By Andrey Vorobiev

This chip is presented by Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT 32 MBytes, AGP videocard.

Features:

• STM KYRO chip, 115 MHz clock rate, 128-bit engine;
• 32 MBytes SDRAM memory in 4 Micron 6ns microchips, 115 MHz clock rate;
• Peak fill rate in the multitexturing mode is 115 megapixels/sec and 115 megatexels/sec.
• Tile architecture.

Overclocking is impossible.

The release of KYRO, a new generation of the PowerVR chip, has illustrated another try to conquer the market with unusual processor architecture. We've written about tile architecture rather long ago. But the original price of KYRO couldn't make it competitor to NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, besides there were few manufacturers of these cards. But the product has been released and its price and perfomance make it a real competitor to NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, but it was late as the release of KYRO II with the same price and perfomance has almost killed the firstling.

For the 10th of April 2002 the latest drivers version from STM is 15.00.20 (only for Windows XP!).

The latest drivers are preferable due to fixed bugs and increased perfomance, but there's criticism about stability.

Still there are quality problems. I.e. No One Lives Forever has Z-buffer bugs:

You can compare screenshots taken on KYRO with reference ones taken on NVIDIA GeForce3.

Games / Cards	1	2	3	4	5	6
STM KYRO			-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	7	8	9	10	11	12
STM KYRO	-	-				-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	13	14	15	16	17	18
STM KYRO						-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	19	20	21	22	23	24
STM KYRO				-
NVIDIA GeForce3

Games / Cards	25	26	27	28	29	30
STM KYRO
NVIDIA GeForce3

Game list:

• 1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• 2. Unreal2 - for GeForce cards, Unreal - for all other
• 3. Comanche4
• 4. No One Lives Forever
• 5. Serious Sam
• 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
• 7. Red Faction
• 8. Rally Trophy
• 9. Sacrifice
• 10. Venom
• 11. Need For Speed V (Porshe 2000)
• 12. Real MYST
• 13. Blade of Darkness
• 14. Giants
• 15. 3DMark2001: Game1
• 16. 3DMark2001: Game2
• 17. 3DMark2001: Game3
• 18. 3DMark2001: Game4
• 19. 3DMark2001: Dot3
• 20. 3DMark2001: EMBM
• 21. 3DMark2001: Vertex Shaders
• 22. 3DMark2001: Pixel Shaders
• 23. Black & White
• 24. Undying
• 25. Command and Conquer: Renegade
• 26. Max Payne
• 27. AquaNox
• 28. Serious Sam II
• 29. IL2: Shturmovik
• 30. MoHAA

Real MYST doesn't run at all, crashing into OS.

Read more about this videocard in its review published on our site and in the review of all KYRO cards.

2D quality is perfect like that of NVIDIA GeForce2. 1600x1200 gives clear pictures, and 1280x1024x100 Hz is excellent.