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Conclusion
At $139, the Evil KYRO is priced right between the ranks of NVIDIA's GeForce2 MX and GeForce2 GTS products. Likewise, the performance level of the Evil KYRO, as we had witnessed throughout our benchmark results, showed that the Evil KYRO performs, on average, slightly better than PowerColor's own GeForce2 MX card--that is, depending on what color-depth you normally play in. If you're running your games at 16-bit color all the time and don't think 32-bit will ever make a difference for you, then the Evil KYRO is not your card and I would suggest sticking with a "traditional" card such as the GeForce2 MX or maybe even the GTS if you have the cash. If, however, you're like me and always runs games at 32-bit whenever possible, then you're sure to see a performance benefit from the Evil KYRO over "traditional" cards.
The KYRO's tile-based rendering engine is truely a work of art that, like all hardware technologies, must be embraced by game developers for one to truely see its advantages. As we saw from our benchmarks, current games such as Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament take little advantage of the KYRO's tile-based rendering technique and such, doesn't allow it to perform up to its full potential. On the other hand, if, someday, we find a game that has the same amount of overdraw as the amount we saw in the VillageMark benchmark, then, according to the results obtained from running VillageMark, the KYRO will reign supreme.
Will games in the future embark on the advantages of tile-based rendering? It will take at least a year or two, if we consider the amount of time that NVIDIA's hardware T&L has taken to catch on, until we actually will see games popping up on store shelves utilizing killer overdraw, multiple texture layers and huge textures altogether. Until those games begin to surface, the Evil KYRO's only advantage now would be in its blazing-fast 32-bit rendering, a feature that I feel is very-much needed; but once they do, we will finally see that elegance will out-perform power.
Pros
- Tile-based rendering
- Blazing-fast 32-bit color rendering
- Affordable price
Cons
- Important driver issues
- Very few, if any, games support all the key features of KYRO accelerator; a little ahead of its time
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