A Speedy Tiler: Kyro II on Hercules’ 3D Prophet 4500 – THG.RU

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Kyro II on Hercules’ 3D Prophet 4500″ –>

Starts With a Whimper; Hits The Market With a Bang

Who would have thought that NVIDIA would have any major competition besides ATI? Coming out with the Kyro II graphics chip was a master stroke for PowerVR Technologiesand STMicroelectronics. Despite the fact the chip isn’t in the same class as the more expensive, high-end GeForce3, this intelligent math wizard is more than a match for ATI’s Radeon, the GeForce2 MX and the GeForce2 GTS. The company carrying the Hercules brand, Guillemot Corporation, has placed orders for vast quantities of chips from STMicro. Hercules itself is planning on bursting onto the market with 60,000 3D Prophet 4500 cards. The 64 Mbyte version will start out selling at a recommended retail price of $149. Guillemot has listed a host of online suppliers for this card at Hercules.com, but the card is not available until mid-May, officially.

Kyro II’s predecessor, the Kyro I chip, paved the way for the Kyro II last year. Kyro I, however, never managed to gain a foothold in the market. The chip clock rate of 115 MHz wasn’t enough for the Kyro I to really get the ball rolling. The Kyro II has lived up to expectations. Despite the fact that our lab still hasn’t received a final production card, the first benchmarks using a late beta driver have yielded astounding results, due to the design overhaul and the switch from a 0.25 to a 0.18 micron production process. The clock rate of the Kyro II has increased to 175MHz, putting it at a par with the GeForce2 MX. One of Kyro II’s special technological features is its tile-based rendering (TBR) technology, which was developed by PowerVR. This tiling technique saves valuable bandwidth when rendering 3D scenes.

Think Tank – Who’s Behind The Kyro II?

In this section we will be going behind the scenes of the Kyro II chip. The relationships between developers, chip producers and distributors are not exactly common knowledge. Let’s start with the designers and the chip manufacturer.

The copyright on the Tile Based Rendering (TBR) technology on the Kyro II belongs to the British company Power VR Technologies, a subsidiary of Imagination Technologies. Imagination is the parent of Videologic. Interestingly enough, the companies all started out as Videologic, which developed the PowerVR technology. Videologic partnered with NEC, and managed to wrest away the Sega Dreamcast contract from 3dfx, a situation for which 3dfx received a decent payoff after litigation. Today, Videologic is only a graphics card manufacturer that equips its cards with PowerVR chips. Imagination now holds the technology licenses for the PowerVR technology and licenses it to companies such as STMicroelectronics, and NEC. For reference, in October 1999, we tested the first generation of PowerVR technology on Videologic’s Neon 250 graphics card.

Think Tank – STMicroelectronics

For graphics card manufacturer Videologic , the problem lies with its distribution channels – they are limited. Looking for the Videologic brand on the retail market can be a fruitless task. So, chipmaker STMicro is pursuing another strategy.

Both the Kyro I and the Kyro II are being sold to several manufacturers. The most significant buyer is Guillemot/Hercules, a company with an outstanding distribution structure. If demand soars, Guillemot should have no problem delivering.

NVIDIA’s Market Muscle: Competitors Under Pressure

There are already four boards furnished with the Kyro I: Innovision Inno3D KYRO II000, Videologic Vivid!, Powercolor Evil Kyro and the Hercules 3D Prophet 4000 32 MB.

As far as Kyro II is concerned we are dealing with an entirely different situation. Videologic offers the Vivid XS card, and the only other card around is the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64 MB. However, other graphics board partners could join STMicroelectronics later on but, for stronger partners such as ASUS, Creative or Elsa, the stakes seem to be too high. No one wants to offend the 800-pound gorilla that is NVIDIA. In addition, Kyro II sales aren’t targeted at the high-end aof the 3D graphics market, but rather in the value or mainstream segment of the market.

Companies that have become market leaders in a particular segment tend to react like monopolists. Intel is a good example in the CPU market. NVIDIA is in a similar position in the graphics chips arena, and exploits its dominant status. In an authentic document, the 3D giant tears competitors PowerVR and STMicroelectronics apart. In the lucrative mainstream sector, the Kyro II is a burr under NVIDIA’s saddle, since it could end up challenging the GeForce2 MX.

Be that as it may, Brian Burke, NVIDIA’s graphics veteran spokesman, doesn’t deny the origins of the paper. “Yes, unfortunately this orginiated here at NVIDIA. As you know, the presentation that has been circulating the Internet was an tool created for the NVIDIA sales team. It was created to help position our products against competitive offerings, as well as to educate and motivate our sales staff. It was never intended for public viewing or distribution.”

The Kyro II Card Up Close & Personal

The board has been manufactured in blue like other Hercules cards. Besides the VGA port, there are no other ports. TV-Out or DVI have been left out to keep the price low. However, it is still obvious that certain areas on the board layout have been kept open for other options.

The newest Powerstrip beta still only recognizes the chip as Kyro and not as Kyro II. An intelligent feature is limiting AGP mode to a maximum of 2X.

Memory

The memory modules used for this model are SDRAMs (Single Data Rate). A glance at the inscription “TC50” reveals that the best access time is 5.0 nanoseconds. That means that the card could potentially be overclocked to 200MHz. The version available in stores, however, will only be furnished with 5.5-nanosecond memory, which means that most of the overclockers will have to make do with 180 MHz.

You can tell that memory and chip clocks both run at 175 MHz in the new powerstrip version. You have to alter settings on both regulators at the same time.

Details of Tile Based Rendering (TBR)

Even the most expensive high-end cards have one problem: limited bandwidth. Fans of the classic approach, such as NVIDIA, can only deal with the bandwidth problem by packing on fast memory modules. Video memory with short access times is, however, expensive. ATI is doing its utmost to rein in this problem by using “HyperZ” technology. PowerVR, too, is taking different tack from NVIDIA. Let’s take a look at the differences.

Conventional cards first fill all the polygons without considering which ones will be hidden later on. PowerVR’s technology, on the other hand, first verifies whether it is even necessary to fill all the polygons present in a 3D scene. Generally, only the objects in the foreground require this process. Classic 3D games need to access memory constantly for the z-buffer and to load textures, thereby eating up valuable memory bandwidth.

This diagram makes the huge tasks that 3dfx, NVIDIA and Matrox cards have to undertake even clearer.

Tile Based Rendering, Continued

PowerVR’s rendering pipeline as is used on the Kyro II is significantly different from the classic approach. The z-buffer has basically been done away with. Textures are only loaded if a visible object requires it. The whole procedure is skipped for hidden objects.

Sounds simple in theory, but the options for the alternative TBR procedure are, in practice, somewhat limited. The entire screen first has to be divided up into small tiles. The Kyro II uses tiles that are 32×16 pixels in size. At a resolution of 1024 x 768, that makes for 1536 tiles. Don’t worry, though, you can’t see them when they are finally displayed on-screen. The great thing about PowerVR tiling is that every tile fits into the on-chip buffer. That means that the tiles don’t need to be copied to video memory first.

After calculating all the tiles, the Kyro II applies deferred texturing, a process we have described previously. By verifying whether an object is visible or not, the chip avoids overdrawing. Textures only need to be loaded for visible areas.

Chip Features

STMicro’s Kyro II has the following features:

• 175 MHz chip clock rate
• 175 MHz memory clock rate (synchronous with chip clock rate)
• Tile Based Rendering (TBR), but no T&L
• 0.18 micron processing technology
• Memory interface for SDR SDRAM
• Expandable by 64 Mbytes maximum
• Memory bus width 128 bits
• RAMDAC 270 MHz
• Interface AGP 2X
• 4X full-scene anti-aliasing available
• Motion compensation for DVD/MPEG-2

At first, the Kyro II’s feature set doesn’t really sound tempting. For example, a 270 MHz RAMDAC is no longer state of the art. AGP 2X isn’t much of a selling point, either. What is crucial, though, is how it performs. We’ll see in the benchmarks that the Kyro II can more than hold its own against the competition in terms of performance.

Drivers

The card made available to us was tested using the Win9x driver, version 7.56. As yet, there are no Windows NT or 2000 drivers available. Let’s hope that Hercules will deal with this shortcoming quickly. The release drivers will be generation V8.xx.

Technologically speaking, the RAMDAC is prehistoric ballast. It only has 270 MHz bandwidth. ATI, NVIDIA and Matrox all have a standard rate of at least 350 MHz. Nevertheless, the 270 MHz RAMDAC can still achieve a refresh rate of 100 MHz at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. At 1600 x 1200 it maxes out at 85 Hz.

Those who know earlier driver versions will see that the developers have finally made an effort to present a clear layout. You can select default settings or user-defined settings for the Direct3D-API.

Drivers, Continued

Hercules offers this tab for games based on OpenGL such as Quake 3. As with Direct3D, you can access the full-scene anti-aliasing option (smoothing) through a sub-menu.

In addition to the Kyro II core drivers, Guillemot has added these driver expansions as well.

Depending on the country, you can access various Hercules Web sites.

Drivers, Continued

Hercules could have done without this window. The operating system already gives you this information.

This tab is pretty unnecessary, too.

The current driver version can still be found under “Version”.

Test Configuration

All benchmarks were determined on an Athlon 1.2 GHz platform. Additionally, we used a Pentium 4 system with a frequency of 1.5 GHz.

Benchmarks At 16-bit Color

The GeForce2 GTS is dominant in the 16-bit tests, followed by the Kyro II. The GeForce2 MX and the Radeon take the back seat here.

Quake3 Arena

At the standard resolution of 1024 x 768, GeForce2 GTS is in the lead, with Kyro II on the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 taking the silver. Trailing them are the ATI Radeon and the GeForce2 MX. All chips achieve poor results below 32-bit color.

Evolva

In Evolva, the GeForce2 GTS shows off its good side with 16-bit color. The Kyro II almost always comes in at second place. The race between Radeon and GeForce2 MX is neck-and-neck, although only at lower values.

MDK2

In MDK2 the Kyro II starts looking a little weak if you only compare the absolute frame rates. It isn’t until it performs at resolutions higher than 1280 x 1024 that it overcomes this deficit. Don’t forget that frame rates over 60 fps are more than adequate.

MTBR

In Mercedes Benz Truck Racing the ATI Radeon gives itself a bad name. No usable results were obtained using the Athlon platform. The Kyro II beat out the GeForce2 MX, but was itself edged out by a hair by the GeForce2 GTS.

Aquanox

The new DirectX-8 benchmark is a real challenge for 3D engines. Practically all frame rates are useless. This benchmark might be a job for the GeForce3 …

Benchmarks At 32-bit Color

At 32-bit color the Kyro II catches up in a lot of categories. At lower resolutions, the GeForce2 GTS is still able to flex its muscles, but at higher settings it has to make way for the Kyro II.

Quake3 Arena

The Kyro II is hot on the GeForce2 GTS’s heels. At settings above 1280 x 1024 on the Pentium, it’s even faster.

Evolva

Finally, the Kyro II has reached higher ground. It’s faster than all the other competitors in almost all of the Evolva tests.

MDK2

In MDK2, the Kyro II is somewhere in the middle. It is impossible to spot a clear tendency in this benchmark with 32-bit color.

MTBR

The Hercules 3D Prophet was dealt a good hand in the current version of Mercedes Benz Truck Racing. With 32-bit color, the Kyro II and the GeForce2 GTS are neck-and-neck.

Aquanox

The Aquamark benchmark is dominated by the GeForce2 GTS and the ATI Radeon at 32-bit color.

Benchmarks With FSAA

For the tests with activated smoothing FSAA (full-scene anti-aliasing), we have limited ourselves to one typical platform. We chose the Pentium 4 1.5 GHz.

Quake 3 Arena

The GeForce2 GTS is only faster than the Kyro II at 16-bit color and a resolution. In all other categories, the Kyro II on the Hercules 3D 4500 is king of the hill.

At a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, the ATI Radeon falls by the wayside, as long as you choose 4X FSAA. While the GeForce2 GTS still has the upper hand at 16 bit, the tables turn at 32 bit.

Evolva

The GeForce2 MX loses in all categories when compared to the Kyro II. You have the following picture at 2X FSAA. The GeForce2 GTS is lord over 16-bit terrain, but the 32-bit world belongs to the Kyro II.

In the Evolva benchmark, the Kyro II faces a fight. At 16 bit, the GeForce2 GTS is in the lead, followed by the Kyro II, with the MX drowning in its wake.

Conclusion: Fast and Cheap

The benchmarks show that the Kyro II on the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 is a thoroughly competitive product when compared to GeForce2 MX/GTS or the ATI Radeon, as long as you prefer 32-bit color. A real highlight is the price – for a mere $149, you get a 64Mbyte graphics card that gives its more expensive competitors a real run for their money.

Not only that, but the 3D Prophet 4500 is a serious threat to long-established chips in low-cost and mainstream segments. Even with the latest beta version (Version 7.56), we observed stable operation for all games tested as well as for standard Office applications. This graphics card, when supplied with the 8.xx drivers and in its final layout, is definitely to be recommended.