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Those boards are 4 layer PCB's. The final boards will be 6 layered. I can tell you for sure that IMGTEC do not test and hand pick special very overclockable boards for reviews. They don't do things that way. You might not beleive that because it sounds to honest but I have received boards from them in the past for reviews (Kyro 1) and the Kyro 1 I got from them was terrible at overclocking. Loads of people I know who bought the board can clock at least 10mhz too 125mhz and I heard of someone clocking to 135mhz with a blue orb on the board. But mine will clock no more then 2-3mhz without having problems. I know nobody else with such a unoverclockable Kyro 1 card. So thats proof to me that they just send random cards for reviews. They certainly don't have 1 stash of good cards for reviewers and another for actual customers.
Look at this thread at Beyond3d: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/noncgi/Forum1/HTML/002641.html
Thats Dave Baumann who did the Beyond3d Kyro II preview. He tests the Kyro II Videologic Vivid!XS 32mb for overclocking and gets better results then any review trying to overclock a Herc 4500. The Herc 4500 boards are built on the Videologic reference board (not a GTS board like Nvidia said in there crappy PDF) but obviously the revision of reference design was a little early for the Herc review boards compared to the Vivid!XS boards. When all cards are finalised on a 6 layer PCB we might get decent results. Certainly to say that there's a real possibility these boards are clocked to the max and might brake at any moment is unfiar IMO. IMGTEC don't have a track record for low quality hardware and neither to ST. Some of there boards might have had bugs when they were still refining tile based rendering but the general quality of there products are good (Dreamcast, Naomi 1 and 2, Kyro 1, Sonic Fury etc). No company in there right minds building for the future is going to release a card that brakes allot. The Kyro 1 only overclocked 10mhz for most people and I don't know anyone thats had a board thats broken.
On a final point just to back up what I'm saying I'll take an extract of the paragraph you based your comments on:
"The core does not get hot, but even with improved cooling (a giantic fan blowing air on both the chip and memory chips) we could not get it past 185 MHz"
If the chip was already overclocked and thats why it won't go much higher then the core would be very hot but it isn't, this shows that the reason is not because the board is clocked to the max.
<<<<<Do you know if a mobile Kyro chip solution is in the makings? Seems like an ideal chip for a mobile unit due to its low overhead.>>>>>
PowerVR anounced a Mobile chip a month back (http://www.powervr.com/PressReleases/2001/IMGAndARMAnnounceNewProcessorForMobileAndCommunications.htm). The chip is called PowerVRMBX, some of the interesting features of the PowerVRMBX that Kyro II doesn't have are a HW T&L unit and FSAA4FREE.
Look at this thread at Beyond3d: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/noncgi/Forum1/HTML/002641.html
Thats Dave Baumann who did the Beyond3d Kyro II preview. He tests the Kyro II Videologic Vivid!XS 32mb for overclocking and gets better results then any review trying to overclock a Herc 4500. The Herc 4500 boards are built on the Videologic reference board (not a GTS board like Nvidia said in there crappy PDF) but obviously the revision of reference design was a little early for the Herc review boards compared to the Vivid!XS boards. When all cards are finalised on a 6 layer PCB we might get decent results. Certainly to say that there's a real possibility these boards are clocked to the max and might brake at any moment is unfiar IMO. IMGTEC don't have a track record for low quality hardware and neither to ST. Some of there boards might have had bugs when they were still refining tile based rendering but the general quality of there products are good (Dreamcast, Naomi 1 and 2, Kyro 1, Sonic Fury etc). No company in there right minds building for the future is going to release a card that brakes allot. The Kyro 1 only overclocked 10mhz for most people and I don't know anyone thats had a board thats broken.
On a final point just to back up what I'm saying I'll take an extract of the paragraph you based your comments on:
"The core does not get hot, but even with improved cooling (a giantic fan blowing air on both the chip and memory chips) we could not get it past 185 MHz"
If the chip was already overclocked and thats why it won't go much higher then the core would be very hot but it isn't, this shows that the reason is not because the board is clocked to the max.
<<<<<Do you know if a mobile Kyro chip solution is in the makings? Seems like an ideal chip for a mobile unit due to its low overhead.>>>>>
PowerVR anounced a Mobile chip a month back (http://www.powervr.com/PressReleases/2001/IMGAndARMAnnounceNewProcessorForMobileAndCommunications.htm). The chip is called PowerVRMBX, some of the interesting features of the PowerVRMBX that Kyro II doesn't have are a HW T&L unit and FSAA4FREE.