Hercules Prophet 4500 in the test: The Kyro2 compared to the GeForce

Quake3 Arena

Now that the DirectX capabilities of the graphics cards have been extensively tested, a Test of OpenGL skills are not missing. Quake 3 Arena was used as a game-related benchmark. Since the Quake3 engine has become a real export hit and a large number of games, be they already available or still in development, use this engine, the benchmark represents a large number of great game titles.

each the more details, the more comfortable the Hercules Prophet 4500 seems to feel. The GeForce2 MX still dominates in low resolutions, but the Kyro2 card can already outperform the competition with a standard resolution of 1024x768. It can expand this lead with increasing resolution until it is even more than twice as fast as a GeForce2 MX. The performance losses of the Kyro2 are also reasonably bearable and amount to 31 percent, while the GeForce2 MX has a performance drop of 72 percent between the minimum and maximum values.

With the slightly faster Pentium III 600 system, little has changed here either. If the Kyro2 Quake3 dominates, it has very little to oppose the GeForce2 MX at lower resolutions. In terms of playability, however, the performance of the chips with more than 60 frames per second is more than sufficient, with anything above thatmakes no difference to the eye anyway. The general geometry seems to suit the Hercules Prophet 4500 very well, since the way the Kyro2 calculates can save some work. During a normal Quake 3 match, the overdraw, i.e. the proportion of hidden areas, is approximately three. The classic graphics chips draw an average of three times what is ultimately visible, but the Kyro with its intelligent computing technology does not do this, which means that it can boast very good speed advantages in Quake 3.

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