Conclusion
We are all extremely lucky that Kyro II based products will not only be available, but also easy to get by the end of March or the beginning of April. The performance of the Kyro II based 3D Prophet 4500 is nothing short of stunning given its price: a mere $149.99.
It has been a while since we have had a truly high powered graphics card dip below the $200 price mark. In the past, stripped-down versions of higher performance parts were sold to cost-conscious consumers, oftentimes leaving them with sub-par performance. The Kyro II changes all that.
With its tile based rendering algorithm, the Kyro II provides blazing fast performance considering the price and was actually able to beat products almost $200 more than the cost of a Kyro II based board. Throughout the benchmarks, the Kyro II based 3D Prophet 4500 simply dominated everything else in its price range. The Kyro II was ready and able to tackle any game we sent its way.
Our one concern lies with the display errors we experienced in Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing. Although the visual abnormalities were only noticed in this benchmark, it is possible that other games may be effected by the improper rendering. We can only hope that STMicroelectronics recognizes the problem and provides a quick fix, as this would make the Kyro II near perfect.
Regardless of the driver problem encountered, the Kyro II is truly amazing and is a true testament of the potential of tile based rendering. Recall the fact that in order to get this high level of performance, all STMicroelectronics had to do was increase the clock speed of the original Kyro and it becomes clear that tile based rendering has an extreme amount of potential.
The Kyro II based 3D Prophet 4500 brings high end gaming performance to a segment that it has not seen in quite some time. As an inexpensive 3D solution, a Kyro II based product may be just what the doctor ordered until a fully programmable graphics processor becomes necessary, an event that will most likely take at least six to eight months. We look forward to what those six to eight months will do to the tile based PowerVR series, but we know that now a Kyro II based card is the card of choice for those out there with even a slight constraint on their budget.
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MonkeyPaw - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane (by keeping the article up). I had one of these cards back in 2002, and it was one I looked back upon fondly. I can't remember most of the GPUs I owned from yesteryear, save the Voodoo 3 and the crappy S3 Verge. That's fairly elite company, at least in my brain, anyway. :)xrror - Monday, March 2, 2015 - link
Yea, it's sad that there wasn't any further development of the Kyro series in the PC market. If I remember right (probably needs fact checked) Imagination's development resources got sucked into the Sega Dreamcast after this point. Even that wouldn't have been so bad if Sega hadn't just given up on the Dreamcast so early on due to a "poor showing in Japan" (nevermind everyone loved it in the US but we didn't count apparently, also see Genesis/MegaDrive).I think Imagination or at least their tech lives on in the embedded/mobile space now, but meh - really wanted to see what they could have done with their tech without being shackled to a power budget in 2002-2005 era PC's.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, October 14, 2020 - link
You're wrong. The Dreamcast was designed years earlier using PowerVR Series 2. The later "Kyro series" was based on Series 3. The DC design win netted them some much needed cash which they used to fuel their Series 3 releases. What killed imgtech was their inability to play well with others (board partners) and issues staying on schedule for releases. If they had managed to get the 4800 out the door sooner, and released the larger Kyro III with DDR it would have bought them some time. Especially if they had paired it with a hardware T&L block like Elan.thegreatjombi - Wednesday, August 12, 2015 - link
Its very interesting to think that Imagination Technologies could have been another foot note in history (3dfx, bitboys Oy! Rendition..) but going mobile and refining their technology has allowed them to basically become more popular than ATI(AMD) or Nvidia. There are probably more devices in peoples houses running a powervr variant than have an AMD or Nvidia GPU.I do wish someone would stick their chip on a discrete card again, they apparently support full Directx and OpenGL! could be an interesting low profile, low end, low power, fanless card for HTPCs.