VideoLogic Vivid!

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

The lousy MX huh ? Well, I that's your conclusion, not mine!<P>Ehm, let me see, it should be about 135 bucks (depending very much on the exchange rate!) + tax .. I don't know what your import-rate taxes are. <P>But to import a piece of equipment is always more expensive, why don't you just rather buy the product in a store in your country somewhere ? 135*1.20 should be ~ 160 bucks (US).<p>[This message has been edited by Hilbert Hagedoorn (edited December 29, 2000).]

If you disable FSAA in the x direction you can minimize some horizontal aliasing without as big a performance hit. Also, some less stressfull games, like test drive 5 as an example, run fine with FSAA turned on. It really makes a difference.<P>

D@mn they have to import it and all that tax never mind I guess I will just buy the GeForce2 MX in the Mall today <IMG SRC="http://www.guru3d.com/ubb/smile.gif"> thanx for bringing me to my senses Hilbert.

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Please post comments on this product here.<P>------------------<BR>Hilbert Hagedoorn - Chief Editor<BR>- "Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else."

Just finished another great review from Guru3d.com and I have been in the need for a new video card for over 4 months...just got $145 for Christmas and now I know what video card I am going to buy...not the lousy GeForce2 MX but the VIVID!

Hilbert I need your help!<BR>I went to there website and it says it cost £97.87 excluding tax? How does this translate to American Dollars and how much tax it doesn't say? Any help would be great since I am so hyped up I want to buy this puppy today! No one can stop me!<P>Thanx again Hilbert.

The Vivid is in fact a great offer, but you should notice that there is an Powercolor Evil Kyro available too! The card is based on the Videologic/ImgTec reference design, an offers up to 64 MB Ram and an optional TV-Out for a lower price! These Cards are working GREAT. (yes I´m using one since a few weeks). And with newer beta drivers (floating around the net), lots of small problems are fixed, and openGL performance is improved by a reasonable margin!<P>I want just to be sure that the information about the PowerVR3/Kyro is as complete as possible.<P>Nice review BTW!<P>Have fun<BR>Chris

Dear Chris:<P>You should keep in mind that just becuase it's based on the same core it doesn't mean that it has the same performance. Apparantly, the Evil Kyro is slower than The Vivid!.<P><P>------------------<BR>Amir R. Pakdel - Assistant Editor<P> <A HREF="mailto:apakdel@guru3d.com">apakdel@guru3d.co m</A> <BR><A HREF="http://www.Guru3D.com" TARGET=_blank>www.Guru3D.com</A>

i have an evil kyro 64 meg and i use inno3d's drivers (they aren't on the driver page but they are on inno3d's ftp)<BR>note- you have to add s3tc to the registry<BR>they are better than vivids except it skips the 64 meg part in 3dmark<BR>FPS in the 50s using FSAA in Q3A isn't bad at all, it's very playable<BR>i like playing w/everything maxed 800x600 w/anistropic filtering+4xFSAA in Q3A

Snoop Dogg, there's no need to buy a Vivid!, the Vivid! is the U.K based Kyro product, you should buy an Evil Kyro from Powercolor which is one of the U.S based cards and is just as fast as the Vivid!, the only difference is the Evil Kyro is cheaper then the Vivid! and has double the amount of ram (we brits always get ripped off by VAT <IMG SRC="http://www.guru3d.com/ubb/frown.gif">.<BR>The Vivid! here in the U.K costs a total of £115 inc VAT which is $170, the Evil Kyro costs $140 and has 64mb ram, thats 32mb more ram then the Vivid! which makes the Evil Kyro allot better at higher res, I own a Vivid! myself.<P>Webmaster <A HREF="http://www.powervr.org.uk" TARGET=_blank>www.powervr.org.uk</A>

Both cards offers for shure the same performance!<P>The same chip, the same clockspeed, and the same PCB design (they´re all reference boards). And of course you´re able to use the same drivers on them.<BR>If anybody have different results between the Kyro boards, then because of a different system environment, other settings or different driver revisions.<BR>The only thing I wanted to say is, if anybody is interested in the Kyro, he´s able to choice between different cards (a card from Innovision is comming soon too).<P>Ciao<BR>Chris

Nice article, thanks.<P>One question though: If it really is a more efficient use of technology, why does it require a fan? It's only running at 110Mhz. Unless Kyro have bought loads of 90Mhz cores, and are overclocking it to reduce costs, I see no reason to have a fan.<P>Also, could you do some comparisons with other CPU speeds? I'd like to know how scaleable the performance of the card is. What speeds are you getting with a slower P3, or a faster TBird?<P>Finally, is the card overclockable? And what kind of performace-boost do you get from overclocking the core/memory?

One of the reasons that the Kyro needs a fan is its on a 0.25 micron process, unlike the MX which is 0.18 micron.<P>Well as far as I know the Kyro at most clocks to 125mhz, I don't think adding cooling will help it overclock because when I've overclocked its never heat that stops me getting past 125mhz.<P>Now you may look at only a 10mhz increase in core and memory (the core and memory clock on the Kyro is synchronous) as a very small increase and something that isn't worth doing but when overclocking the Kyro you have to consider that this card beats a Geforce 2 MX with about half its fillrate, the reason for this is the efficient way the Kyro deals with rendering, so while 10 extra MHZ might not be worth having on an MX, 10mhz means allot more when added to the Kyro, for instance the Kyro has a fillrate of 230mpixels/s (115mhz clock x 2 pixel pipes = 230 mpixels), now with this fillrate the card wouldn't have a chance against the MX, but one important thing in the Kyro's favour is that it doesn't render overdraw, now its commonly thought that overdraw in most games is around 2.5-3 average depending on what game your playing, so to try to comprehend what fillrate the Kyro has in standard terms we need to multiply the actual fillrate of the card by the common overdraw level (for this example well be conservative and use a 2 overdraw level) which brings an effective fillrate of 460mpixels/s.<BR>Now back to overclocking, since the Kyro's fillrate is very dependent on overdraw when overclocking any additional clock speed must also be multiplied by the common overdraw value, so if we overclock the kyro by 10mhz and then multiply that by overdraw we get 20mhz, now you can see why any gain even a small one is well worth it for the Kyro.<BR>Overclocking the Kyro from 115mhz (which brought an effective fillrate of 460mpixels/s) too 125mhz takes the Kyro's effective fillrate upto 500mpixels/s, thats a gain of 40mpixels/s, to acheive this same gain on the MX you'd have to actually overclock the MX by 20mhz.<P>Webmaster <A HREF="http://www.powervr.org.uk" TARGET=_blank>www.powervr.org.uk</A>

For anyone wanting a Kyro in the U.S here are two online retailers based in the U.S selling 64mb Evil Kyro boards for only $115.<BR> <A HREF="http://www.monarchcomputer.com/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.monarchcomputer.com/</A> <A HREF="http://www.verasoft.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.verasoft.com</A>

For anyone interested in buying a Kyro in the U.S here are two online stores based in the U.S selling the 64mb Evil Kyro for only $115<BR> <A HREF="http://www.verasoft.com/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.verasoft.com/</A> <A HREF="http://www.monarchcomputer.com/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.monarchcomputer.com/</A>

Can anyone post 3dmark scores comparing the kyro to a Geforce 2 mx using the same system. I may have a chance swap my mx with a 64 meg Kyro. How do you overclock the kyro. Is it a standard feature in the drivers or what?

If you ask that at either the hardware beyond3d.com forum or the paraknowya.de hardware forum you should get a comparison.<P>As for overclocking, there was an overclocking util made for it, its over at deferred power(http://www.mitrax.de/files/kclk.exe) there's also a new version of powerstrip that supports the Kyro and will allow you to overclock on the fly.<P>Webmaster<BR>powervr.org.uk

I know there were a few people wanting a shootout between the Powercolor Evil Kyro and an MX, so here it is: <A HREF="http://www.inside-hardware.net/budget-videocard/Page1.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.inside-hardware.net/budget-videocard/Page1.html</A> <P>Appart from a frankly rediculess conclusion this review is good, not very indepth and doesn't mention lots of the features of the Kyro but it was ok overall and I think everyone can see that the Evil Kyro is a hell of a card at a very good price.

Just ordered the evil Kyro with 64mb ram. Does anyone know why the power color version of the kyro is clocked at 115 and the Vivid 125? Is power color using a cheeper core or not using a fan? I plan on overclocking it to see how it raits against my overclocked geforce2 mx. Who has the best drivers? I know Inno3d just released some new ones that are said to bee very good. Thanks for your help.

All the Kyro cards run at 115mhz including the Vivid!.<BR>The Kyro cards don't overclock very high at all, probably 125mhz at the most, 10mhz doesn't sound like much but 10mhz extra on the Kyro is equivalent to about 20-25mhz extra on a traditional card like the MX because of the deferred tile based rendering architecture and the way it makes better use of the available power.<P>The best driver can be found at the INNO3d download page, these driver aren't really INNO3d drivers, there simply the newest Kyro reference drivers repackaged to look like INNO3d driver, they work fine on any Kyro card.<P>Webmaster <A HREF="http://www.powervr.org.uk" TARGET=_blank>www.powervr.org.uk</A>

Thanks allot Teasy. I'll be getting my kyro tomorrow. I'll post some 3d mark scores compairing my mx both at the default clock and overclocked.

I'm just wondering what is exactly new in the series 3 vs the series 2 that lets it get such a large speed boost?<BR>The Neon250 is also 2 pixel/clock and uses tile based rendering, but running at 125mhz, yet the KYRO at only 115mhz with the same 2 pixel pipelines do much better.

Well there's a few things new about the series three chip that gives it a speed boost over the series 2, but firstly the main reason is fillrate, the series 2 didn't have 2 pixel pipes, it only had 1, it had a fillrate of 125mpixels/texels per sec, the Kyro has 2 pipes as you mentioned giving it a fillrate of 230mpixels/texels per sec.<P>Also there's 8 layer multitexturing which can give a massive speed boost over the series 2 in games that use more then 1 texture layer.<P>Then there's forcible texture compression in all API's, this can save a hell of a lot of memory bandwidth, also when this is enabled the Kyro can perform free trilinear filtering (unlike the series 2).<P>Webmaster <A HREF="http://www.powervr.org.uk" TARGET=_blank>www.powervr.org.uk</A>

I just want to correct this sentence "Also there's 8 layer multitexturing which can give a massive speed boost over the series 2 in games that use more then 1 texture layer.", I should have said that 8 layer multitexturing can give a massive boost in a game using more then 2 texture layers, because obviously the kyro already has 2 pipes with 1 TMU to each pipe so it can already output 2 texels in one pass even without 8 layer multitexturing.

PowerColor Evil KYRO vs PowerGENE CMXDV? They are both KYRO brand. PowerGENE has Geforce 2 GPU while PowerColor Evil KYRO doesn't have.