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HERCULES 4500 KYRO 2 REVIEW"Hercules 3DProphet 4500 Kyro 2 review featuring the Kyro 2 GPU which we last tested 2 years ago in our Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 review. In this article we test the Hercules 3DProphet 4500 Kyro2 against the Elsa Gladiac 511 GeForce2 MX 400. Software used for benchmarking is as follows:- 3dmark 2000, 3dmark 2001 SE, GLexcess, Quake and Quake 2." 2001 saw the release of the PowerVR Kyro2 chipset, the first two video cards to use this chipset was the Hercules 3DProphet 4500 and the Videologic VividXS. The Hercules 4500 was fitted with 64mb memory while the cheaper Videologic VividXS had 32mb. Later versions of the Videologic VividXS were fitted with 64mb memory. Other makes of Kyro2 were later released by such companies as Apollo (Inno3D), Powercolor, Shadow and Suma. The main difference between the Kyro2 and the earlier Kyro chipset was a speed increase from 115mhz to 175mhz. WHY IS TILE BASED RENDERING SO SPECIAL?
The Kyro2 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. However with the release of the powerful Kyro2 chipset I'm sure that's all about to change.
GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION
3DMARK 2000
COMMENT - "The Hercules 4500 Kyro2 wipes the floor with the Elsa GeForce2 MX with this benchmark, all of it's scores apart from one result are above 60fps which is very impressive. The Elsa GeForce2 MX however can only manage to get above 60fps with one benchmark which is the low detail helicopter test."3DMARK 2001 SE
COMMENT - "Now we are using a more advanced benchmark program than 3dmark 2000 which supports the use of pixel shaders. Unfortunately both of the video cards are now unable to complete the fourth game test which is called nature because they don't have pixel shaders. As you can see the high quality tests make both video cards fail to deliver 30fps. The low quality tests are much more impressive and the Hercules 4500 Kyro2 scores are in the 60's while the Elsa GeForce2 MX can only manage scores in the 40's."
HERCULES 4500 KYRO 2 REVIEW INDEX
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