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September 2002 3Digest -
PowerVR/STM KYRO II SE 64MB





This chip is presented by Hercules 3D Prophet 4800 64MB, AGP videocard.




Features:

Overclocking is impossible.

A year ago we reported about KYRO II as an overclocked KYRO. It seems that developers considered such numbering unethical and decided just to add "SE" suffix to the name of a newly overclocked KYRO II. Yes, KYRO II SE is just 200 MHz of the core/memory. Of course, it's supplied with new drivers, supposedly enabling KYRO's Hardware TCL, though everyone knows it doesn't support actual HW TCL at all. Comanche4 proved this, having refused to run on KYRO II. Only 3DMark2001 "believed" to drivers and was tricked into enabling card's "HW TCL".

Taking into account that PowerVR's partner - STMicroelectronics - left the PC market, KYRO II SE shipments are questionable, as PowerVR hasn't yet found a new partner among semiconductor brands.

On the 10th of September 2002 the latest drivers from STM are 16.51 for Windows XP.

The performance results are in our summary diagrams.

I shall also note that real trilinear filtering is replaced by approximation at S3TC activation to reduce perfomance losses, but the approximation quality is rather high. Read all details in the SUMA Platinum K2 review.

You can compare screenshots with reference ones (NVIDIA GeForce3).

Games / Cards 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
PowerVR/STM KYRO II




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Game list:

  • 1. Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  • 2. Unreal2 (alpha version)
  • 3. Comanche4
  • 4. Jedi Knight II Outcast
  • 5. Morrowind
  • 6. Colin McRAE Rally2
  • 7. Red Faction
  • 8. Rally Trophy
  • 9. Sacrifice
  • 10. Venom
  • 11. Unreal Tournament 2003 DEMO
  • 12. Real MYST
  • 13. Blade of Darkness
  • 14. Neverwinter Nights
  • 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. Warcraft III
  • 24. Soldier of Fortune II
  • 25. Command and Conquer: Renegade
  • 26. No One Lives Forever Demo
  • 27. AquaNox
  • 28. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  • 29. IL2: Shturmovik
  • 30. MoHAA

Pity, but criticism exceeds stroke-out games. For example, Soldier of Fortune II produces these awful artefacts (screenshots above). the same happens in Morrowind.

Andrew Worobyew (Anvakams@ixbt.com)
Alexander Kondakov (kondalex@ixbt.com)
Evgeniy Zaycev (eightn@ixbt.com)
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