There appeared the first results of the preliminary tests run for the new KYRO II based graphics card by Hercules – 3D PROPHET 4500. The exclusive tests were carried out by German CHIP Online. And the results proved just impressive! Here is what the guys managed to obtain:
The test system was configured as follows:

• Pentium III 1GHz CPU;
• i815 based mainboard;
• 128MB PC133 SDRAM;
• DirectX 8.0a.

Here are some numbers:

Benchmark	Results, fps
Quake3 Arena, 1024x768x16	91
Quake3 Arena, 1024x768x32	79
Quake3 Arena, 1280x1024x16	79
Quake3 Arena, 1280x1024x32	53
Expendable, 1024x768x16	90
Expendable, 1024x768x32	87
3DMark2001, 1024x768x16	5225

If we compare these results to GeForce2 MX, we will see that in Quake3 Arena KYRO II is about 10% faster than the NVIDIA’s competitor. The advantage of the newcomer in Expendable makes about 50% even though the drivers aren’t finalized yet. The final drivers should be ready by CeBIT. Moreover, in 32bit color the values drop insignificantly and the gap between the results obtained in 16bit and in 32bit is considerably small. Why? Well, in the first place KYRO II owes its success to the tile based architecture and true 32bit rendering.