Like usual, I'm going to start out with our ol' faithful 3DMark2000. I've said this time and time again about how this benchmark not only stresses quite strongly on your video sub-system performance, but also considerably on your system platform.

Both the NVIDIA cards are running with hardware T&L enabled in this benchmark while the Evil KYRO, which doesn't support hardware T&L, is running with software T&L. This is not a fair comparison between each card, but can show you how each card performs under "best-case" scenarios.

As you can see, even without hardware T&L, the Evil KYRO can keep up quite nicely with the NVIDIA duo, even topping the GeForce2 MX at 32-bit a few times in the higher resolutions and then falling back to last place when in 16-bit rendering mode. This is just one of the many examples of the KYRO's superior 32-bit rendering that gives it such a boost in performance when compared to the NVIDIA cards at 32-bit color.

In our low-end system, the Duron 650 was basically a bottleneck for all three cards as the performance level plateaued at the lower resolution. At the higher resolutions, the video cards' fill-rates becomes the bottleneck and so, we see the same pattern of the KYRO taking a lead over the GeForce2 MX at 32-bit color.

The GeForce2 GTS continues to dominate in both test systems.

Now, things start getting interesting. To even the tables, I decided to turn off hardware T&L support altogether, forcing all three cards to run using software T&L. With this setting, we see that the GeForce2 MX becomes the slowest of the bunch and the KYRO and GeForce2 GTS exchanging leads. At the lower resolutions, the KYRO leads because of its more-advanced technology, but at the higher resolutions, it falls short simply because of the GeForce2 GTS's raw power.

Again, we see that the Duron 650 processor in our low-end system becomes the bottleneck for our performance levels. As soon as we hit the higher resolutions where the platform becomes less and less of the bottleneck and the video card handling more and more of the weight, we see that the GeForce2 GTS just slightly edges out the KYRO for top spot. The GeForce2 MX is simply hurting, dragging along in last place through all the resolutions.

Through the last 2 graphs, we begin to see the benefits of the Evil KYRO appear. With hardware T&L, the two NVIDIA cards clearly wins over the KYRO, but without hardware T&L, they fall to the wrath of the KYRO's advanced rendering methods.

On to: 3DMark2000 Results: Continued