As far as I remember, Hercules did build a board based on this chip (3D Prophet 4800). It was basically a KYRO II clocked at 200 MHz (instead of the usual 175), and it's supposed "hardware T&L" was a software hack dubbed "EnT&L" or "Enhanced T&L" (somewhat similar to the Voodoo3/4/5 "Geometry assist" feature).

More info:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200304230402 … tm-kyro2se.html

The final "retail" PCB and package never surfaced. The only existing boards are probably only engineering or review samples.

http://www.overclockersonline.net/reviews/5000147/
(The earliest archived page I found was when the review was taken down, bummer).

VideoLogic also built one called the Vivid! XS Elite, but whether these made it out into the wild is a matter of question.

So if it's just an overclocked Kyro II, then the drivers should enable TnL on any Kyro II 4500?

As PPP said, none of them have T&L hardware. They were going to pull a 3dfx and emulate it in their drivers.

Besides, DX7 T&L is nearly worthless for actual gaming. 3Dmark scores ballooned its worth way beyond reason. It was very restrictive so not very appealing. DX9, and to a lesser extent the short-lived DX8, was when hardware geometry processing really took off and meant something.

swaaye wrote:

As PPP said, none of them have T&L hardware. They were going to pull a 3dfx and emulate it in their drivers.

Besides, DX7 T&L is nearly worthless for actual gaming. 3Dmark scores ballooned its worth way beyond reason. It was very restrictive so not very appealing. DX9, and to a lesser extent the short-lived DX8, was when hardware geometry processing really took off and meant something.

Yes sir, though it did end up forcing developers to write fixed-function T&L rendering paths for games (Doom 3, Halo and Half-Life 2 being the biggest, if not only examples), since so many people were using such cards (at around HL2's release time, the most common card in their userbase's computers was a GF2 MX).

And sliderider, I don't own any Kyro II cards, but perhaps if you own one you could try those aforementioned driver sets and see if the emulated T&L works and provides you with any benefit. Still not as good as the real deal, if you ask me.

Those aren't the only examples. Some of the earlier big examples are NOLF2, BF1942 and Operation Flashpoint - 2001-2002 games that made heavy reliance on hardware T&L for performance. No T&L on these means death. 3DAnalyze or software solutions can't help you here.

Also, MDK2 is another early T&L game from May 2000 before the Geforce2 even came out. Giants: Citizen Kabuto was infamously slow and supported T&L anyway...

It's too bad NV made GF4MX. Made everybody's life difficult except the NV money bag of course. It would have been interesting ifit had been DX8. We'd have had an extended DX8 era.😁

swaaye wrote:

It's too bad NV made GF4MX. Made everybody's life difficult except the NV money bag of course. It would have been interesting ifit had been DX8. We'd have had an extended DX8 era.😁

Yeah, between the millions of OEM cards and the millions bought at retail by people looking for an inexpensive gaming card it set gaming back for a long time because nobody dared to cut them from their compatibility lists out of fear of destroying their sales and since the GF4MX has direct links back to the GF2MX and the even earlier Geforce SDR/DDR cards, those cards ended up being supported long past their expiration dates as well.