Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64MB - KYRO II (5/15) Image Quality Another category in which the Kyro II does things differently is image quality. Internally, the chip always renders a picture at full 32Bit color, but whenever 16Bit is required, it downsamples the colordepth. This explains why the performance is almost identical under 32Bit and 16Bit, and also makes the choice to play in 32Bit color much easier. Due to the fact that even some of the games released today offer only 16Bit color modes, image quality at this setting remains of importance to gamers. Below you’ll find screenshots comparing the picture quality of a 3D Prophet 4500, an MX, and a RADEON at 16 and 32Bit color. (You'll need to set your desktop to 32Bit color, otherwise you won't be able to see a difference between 16 and 32Bit.)
The screenshots are an enlarged cut-out from the new DirectX 8 benchmark Aquamark. You see that the Kyro II shows a lot less color banding. These artifacts are especially visible when several transparent textures overlap (for example the rays of light crossing the shimmer of the dome). In 32Bit color, which all cards run flawlessly, none of these artifacts are visible of course. Now for a comparison of 16Bit vs. 32Bit color output between the Kyro II and the GeForce 2 MX:
In these screenshots we see that the downsampling of the color doesn't leave the image quality unaffected. So although the Kyro II has the better dithering, it has a slight problem with color corruption. Texture Compression This brings us to the next interesting point, namely texture compression. The Kyro II only supports DXT1 mode. If a game uses textures compressed for DXT2 or DXT3, these textures are recalculated/recompressed to DXT1. For more information on texture compression and the various modes available, take a look here and here.Compatibility Of course, as with any other graphics accelerator, the success of the Kyro II depends completely on its compatibility with existing (and upcoming) games. A low price and good performance are worthless if the card will not run a game or only runs it with display errors and visual artifacts. On the whole, testing and benchmarking proceeded without incident with the v7.56 drivers. The only problems I encountered were that that Evolva's Dot3 bump mapping test refused to run - an issue which Hercules has promised to look into - and that Mercedes Benz Truck Racing showed visual artifacts until I turned off the alpha textures. A cautious prediction: Since the Kyro II is basically nothing but a Kyro (1) treated to a die-shrink, and since the Kyro has been around for over a year now, I don't expect any major compatibility issues. Besides, the driver team still has some time left before these cards go on sale, so they should be able to iron out the remaining kinks by then. The final driver version, v8xx, should run without problems. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Copyright: 09.04.2001 -
RIVA
Station 2001 - Lars Weinand Translation by Benjamin Kraft URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/3dprophet4500-64mb_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
 |
