Also the Radeon has outstanding 2d in clarity and in speed. Its 2d actually has been tested and is faster then a GF2 2d besides a much better image. Check out Sharky comments on 2d on the cards here:
<A HREF="
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/super_he..." target="_new">
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/super_he...;/A>
Between the two the DVD ability of the Radeon is unmatched. Adaptive Deinterlacing is very observable and simply an excellent feature which no other cards have. Also the Radeon has additional hardware support of IDCT which allows using a 9bit error correction which the other cards don't use, other cards truncate the last bit and use 8 bits only. Also the hardware IDCT decreases cpu usage significantly allowing you to defrag, download, virus scan, compile etc. while watching a DVD effectively. Scaling a video on the Radeon while watching is virtually perfect while the others are not. Right now I am watching MSNBC as I am typing this in W2K. This is a feature I didn't think I would use that much either but I use it constantly and love it. It is just a time saver for me. Also remember that Adaptive De-interlacing is also done with the Video in. When text is displayed in the VideoIn you will be able to read the smallest text clearly, it is so good that I game away my 21" Zenieth TV set (I have a 21" workstation trinitron monitor). Video image quality puts to shame the best TVs at Circuit city. Since you have a high end high quality monitor a Radeon would be a good match there. If you like high quality rendered images in 32bit it is hard to beat the Radeon with its very efficient Anisotropic filtering which brings out the details in the furthest textures and gives a very rich depth to a game. Now the FSAA on the Radeon as far as I see it is very limited. If you have a 640x480 limited game like the game Riven then it works pretty good. The performance hit using FSAA beyond 800x600 is just not worth it because a higher resolution without FSAA is usually faster and looks better. For flight simulators the Radeon does well but its FSAA is limited on the current crop of flight simulators.
The Kyro2 outstanding FSAA would do you wonders in Flight Sims hands down. Its lack of T&L is meaningless for current FlightSims. FS2002 from Microsoft is a different story, it is optimize around a GF2 card meaning hardware T&L optimize. With a system like yours the hardware T&L will double the framerate with much improved image quality. I expect FS2002 to be out at the end of this year about 2 years after FS2000. It appears to be ready right now, here is a link that you might want to read:
<A HREF="
http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/special/fs8hands.htm" target="_new">
http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/special/fs8hands.htm</A>
The Kyro2 is a good design and card and will run virtually any game well that is out now. Future games like Max Payne and FS2002 it may start to be bogged down, due to the lack of hardware T&L. As time goes on and on the hardware will get used more and more in the advance cards, in which the Kyro2 will be hit. Still the Kyro2 should perform well in the next 12 months. If you have a 1.1ghz machine and above I think the lack of hardware T&L would be not as important.
If you are solely a flight sim franatic then a Kyro2 would be probably the best card until FS2002 comes out. If you do more then just play games then A Radeon starts looking very good.
Now the Ultras are becoming cheap, its FSAA due to its much increased GPU speed and memory will beat the Kyro2, plus it is much faster in FPS then the Radeon and Kyro2 in virtually everything. Its 2d is not as good nor its DVD/Video of the Radeon. It does have better drivers which is another consideration. Right now the Radeon drivers are very stable in both WinMe and W2k, W2k DX performance is some what slower then Win9x but has improved tremendously over time. OpenGL is equivalent if not faster in W2K. Games like FS2000 and others programed with W2K in mind perform virtually the same in Win9x and W2K on the Radeon. Still nVidia does have the best drivers around and also if you are looking at using linux then Nvidia is really the best way to go right now.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by noko on 05/04/01 12:42 PM.</EM></FONT></P>