Geforce Ultra Tastes defeat!

[Guest]

Has any one checked out the review on anandtech about the KyroII tile based video card? It actually beats an Ultra on more than one benchmark and is only supposed to cost 149.99. It is exciting to see another graphics company making a high performance product and selling it for less than 500 beans. Here is a link to the review
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1435" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1435</A>
Sounds GREAT, what do you guys think??

HazyBlue <P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by hazyblue on 03/13/01 11:48 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Bubba]

Please fix you link.

The price is right.
However, I don't understand how a card can do so well in one category and so poorly in another.
Usually, the Nvidia cards, Voodoo cards, and ATI cards all rank basically the same thoughout all the tests but this card is all over the place.
So I really don't know what to think.
Before buying this card, I would look to see where it performs best and then determine if it would meet my needs depending on what I do the most.

 

[Guest]

The card works on a totally different principle than many previous cards. Whereas the Radeon and GF2 render all objects, the Kyro only renders objects that will be visible on the screen.

For example, if you're shooting some bad guy on Quake, only the parts of the bad guy not hidden behind the wall will be rendered on the Kyro, whereas on the Radeon/GF2 and most previous chips, the bad guy will be completely rendered, then the wall will be rendered on top.

Hence, the GF2 Ultra will be much faster with a few complicated objects on the screen, but slower if you've got many overlapping objects. So faster in some benchmarks and slower in others.

I've read that the GF3 uses the same technique which is why it [is/will be] much faster than the GF2 Ultra without having a massively higher clock speed.

~ I'm not AMD biased, I just think their chips are better. ~

 

[noko]

Well the Radeon has hierarchicalZ which also limits the overdraw or rendering of polygons not seen by your view point. In fact with VilliageMark1.17 the Radeon beats the Ultra due to its HyperZ feature in this rather overdraw excessive benchmark.