VIDEOLOGIC VIVID XS KYRO 2 REVIEW

"Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 review tested against the Palit Daytona GeForce2 MX. Video cards tested on a system using a 1.3Ghz Athlon and a JETWAY 663AS PRO. Software used was:- Max Payne, Quake 3 Arena and Serious Sam."

For this test we are using the Palit Daytona GeForce 2 MX and the new Videologic Vivid XS using the amazing Kyro 2 gpu, they are both AGP and have 32MB of memory.

WHY IS TILE BASED RENDERING SO SPECIAL?

The Kyro 2 uses tile based rendering instead of the more common immediate mode rendering used in such cards as the GeForce2. With immediate mode rendering all of the scene is generated, with tile based rendering only visible parts of the scene are rendered. This approach is obviously more efficent and it means that the video card has to process less information thus saving memory bandwidth.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO SAVE MEMORY BANDWIDTH?

Even though video cards are getting more and more powerful all of the main graphics chip producers face the same problem, memory bandwidth. The higher the resolution, colour depth or number of polygons the more memory bandwidth you will need. You can only pass a certain amount of information over the video card's memory bus, this is the problem they are all facing. ATI was first to tackle the memory bandwidth problem with their HyperZ technology which provides a huge 40% performance increase in some tests. Nvidia introduced the Lightspeed Memory Architecture for the , however none of these go far enough to prevent the latest video cards from being limited by memory bandwidth.

There's one chipset which doesn't use immediate mode rendering, it uses something very different. Something efficent, something called tile based rendering. Tile based rendering is nothing new, it's been around for quite a while but so far has never really caught on. With the release of the Kyro 2 gpu I'm sure that's all about to change.

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON 1.3GHZ
VIDEO CARD	VIDEOLOGIC VIVID XS KYRO 2
	PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX 32MB AGP
POWERVR DRIVER	v1.04.14.0028
NVIDIA DRIVER	DETONATOR v23.11
MOTHERBOARD	JETWAY 663AS PRO
MEMORY	512MB SAMSUNG PC-133 SDRAM
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION	v8.1

QUAKE III ARENA

FASTEST

	123
	115

NORMAL

	103
	107

HIGH QUALITY

	70
	100

PALIT GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS

COMMENT - "The first test is the Quake 3 test, the Palit GeForce2 MX has always done well with this game as a benchmark so I expected it to do quite well. The Palit GeForce2 MX takes an early lead using the ugly fastest setting, this is due to hardware transform and lighting which takes some of the work load off the cpu. However increase the quality settings and the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 gains an advantage when the memory bandwidth limitations of the Palit GeForce2 MX start to take effect. At the high quality setting the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 has achieved a 30fps advantage."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Four.dm68 Benchmark

FASTEST QUALITY
512x384 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Vertex Lighting
Geometic Detail Low
Texture Detail 50%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

NORMAL QUALITY
640x480 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

HIGH QUALITY
800x600 Video Mode
32Bit Colour Depth
32Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometic Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

QUAKE III ARENA

640x480x16

	112
	107

800x600x16

	103
	107

1024x768x16

	74
	101

PALIT GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS

COMMENT - "The Palit GeForce2 MX starts off strongly but loses the lead to the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 in the higher resolutions, both video cards achieve a strong 100fps at 800x600 which is good. The Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 is the only video card to get over 100fps at ALL resolutions tested."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Four.dm68 Benchmark

NORMAL QUALITY
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

QUAKE III ARENA

640x480x16

	112
	107

800x600x16

	101
	103

1024x768x16

	71
	77

PALIT GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS

COMMENT - "Now we are going to use a more advanced form of filtering called Trilinear filtering which offers better image quality than Bilinear but in some cases results in a large performance hit. Here we see things are much closer between the two video cards, the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 just about wins this benchmark. The reason the Palit GeForce2 MX was able to keep up was due to the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 taking a larger performance hit than the Palit GeForce2 MX at higher resolutions, using 16bit also helped the Palit GeForce2 MX because of it's limited bandwidth."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Four.dm68 Benchmark

NORMAL QUALITY
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Trilinear Texture Filtering

MAX PAYNE

640x480x16

	80
	64

800x600x16

	65
	64

1024x768x16

	50
	59

PALIT GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS

COMMENT - "The Palit GeForce2 MX takes a strong early lead taking both 640x480 and 800x600, however it's limitations start to show at 1024x768 and it takes second place to the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2. The reason the VividXS Kyro 2 fails to beat the Palit GeForce2 MX at the lower resolutions is because the Palit GeForce2 MX supports hardware transform & lighting and Max Payne makes heavy use of that feature, another reason is that this test is 16bit so the bandwidth problem of the Palit GeForce2 MX isn't so much of an issue. The Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 however doesn't have hardware t&l so the CPU has to take over the task of t&l which sometimes results in lower performance."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Truck Exploding Demo
Normal Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled

SERIOUS SAM

640x480x16

	96
	84

800x600x16

	79
	83

1024x768x16

	50
	77

PALIT GEFORCE2 MX VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS

COMMENT - "The Palit GeForce2 MX takes an early lead but as the resolution increases it's performance starts to suffer, the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 wins the 800x600 and 1024x768 resolution tests."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
Normal Setting
UHSS Demo
Huge Texture Size
Detailed Textures Enabled
Huge Shadowmap Size
Standard Lens Flare
No Wait Vertical Retrace
Wide Screen Disabled