Just thought, looking 'over the Horizon' is always a nice thing to do once a while...

...checking out what other Hardware is existing besides 3dfx ;)

I'll open this Thread with my Experiences, but feel free to add your's.

Greetings
FalconFly

PoverVR KyroI, 32MB AGP

Just got one of those recently, and wanted to check it out to see if it's working okay.

Since it appeared okay, I thought I give it some test, to see how this old, but interesting Card works :)

First surprise came, when I booted into Windoze :
Everything was grossly mis-coloured, even in 256 Color mode it appeared each color was chosen at random ???

Setting everything VGA related in the Motherboard BIOS from max. Performance back to max. compatibility, I was able to correct the Problem...
...at the cost of reduced performance, however ::)

Anyway, I went for some Unreal Tournament; with the latest Renderers and Updates, I knew a KyroII was performing very well at that.

I ran it in OpenGL, 1024x768 32bit.
Turned out, that old 115MHz Card was able to perform surprisingly well (upto ~90 fps), but the framerates were extremely inconsistent, all the way downto 15fps :(

Alot of Graphical glitches as well (Geometry errors, Missing Meshes, Texture errors).

After some tweaking in the Driver's (the newest available) Advanced Options, I was able to correct most of those, but not all. Also it was strange to see those compatibility Options in the Driver, that almost 'announced', that there might very well be missing Geometry and Texture errors in Games (?)
So in the end, playable at 800x600, but still with mild Texture errors and inconsistent Framerates :(
16bit was not very different in speed (as the card internally renders in 32bit anyway), but looked alot worse than on a Voodoo...

But I was able to look at the S3TC Textures, which looked indeed extremely nice :)

Next test was 3D Mark 2001SE, just to see how it looked.
After about 5 crashes trying to get the Benchmark to correctly initialize in the first place (!), I found the settings that would allow it to run.
The Image quality was okay, and performance acceptable. But also here, missing Geometry in the High Polygon Tests (!) :(

Envroinment and Dot3 BumpMapping looked extremely nice though :D

I also ran AquaMark, and it worked graphically flawless.
It didn't look as good on my Voodoo5, though, which surprised me. Trying to see how well AGP Texturing worked, failed however, since the Benchmark crashed anytime more than 24MB of Textures were selected :(

Performance with 24MB Textures was about 60% of my Voodoo5...

That's where I put the Tests to an end, and got the good old Voodoo5 back in. Back at Home, and everything ran perfectly fine again :)

Overall Opinion :
I was amazed that even with much newer DirectX8 Drivers, this Card had so many Problems with common Programs. During testing, my machine froze and crashed more often than in an entire month otherwise :P

So once again it was proven to me, newer isn't always better. A good reason to keep those things that have proven to be reliable (like the Voodoo's), even if they're not up-to-date equipment ;)

Nevertheless, an interesting Card. I'm sure it was a good and competitive performer when it was released :)
I'm also sure, with some more in-depth tweaking and finetuning, most of the remaining display errors would certainly disappear...

Greetings
FalconFly

That's an interesting account, FalconFly.  I always wondered what the original, add-in PowerVR cards were like?  When I bought my Monster 3D Voodoo Graphics there were magazine articles that suggested that the PowerVR cards might be a better bet.

They were supposed to be a better alternative to the Matrox Mystique and other similar cards.  And I've never known anyone that had one.  And I was always intrigued by the Kyro cards but, in retrospect, it's probably just as well that I didn't get one.

Oh, yes, I know this first Add-on Board from PowerVR...

Videologic "Apocalypse 3D".

In fact that was my very first attempt at 3D Accelleration ;)

Interesting Link about this (and other early Cards) :
http://www.geocities.com/k_lupinsky/1996-97_3D_Chart.htm

The Card unfortunately was almost completely unsupported. In the end, all I could do with it was to run the Demos that shipped with the card :(
(Sort of remembers me of the 3D Mark history for many NVidia owners *g* )

Anyway, in the end, if utterly failed, being unsupported except in a very few Games (Mechwarrior 2 and Tomb Raider, for example).
All "Special Editions", that were modified many times to run good on many diffent cards...

I opted to return that Card a few days after I bought it, because it seemed so useless :-/

PowerVR's first really competitive approach was the PowerVR 250, which gave some good competition when it was released.

Strange though, that all those PowerVR Cards seem to share the same, sad tradition :
They don't receive required Updates in terms of Hardware Capabilities.

Now, the KyroII's are starting to become old, with no successor in sight.
And that's even more sad, since the KyroII's I've seen in Action were really very nice cards, often out-performing even my Voodoo5 from time to time...

Surprises me, since the Tiled Rendering and Hidden Surface Removal were really successfully competing against other Card's "Brute Force Methods" (sheer Fillrate by expensive, fast RAM) with smart Efficiency...

I liked that approach :)

Greetings
FalconFly

Ya', I own a Kyro 2 and I'm using the latest drivers from the pvrdev website: -(http://www.pvrdev.com/driver/index.htm)

The only real gripe I've got about this card is that if things get TOO hectic, it starts to skip frames... :P

Otherwise though, this is one of the best cards I've owned in a LONG time! :D

Can't wait to get my GeforceFX next year though!!! ;D

L8R! 8)

i had a  voodoo rush my first accelerated card which was a real dud , had it a couple of weeks could never get the thing going right ( took it back and got a banchee). i also had a tnt 2 because my banchee wouldn`t run on win 2000 properly . a geforce 2 , never liked it much using it on the old glide games in gl mode sucked ! i really should have got a voodoo 2 in the first place would have served me alot better in the long run .

Almost forgot this Thread ;)

Well, since I have it running since a while now, here's another one from my side :

ATI Radeon 9700Pro 128MB

Well, this card was bought as a Performance Monster, and it should get the job done for years to come.

However, even this Card has its high's and low's :
------------------------------

On the Pro side, there's (obviously) Performance.
By all practical means, this card offer's ludicrous performance, and is still most of the time waiting for the CPU to deliver the next frame to be rendered ;D

Framerates in 1024x768 32bit can easily exceed 500fps :o , provided the CPU can keep up, which is rarely the case though...

I haven't found any real Driver Bugs, the often blamed ATI Drivers worked like a charm right from the beginning, now having reached the Catalyst V2.4 level.

-------------------------
However, when looking at the Driver's Advanced Properties, any 3dfx User will instantly notice the lack of literally any advanced Tweaks in the Driver.
Knowing just how much Advanced Features are embedded in the R300 Core, that was my first disappointment about the Card, or rather the Drivers.

There are alot of Tweaker Programs out there, but they are quite a pain to use, and offer a complete overkill of options (most of them appear rather ineffective, or the performance gain is not noticeable). That's unfortunate, and there's no Tweaker existing, that limits itself only to the "real things" that would be really useful to tweak.

Since the Card is fast enough, not a big loss, but something worth mentioning ::)

Something that really disappointed me was the very low Texture Quality (compared to a 3dfx Card), even on highest Driver settings. It seems MipMapping is performed much closer than a Voodoo5 would render it, for example.

In order to get the same Texture Fidelity (in terms of MipMap Quality), Aniso Filtering is really needed.
The R9700Pro definitely needs about 4x Aniso Filtering in order to achieve Image Quality comparable to a Voodoo5 on default settings.

And what 3dfx Users really have to their advantage with their MipMap Dithering Option really becomes apparent, when viewing those clearly defined MipMapping Rings drawn on the R9700pro. Again, only the 4x Aniso can really even this out on the Radeon.

So putting it side by side with a 3dfx Card, with both running on default settings, would clearly make 3dfx a winner without any discussion, in terms of default MipMap Texture Fidelity.

One thing that also never happened to me with any other Card, was that I was struck by a variation of the infamous 60Hz Bug. Surprisingly, as this error is commonly seen only on Win2k/WinXP machines. Since I'm running Win98SE, I clearly did not expect that.

In some Resolutions, I have full control over the Refresh Rate. But in some, I have only partial control (not all Modes are accepted), and eventually, some Modes are stuck at 60Hz.
What hurts even more, is, that there's no tool existing, that has helped me. :P
Luckily, my main Resolution still runs at 85Hz, but effective use of higher Resolutions is (presently) inhibited, as I don't want to make my eyes hurt. ::)

I guess that's up to some serious Registry hand-modifying, which I still have to do...

-----------------------------
Other than that, a very nice, stable running card, and it also has the additional Power Connector, just like a Voodoo5 ;D

It permits simultaneous, effective use of FSAA and Aniso Filtering with practically no Performance loss in 1024x768 32bit.
The ability to finally use FSAA at no loss is probably the most dramatic factor, which puts its Image Quality ahead of the competition, since playability is not affected :)

Colors are nice and vivid, and can additionally be tuned if that would be desired (Overbright).

---- update -----
Finally, someone has found a Registry Trick, that solved the 60Hz Problem under Win9x :D