KyroII SE - Hercules 3D Prophet 4800 Review in a few days !

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Hello!

Thomas how's webmaster @ www.pvr-world.de let us know that a Hercules 3D Prophet 4800 is on his way to him and he's going to bring a review of this card online in the next few days :D ! I don't expect too much of the KyroII SE, but i wonder how it will compete against Nvidias G4MX series.
I should mention that it's gonna be in German, which is no problem for me (as i'm living in Germany :D), but could be a problem for some guys of you. Hopefully there will be English reviews soon online too. I'm sure Thomas is not the only one how got a reviewboard from Hercules :)!

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I do not see why Hercules are messing around with a dead product. They applied a high profit margin to the Kyro II on initial release which did not help its cause. What do Hercules think they are going to get out of another Kyro II?
I used to think the Radeon compatibility was bad until I stepped in a Kyro. They say you can't flog a dead horse but legendary Hercules was never known for his brains. So is he writing drivers now? If not, who is?
 
I know all ya'll would think I'm crazy, but Hercules would be REALLY smart to take a look at buying or at least investing in Bitboys. REALLY SMART.
 
Oh goody... Better let the BitBoys rest in peace. Has never worked, but tapped money. Sorry country-fellows, but there is no more trust in you.


And what the hell is Hercules thinking? Even KyroIII was late last autumn. Still rehashing KyroII? We are in the age of Parphelia (with a bit poor perfomance, comparing that it should have the clocks and the bandwidth) and GF4. Now just get me a combination of those: decent FSAA and proper speed not to drop in the first games that come after the card...

Admitted: it's not the budget option. But there was not that much advancement between GF2 and GF4. I'd like to see a worthy step sometimes. Which Parphelia could've been.
 
Bitboys is hardly dead at all. Can't say anything specific, but they are doing stuff you would be surprised at. I stand by what I said though.
 
I would be surprised if BitBoys released a card or sold their technology for use in a commercial product, that's what I would be surprised at. ;) :p ;)

Seriously, if they have something good, the market seems relatively open--let loose, I say. They'll have to come out of their cocoon and make money someday. How much longer can they retain their supposed technological lead with the size of nVidia's and ATi's R&D bearing down on them?
 
No ben I'm not at all, just making a statement that I feel is correct.

You're in for a few surprises Pete. That is a fact, not something I suspect or anticipate. Additionally, it isn't as though they aren't doing R&D. A whole bunch of new stuff was developed during my time there.
 
do not see why Hercules are messing around with a dead product.
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And the stupid thing is Hercules have actually deliberately delayed the Kyro II SE, they could have had it out much earlier. Now it is sort of pointless to release it.

I used to think the Radeon compatibility was bad until I stepped in a Kyro
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If you had loads of compatability problems with Kyro then you did something wrong IMO.

And what the hell is Hercules thinking? Even KyroIII was late last autumn. Still rehashing KyroII?
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Well they can't manufacture the Kyro III chips without someone like STM.. so what would you have them do? Isn't this the same sort of thing that Nvidia did when they brought out the Geforce 2 MX400? It was just a Geforce 2 MX with a new name brought out around the time of the Geforce 3.

But yes we should be seeing Kyro III now, and would have seen it already if not for STM pulling out... ah well we may still see a souped up Series 4 and they do have Series 5 in advanced development now anyway
 
I do not see why it is such a shame for Hercules to worm its way in with the Kyro versus the GF4MX. Anyhow, will the SE have cubemaps this time around? I believe that was a Sweeney complaint, but what do I know?

Its nice to see you back and posting Dave, hope all is well with the girlfriend.
 
I'm happy to hear that BitBoys are doing something . Their technology might just fit into today's memory bandwidth needs ... I'm refering to that thing with QBM or sometihing like that .

I've never trusted them and never got enthusiastic as I know how hard is to start a buissiness but I wish them good luck . With nVIDIA around we need as much competition as we can get .

I remember back in the TNT2 times , the best video card in the world was under 199$ and now the starting price is more than double ... :(


Also I'm very sorry for the dumping of KyroIII and Kyro technology and methods in general as I feel there was something in that company ....

Oh well , VIA is launching Columbia . An S3 powered DX9 GPU @ 300/600 and I don't think that they'll be the saviours of Kyro either ...
 
Dave said:
No ben I'm not at all, just making a statement that I feel is correct.

You're in for a few surprises Pete. That is a fact, not something I suspect or anticipate. Additionally, it isn't as though they aren't doing R&D. A whole bunch of new stuff was developed during my time there.
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The problem is they're competing against profitable companies with massive R&D budgets. I'm sorry, but eventually they're going to slip behind if they don't make money somehow. Nvidia and ATi are pouring a lot of money into R&D and they can afford it.
 
Dave said:
I know all ya'll would think I'm crazy, but Hercules would be REALLY smart to take a look at buying or at least investing in Bitboys. REALLY SMART.
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I was waiting this last summer already, but it never happened.

(since KYRO II deal in march, Hercules had very big troubles getting high end products out, because of delivering problems with nVidia. Still, though ATI announced as early as April that they are selling chips to 3rd party manufacturers, Hercules <-> ATi deal was announced not until in November. So, what on earth Hercules was waiting for the whole summer?? I don't know exact answer, but I do have strong feeling about it.)


Dave said:
Bitboys is hardly dead at all. Can't say anything specific, but they are doing stuff you would be surprised at. I stand by what I said though.
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I am still standing behind all that what I have said about Bitboys too. But when talking about bitboys, everything is unsure until it is officially announced. So, I don't doubt Dave's words, but I just want to remind that things may take for a while. (or they could also happen tomorrow.)

Dave said:
No ben I'm not at all, just making a statement that I feel is correct.

You're in for a few surprises Pete. That is a fact, not something I suspect or anticipate. Additionally, it isn't as though they aren't doing R&D. A whole bunch of new stuff was developed during my time there.
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I think there's bunch of suprises coming to many. and don't ask when or what. ;)
 
Anyhow, will the SE have cubemaps this time around? I believe that was a Sweeney complaint, but what do I know?
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No, its just a faster slightly modified Kyro II chip AFAIK.. I'll be incredibly suprised if its anything more then that.

Oh well , VIA is launching Columbia . An S3 powered DX9 GPU @ 300/600 and I don't think that they'll be the saviours of Kyro either ...
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I've heard this name mentioned before but I've never seen anything more then what seem to be made up specs and rumours. Is their any hard info on this chip?.. does it actually excist or is it just an idea/plan?
 
I dont see any reason why Hercules should NOT get out the KyroII SE for the low budget market against Geforce4MX, but i also think it's very late for a KyroII SE! The right time would have been IMHO end of 2001!
And as i know PowerVR is developing Series 5 already which is a DX9-Part as www.hardware.fr claims and should IMHO be ready latest at CeBIT 2003.
And who knows perhaps we will still see a Serie 4 Chip as TSMC seems to have problems with 0.13 micrometer prozess (see ATis R300) and Kyro3 is planed for 0.13 micron and should be produced at TSMC. So this could be a reason why we still didn't hear anything about Kyro3....who knows ;)!

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ActionNews said:
And who knows perhaps we will still see a Serie 4 Chip as TSMC seems to have problems with 0.13 micrometer prozess (see ATis R300) and Kyro3 is planed for 0.13 micron and should be produced at TSMC. So this could be a reason why we still didn't hear anything about Kyro3....who knows ;)!
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funny, and i though the reason we didn't hear anything 'bout kyro3 was that STM had left the pc graphics market.
 
darkblu said:
ActionNews said:
And who knows perhaps we will still see a Serie 4 Chip as TSMC seems to have problems with 0.13 micrometer prozess (see ATis R300) and Kyro3 is planed for 0.13 micron and should be produced at TSMC. So this could be a reason why we still didn't hear anything about Kyro3....who knows ;)!
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funny, and i though the reason we didn't hear anything 'bout kyro3 was that STM had left the pc graphics market.
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Yes it's only my speculation, but then i do not understand why STMicro still releases KyroII SE but not the more promisingly Kyro3? IMHO when STMicro releases the KyroII SE they or a new partner will most likely also release Kyro3. For me it doesn't make sense to release the (IMHO very late and without real chance) KyroII SE but not the Kyro3.
But i don't know what future realy brings :)! We will see!

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Just thought I'd mention that here in remote Sweden, a small computer hardware store lists a "Hercules 3D Prophet 4800 Kyro II SE chipset AGP 64MB SDRAM TV-Out Retail", and I believe it is a new entry in the pricelist.

Mind you, it's not in stock.

Interesting thing about the price: At least in this store, it just barely undercuts a Hercules 8500LE 64 Mb. One should note, however, that in Sweden, video card prices seem to have little correlation with performance.

http://www.mycom.se/produkter/default.asp?itemnr=5&pt=5, for those interested.
 
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