Kyro II problems

[Liquid Snake]

Well I built a machine for my sister and decided on a Kyro II. After I got everything up and running, I fired up 3DMark2001 (yeah, yeah it sucks) and got an astonishingly horrible score of 979! My G400 MAX could easily hit 1100+. This is at 1024x768x32. So I looked around for the Kyro II threads here (the search function of this forum is atrocious, can't find anything!), and followed some suggestions.

I disabled AGP 4x in the BIOS but that didn't help much. Nuno mentioned Video Memory Cache, but that setting isn't found in the BIOS. AGP Drive is on auto. Didn't find the Fast Writes option in the BIOS either. I tried setting AGP Apeture to 256MB (originally 64MB). It seemed to help a bit, score in nVidiamark 2001 was boosted to 1050. Nothing is overclocked. One of the threads mentioned that DX 8.0a does not work well with the Kyro II. I'm going to try DX 8.1 beta 648 after I post this.

System specs:
Duron 700
MSI K7T Turbo (BIOS is v2.8)
Hercules 4500 64MB w/o TVOut (OEM version)
256MB of PC133 (RAM is set to CAS 2 and 133MHz)
IBM 60GXP 20GB HD
Pioneer DVD-106S
Linksys LNE100TX NIC

System is running Win2K SP2. VIA 4in1 drivers are 4.32. Hercules drivers are 7.114. Using the onboard sound with VIA's latest drivers (this machine doesn't need high quality sound). DirectX version is 8.0a.

[Wombat]

Doesn't the Kyro depend on the CPU even more than the G400?

[Liquid Snake]

Yes, but I think the Duron 700 is at least adequate for the Kyro II.

[Nuno]

Snake, with all due respect, stop whining about 3dmark2001 and KyroII. Yes it sucks completlely at it with a less than 1 Ghz cpu. Yes it´s quite possible the G400 was scoring better.
Yes that score (although a bit on the low side) seems adequate for a Duron. Other factors come into play. Higher fsb speeds helps alot. 4-way interleaving also. Agressive memory timing (in wich CAS 2 makes only a small diference) can give you ~100-150 more.

Dx8.1 build 620 (not 648) will give you 100 points more mainly because of the rendering errors intoduced. You could look at the demo thought, because miraculously Kyro II seems to be able to render into textures after all

KyroII drivers 7.xxx also seem to be highly unoptimized for 3dfart2001. Rumors from Madonion fori is that a new deriver set available to developers and soon to be released (maybe 8.xxx series) bring KyroII performance up to par with a GTS on a decent cpu (wich I find hard to believe).

Don´t worry with a 1 Gig cpu KyroII always start scoring better than a MX, actually its natural competition. Here, KyroII at default speed:

http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?1183358

3dmark2001 IMHO is benchmarketing at its best. It was totally suited to hype Geforce3, as 2k was to hype Geforce2. Now what´s funny is that by what I´ve seen until now by early experiencez is that Max Payne, suposedly using 3dmark2001 engine doesn´t run better on a Gforce3 than on a KyroII. Amazing, eh?

Now back to the point. To be sure there´s nothing wrong with your system, fire like Quake3 HQ++ at 1024x768x32 and tell me if you´re getting similar framerates to your G400

[Liquid Snake]

Heh actually I forgot to mention that I also ran Sandra, and memory performance seems low (the numbers were in the 400MB/sec range I think). Overall the system seems kind of sluggish, so actually it may not be the Kyro. I don't have a copy of Q3, but I will download the demo and see. Also, if you can point me to any way of benching UT, I can also do some UT benchmarks (I have a copy of UT). Oh, and I've seen some "gl_ext_reme" scores posted by you and some others, where do I get this program?

[Tom]

Liquid Snake,

Here's a site with a ton of good benchmarking information,
including Unreal Tournament......be aware that it is a Nvidia
site ...they even poke fun at themselves with this line
on the webpage "Over Six Million nVIDIOTS Served"

nN News Guide to Benchmarking

[Oboy]

To see what FPS you get in UT,
in the console type (to open it hit the ~ key)
timedemo 1 (enter)

Then type
open cityintro (enter)

Then hit the esc key to see what going on.

this will bring up the FPS

To end In the console type timedemo 0

Oboy

[Nuno]

MSI K7T doesn´t have 4-way interleave on by default I guess. If you haven´t that option on the bios you´ll have to download a little hack (a device driver that reprograms that option on the chipset every time it boots). Search on www.viahardware.com
I may have it floating around on the hdd, I may e-mail it to you if you want.

Here´s what a half-decent memory tunning can do on a Asus A7V133:


That alows me to beat Athlons 1.2 Gig

About Quake3, how about other games that you played with the G400? Do you notice any improvements?

[Liquid Snake]

OK thanks for the links guys. I guess 3DMark just doesn't like the Kyro. Ran Q3 at 1024x768x32 with everything on max and got 51.2fps. What did I get on the G400? 18.2fps But that this Kyro is going into my sister's machine not mine I'll look for the tweaks and report back.

[Nuno]

Just to tease, if you upgrade that Duron with a bird 1 ghz (cheap now) you´ll get ~80 fps on that setting

Talk about scaling

[Liquid Snake]

Heh well the Duron was cheap, and this machine is going to be used by my sister, not me. She doesn't care if she can get 80fps in Q3 I located the program to enable memory interleave. Now I get 419/519 in Sandra mem. benchmark (previously was 368/430). Quake3 went up to 53fps. The Quake3 scores are after I reinstalled Win2k w/o VIA drivers. I used SP2 only as Gurm suggested in another thread. nVidiamark still gives the same score as before reinstallation.

[Admiral]

I get about 70fps in Quake 3 1024x768x32 (highest settings, trilinear), a score of around 1800 in 3D Mark2001 and about 5300 in 3DMark2k.
On a P3 650@900 with a Hercules Kyro II.

3DSpotlight has a guide on tweaking the Kyro II if you're interested (Kyro II tweak guide).
Good for driver settings explanation. Not that the Hercules' HTML manual isn't good for this, it just doesn't talk much about External Depth Stencil Buffer and today I installed the first game that didn't like the Kyro's internal one, Revenant.

[Liquid Snake]

Oh well. I unlocked the CPU (btw, anyone know any cheap (i.e. free) way to connect the L1 bridges other than using a pencil?) and bumped the FSB up to 133 and set the multiplier to 6.5 resulting in 866MHz. That boosted the Q3 scores at 1024x768x32 (all settings at max) to 63.3fps. I had a hard time believing that the Kyro II was so CPU-limited. Didn't make any sense to me for a budget card to require a very fast CPU. Anyway, in Powerstrip Diagnostics, it indicates that AGP is off, and in DxDiag AGP Texturing is disabled. Is this normal?

[Pace]

So, just wondering, how is Kyro performance on a 1Ghz+ system, i.e. a top Athlon or P4?

(Paolo going for a gaming rig )

P.

Edit: Here's a link I'm using for 1Ghz numbers - http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/kyro2/page6a.asp

[DentyCracker]

You have a problem using the pencil? Just make sure it's a soft lead and that it is quite sharp. If you're nearsighted it helps too
I can focus (without me glasses on) on things 7 cm away. My pencil job has been running now since the end of August 2000 without having to be redone.