KYRO-II or ATI Radeon, which is better?

[Vincentkhm]

KYRO-II or ATI Radeon, which is better?

 

[Palpatine]

Radeon if you have the money

 

[killall]

depends on your cpu... the kyro scales a lot better... if youve got a really fast cpu i advise you try the kyro

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[Gog]

Depends on which variant of radeon you're talking, you can get 64M DDR VIVO OEM Radeons for the same price as the hercules KyroII, Radeon 32 M SDR for £50 less. (This is not meant to imply that I think the SDR Radeon is a good card, I shall remain neutral and let people who have tried them argure the finer points).

From a non user of either card the Kyro II seems more interesting from a techie point of view.

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Look at the size of that thing!

 

[Mordy]

Acording to most compares on internet (THG, e.t.c.) Radeon (64MB,DDR,TV out) is a little bit faster on high resolution 3D games. But Radeon costs X 2.5 .

-Beer! Good!
-James Hetfield

 

[Palpatine]

If you play alot of games and you want all games working correctly then go with the Radeon. I remember the old days with the voodoo 2/3 and the TNT/TNT2. TNT was faster but Voodoo played all the games perfectly and never had a problem (at least in 60-70 games i tried playing with the 3dfx chips).

The story is the same with the Kyro II. It is a fast chip in higher CPU frequencies but it has some problem with many games. Also Kyro's FSAA is pretty much useless unless you play in 800x600 and below.

Radeon has better 2d image quality - which is pretty important as you spent alot of your time in a 2d enviroment -it is an excellent 3d accelerator with great anisotropic and 32bit-high resolution performance, and the DVD is the best.

I own a Kyro II and i am not impressed by its performance. It is the same as a MX400 based card in 3d as far as i can see from my system and the games that i have played (tbird 980 - 140 x 7, 256 CAS2 ram). The benchmark are showing that it can match a GF 2 or a GF2 ultra in some games but if you dont like playing just one game that the Kyro II performs well, then you have a MX400 equivalent performance. The Kyro doesn't have a T&L and it will be a big drawback when the T&L games start showing up - and some are in the shelves right now.
Some say that it you have a Tbird 1.4 then the Kyro II performs great but in a 1.4 GHz PC even my old Voodoo 3500 is flying...

If you dont have the extra money to buy a Radeon 64DDR or the 32DDR then buy the Kyro II. But if you do have the money (and you are willing to spend them) then buy the Radeon and you won't be dissapointed.

Hope i helped
Palpatine

 

[Crashman]

Radeon. It does almost everything in hardware, putting less dependance on your CPU. The Radeon LE is less than $70 and still beat the Kyro II on most systems.

Video killed my Radio Card!

 

[Guest]

Hey Palpatine,
You say you have trouble getting the Kryo II to work with alot of games. I'm in the market for a card, can I ask you a few questions?
I have a Rage 128 and have come to the opinion that ATI makes the worst drivers for compatability in the market, has that changed with the Radeon? In paticular, a feature in many older games is "8-bit palleted textures" Does the Radeon or Kryo-II support these? Games that need this: StarFleet Command 1&2, X-Wing Alliance, Final Fantasy 7&8. ATI has ONE driver that supports these in win9x and NONE for win2k. Any idea?

 

[Palpatine]

I havent played the games you mention with the Kyro II. The Radeon drivers are ok in 9x but in 2k they are very bad. So i you are using a win2k radeon is not a good choice. I dont know about the 8-bit pallete and the radeon.
Kyro maybe be a great chip but the software companies propably wont care to check if their games will work with a Kyro II based card because Kyro is 1% of the market. So you will see more incompatibilities than a radeon or a GF.
Also many think that Kyro is equal to a GF. That is not the case and many should know that they are buying a MX400 class card. In some games maybe the card does well but you will not see a Kyro II optimized game but all the games will work with a GF card.
I have read many reviews in the net and i havent saw compatibility problems with the radeon. Rage chips had some problems that radeon doesnt seem to inherited them.
So my opinion is that if you want performance, raw power and great fps go for a GF3 or a GF pro/ultra, if you want very good performance and you care about DVD and 2d quality go with a radeon 64DDR. If you want a low-end trouble free chip go with a MX400. I wouldn't recomend the Kyro to anyone. It is a good card but i makes you tamper with settings/registry to make it work correctly.

Hope i helped
Palpatine

 

[Guest]

I had a Radeon 32 meg DDR and I installed the Hercules Prophet 4500---it kicks the Radeons butt, and I have no game issues with the Herc card.

 

[Guest]

2000 is just another update of NT so don't expect a great gaming experience with any card. NT has always had bad game support. 2000 has directX but that doesn't do a whole lot for it. Check www.ntcompatible.com for lists of compatible games, hardware, and drivers if you want to play games on any NT machine.

 

[HolyGrenade]

Actually 2000 is a total rebuild, with just a bit of nt in the core. It is pretty damn good at running a lot of games.


<font color=red><i>Tomorrow I will live, the fool does say
today itself's too late; the wise lived yesterday

 

[noko]

I use both WinMe and W2K. I play most of my games in W2k on my Radeon 64. It is false that the Radeon has terrible W2K drivers, at first yes, now, no way. Choose wisely if you get a MX400 card or any Nvidia card, some are downright trash. My MX400 has cheapo ram which has artifacs at the default ram speed, suck ass 2d and only a few drivers from Nvidia that don't have problems with it. The det 12:41 made a crash box out of my machine while the 12:20 betas worked OK.