardware T&L. This may not be a big deal. If your processor is fast, software rendering of Transform&Lighting seems to be acceptable. I'm no Vidcard expert, so I don't really know.

Its strength is that there is no performance penalty worth mentioning when running 32bpp color depth instead of 16bpp. Personally, I can't tell the difference anyway!

Are Kyro II's really on a etailer's shelf--yet?

 

[Supafly]

yeah, those prices are from www.newegg.com great store but their return policies are crap, for the same products and prices but with a no questions asked warranty go to mwave

 

[Bender]

Just stay away from the origional Kyro it's a slow card. I had a 64 meg Kyro and my Geforce2 mx kicked the Kyro's pants off. The Kyro II is a good card but I would still go with a cheep Geforce2 ddr for around the same price. I am still waiting on the Kyro III which will have T&L support.

 

[PapaSutra]

By the way, mwave has them for $115 now.

 

[Paul -The Mad Hatter]

bender, whens the kyro3 coming out?

 

[Bender]

pauldogg (May 30, 2001 12:23 a.m.):
bender, whens the kyro3 coming out?

Very good question. I really hope it is soon. Supposedly the Kyro 3 is designed for T&L and DX8! I have heard rumors about it also using DDR ram. Stay tuned for updates.

 

[sparks]

Ed just posted this on the front page.
Observations: 2D and 3D image quality good, 3D maybe not as good as the Radeon I've been using, but almost indiscernible. Stupid fast in 3D - about 125fps in UT @ 1024x32bit - all game options on high except skin detail - medium.

125 in ut at 1024 x32bit... DAMN, Will a GF2 Ultra do that?

Ok what am I missing, I know its no GF3 but for the price is this a good card ?

 

[SP]

One thing you should know about these cards is that in some games they can perform very well and perform poorly in others. The Kyro2 is taking advantage of the fact that some games have alot of overdraw. It performs well in those games because it doesn't have to draw alot of polygons that are not visible. In some games where there isn't alot of overdraw then a card with a higher fillrate, like a GTS card would probably perform better.