This is truly one of the most interesting retro cards of its time, and it honestly deserves more attention. I'm glad people like you have benchmarked it, and Phil made a video about it, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if more owners came out of the woodwork and talked about their experiences with it.

And now tiling was fully adopted by modern GPUs.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

And now tiling was fully adopted by modern GPUs.

Yes, only took thirteen years for them to see the light.

Reputator wrote:

This is truly one of the most interesting retro cards of its time, and it honestly deserves more attention. I'm glad people like you have benchmarked it, and Phil made a video about it, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if more owners came out of the woodwork and talked about their experiences with it.

Texturecoord precision wobbles are not nice to see with old games. I wouldn't recommend it for "retrogaming". It's also unstable with anything UnrealEngine2. Many of the features it supported ended up being barely used by games anyway (EMBM, 8-stage multitexturing, etc)

It could be seen as a PowerVR TNT2 Ultra at best, especially without the fun SGL stuff.

(also its much touted "Internal True Colour" is just 32bit buffer->16bit dither->DAC filter (overmarketed as some crazy super secret tech), so basically "22-bit"'ing it there.)

It's a crazy mix of everything. Flawed linear filtering of GeForce, godlike 16-bit color of 3Dfx, capable of doing Dot3, EMBM, S3TC, SSAA. 32mb version does not suffer as much as competitors when VRAM hits it limit.

Just to note, per the next thread I am fixing to start, the Kyro II also beats the crap out of the Geforce 4 MX 420 in a large chunk of the test I did..... Given the price of the two cards at the time they were on market, the Kyro II seemed much more like the better bang for buck option in the budget card range. Not bad considering Kyro II was released first at what, a year earlier?

You're not exactly comparing them in an app it wants (3dmark2001 will show the Kyro2 getting stomped here)

I'm gunning for Direct X 7 and prior only. Thats the type of stuff I run in 98. Thats why you're not seeing me run anything after 2000.

I wouldn't even consider throwing 3D Mark 2k1 into any kind of mix anyway unless I was using Windows XP, a Athlon Xp at least and a card capable of pixel shader support, because CPU speed does play a big role in that test as does pixel shader power for the end test score. 3D mark 2k1 is aimed mainly at testing Direct X 8 hardware and faster processors in general, and both cards do so poorly in that test that its pointless to me unless I want an exercise in frustration. Also, I'm not comparing them at all to each other in some kind of specific project, thus two separate threads. I have some cards here I will be testing as I go before I box them back up. Thats why I am posting these threads.

Also, the MX 420 beat the Kyro II in 3D Mark 2000, which I expected due to Hardware TnL but it did not win by some overly massive margin. I cant play 3D Mark 2000 though, so I'm more inclined to not pick a card based on just that benchmark when I finally decide on what to leave in this build. You know what I can play? Dethkarz, No one lives Forever, and Unreal Tournament. I have to look at the majority of the games I'm playing, and see which card runs the most at the best performance with the least amount of frame dips per session. I more or less just run 3D mark 99 and 2k out of habit and to make sure things are working correctly and stable. I tend to run it before I install any games.

But yeah as far as the two cards go, I'm just noting an observation between the two as I go, and as of now the Kyro II is doing better at DX 7 at the majority of the games. Gameplay also feels smoother on Kyro II to me. There are less FPS dips on it then on the MX 420 in my experience. YMMV. If you plan to run mainly hardware TnL extensive games, the MX 420 may better suit your needs. But then again, so would a Geforce 3.

If you really are interested though in seeing how future proof the Kyro II was compared to the MX 420, you can check these videos out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7mC0Eqnues&t=697s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPSVze0NZyA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bkKD6C7Ng

That guy ran the card with a Pentium dual core. Was interesting to see the results he got. Basically if you know the MX 420 can run those games in the videos better then Kyro II on a similar setup, then you have all the info you need to know concerning DX 8 on up, if thats what your goal would be.

Something I should mention about the Kyro on the off chance someone feels encouraged to buy one on a whim. If at all possible try to google to see if your motherboard has compatibility issues with the card prior to purchase. Every Kyro II card I have ever owned has been somewhat picky about what motherboards it will work with, similar to how the Rage Fury MAXX acts. If you do pick up a Kyro, and its not working in your setup, if possible try to test it in a couple other boards before writing it off as defective.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

Something I should mention about the Kyro on the off chance someone feels encouraged to buy one on a whim. If at all possible try to google to see if your motherboard has compatibility issues with the card prior to purchase. Every Kyro II card I have ever owned has been somewhat picky about what motherboards it will work with, similar to how the Rage Fury MAXX acts. If you do pick up a Kyro, and its not working in your setup, if possible try to test it in a couple other boards before writing it off as defective.

Ah yes, good to know. This issue can sneak up on a person who isn't used to dealing with, shall we say, off-kilter graphics cards.

Also, I had a fan just quit on a Kyro 1 64MB after only 4-5ish years of use. That caused the card to slow die as I gave the PC to a family member. 😒