Nobody is stating that the KYRO II is the perfect card. But it is not a bad card as well! Now lets talk about T&L...the so-called holygrail of 3D GPU's. To date there is not a game on the market that requires T&L. Also, I cannot see a T&L only game being released for a very long time. The retail market for games these days is bad enough and I do not believe developers will be cutting their own throats by releasing a T&L required game anytime soon. This can be said of Unreal II as well. But Unreal II in relality is a non-issue as it will not be released until next year. By that time, the KYRO (most likely will not be called KYRO), or rather PowerVR 4 board will be released and will include a T&L hardware unit. In fact, PowerVR already has a T&L hardware board on the market in the name of the Naomi 2 (the arcade board Sega is currently using), so the technology is available to ImgTec and STM. STM has also mentioned they are going to be meeting with Tim Sweeney to show him how T&L actually works on the PowerVR technology (he has mentioned that T&L would not work and was one of the reason he felt the tech is not good). So the technology is there. Why it is not on the KYRO II board....who knows, but it is mostly likely a cost factor...
Now, I also believe that T&L is a great feature and has a wonderful future, but presently it is not needed or required. Some of you may yell at the MDK2 benchmarks, but the KYRO II still plays this game extremly fast. Up the bandwidth requirements and the KYRO II will in fact become the fastest.
Lets take a look at Serious Sam, which also sports T&L support. From the results I have seen it looks as if the KYRO II is the card to have with Serious Sam, beating out the most of the GeForce 2 boards in benchmarks. Hmmm...does T&L help the GeForce 2 boards with this game?
Someone mention MBTR earlier....this game supports T&L. So I think this individual was probably making reference to the problems some reviewers have found with the KYRO II and this game. Well, I am sorry to say that the problem was not in the KYRO's fault but rather the game developer's fault. A recent patch from the developer have corrected all the problems the KYRO has had with this game (no internal reg settings needed now). In fact, this same patch is needed to get the GeForce 3 to run the game properly. You can look at this page to see how well the KYRO II actually does in MBTR at 32-bit color (ignore 16-bit color as 16-bit rendering on the KYRO is not the same as 16-bit rendering on any other board due to its use of internal true color).
http://www.rivastation.com/3dprophet4500-64mb_e.htm
Someone else mentioned Aquanox as well as a reason not to but the KYRO II. Well, from what I have seen so far I would not buy anything but a GeForce 3 to run this game. The individual who was stating running a GeForce 1 with Aquanox....I do not think so. Interesting to see with these benchmarks though the the KYRO II is able to keep pace with the MX and Radeon boards at 32-bit color. If this game was to be released today....who would buy it?? I know I wouldn't even though it had outstanding visuals. Anyone remember Nocturn and its unrealistic system requirements? I think today people are becoming more interested in the game simply because more people are able to play it.
Now and interesting point that people have not really touched upon in this thread is the idea of game complexity. Increase game complexity (in other words overdraw, increase texture layers etc...) and you in effect increase bandwidth requirements to play the game at a fast fps. With increased complexity which board(s) do you think will be hit the hardest? Well, you can take a look at Serious Sam and see the KYRO 1/2 are not hit very hard while the GeForce 2 boards take the hardest hit (AnandTech review). Another good way to see this is looking at how well a board performs in high res @ 32-bit color-depth with todays games (ie 1280X1024). If you look at the benchmarks you will see the KYRO II is least affected by increased bandwidth requirements...even with games that utilize T&L (remember, hardware only T&L games is a thing of the distant future). So if you want to talk about how future-proof a board is do not forget to include the factor of increasing game complexity and increased bandwidth requirements in the equation. T&L will do squat for you if your board is already memory bandwidth limited. Which is the main reason why 3Dfx was looking into HSR software support in their drivers....and the reason why the GeForce 3 includes HSR in software (Hmmm...some of you are fast to jump on the KYRO II for doing T&L in software but seem to praise the idea of HSR in software...which is nowhere near as fast of hardware HSR). This is probably why a small board with very little transistors with virtually the same specs of a TNT2 board is able to compete with the GeForce 2 boards on the market (minus the ultra). Lets increase game complexity and I really believe the KYRO II will only get stronger when compared with the GeForce 2 boards. I wonder if this is a reason why Hercules has dropped the MX boards from its low- to mid-level boards. Could this be also why rumours of a Creative Labs KYRO II board is floating aroudn the net (other OEM's cannot announce their boards yet as Hercules is given one month free promotion of thier board).
So, even though the KYRO II is not perfect, it is still good enough to warrant a serious look. Simply because it does not support hardware T&L does not mean the board is useless. It does support EMBM, has "working" S3TC support (unlike GeForce boards if I have read correctly - Quake 3 sky), extremely efficient design, excellent 16-bit image quality (only for those games that sport 16-bit only support), excellent 32-bit performance (hardly a drop between 32-bit and 16-bit performance), very good FSAA performance, etc....
So before ditching the board because of its lack of T&L, remember to look at all the factors affecting game performance, not just T&L.
Sorry for the long rant....
The way you explained it makes sense, so thanks for the clarification.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram