PowerVr users

Zardon

does anyone still own a PowerVR card? id love to hear, in fact im sure alot of people would love to hear owner experiences with this card. from dreamcast to PC !

Candyman

Does the Matrox M3D count???? :o

UberLord

Dude - this needs to be in the flamewar section!!!

FYI: The Dreamcast uses a PowerVR series 2 based chip. The Neon 250 (made by VideoLogic) uses a similar chip but a bit more advanced. This card and unfortunately console was a total flop in terms of sales. However, PowerVR made a tidy sum from the Dreamcast. Infact, the console itself sold very well - its just the games took too long to come out and SEGA couldn't afford to keep selling the console below cost.

Present day brings the PowerVR series 3 cards called the Kyro. A totally new core and thankfully a totally new driver as PowerVR have really struggled with compatibility through D3D and OpenGL. The D3D driver is rock solid - on par with ATI and nVidia cards I've owned. However, aside from Quake3 based titles the OpenGL driver really does suck a$$. Hopefully Linux driver development by ImgTec will improve OpenGL performance in Winblows - er Windows.

The Kyro 2 range (same chip - just a bit faster) holds its own against the more expensive cards such as the ATI 7500 and the GayFarce MX range. The range of DirectX 8 games can be counted on one hand - the number of DirectX 7 and OpenGL 1.2 titles require something a bit more powerful. The card is dead in terms of features and speed for the future, but for present day there is no better performing card bang per buck.

From another POV, the 3D market started off as 3Dfx vs PowerVR. No other contenders were around for a year or so. 3Dfx is long gone, as was THE success story of the early 90's. PowerVR has never really sold all that well - enough to keep it alive, make money and develop future products -but not enough for outright glory.

I've been with them from the start - and the image quality and speed has always impressed me (if the game worked in the old days - lol). The only letdown was Unreal - looked worse and played slower than software more :/ The classic "mines better than yours game" was Ulim@te Race - one of the 1st games to support PowerVR from the ground up. And it showed. Faster and much much better looking compared to the Voodoo1.

Sorry if I've gone on a bit, but PowerVR has been in 3D since the very start of the PC 3D era and they're still there. Kyro III (series 4) might not turn heads as its more than likely to be another budget card. But with VIA rumoured to be buying the graphics part of STMicro - well, VIA already have S3 making budget and integrated 3D stuff. So logic says that VIA want a top-end PowerVR chip. Hopefully, this will be cheaper and faster than your wildest dreams. Image Qualty isn't to be frowned at either - the VideoLogic Kyro had better IQ than my ATI 8500. Maybe not as good as my Matrox G200, but certainly there abouts.

So - erm - yeah

GO [size=large]P[/size]OWER[size=large]VR[/size]

UberLord

Ahh - the good old PCX2 - sadly imcompatible with most D3D titles - but rocked in everything else

przemol

Hi. I like powerVR and i have PCX2 and neon250 from videologic. (Boxed version) Old pcx2 works fine on duron 1 GHz In quake 2 I got about 30 fps but lighting are poor, very ugly. Ultimate race pro works excellent I can run neon250 normally, maybe the card is broken or dont want to works on my mobo ecs k5s7a I have conflikt with hdd on board controller. I cant change this.

IceCold

When the PVR250 was originally launched, poor drivers caused the card to flop...rendering errors in many games. Games on the DC running the Series 2 chip didn't turn out to be flops...obviously, since the games were coded to utilize the chip's features, and tile rendering approach.

And when the Kyro was released, due to the lack of even a DX7 feature (HW T&L), marred with poor drivers (usual of STM), caused substantial performance below that of a GeForce2 MX, but on the level on an S3 Savage 2000. When it came to rendering scenes with high amounts of overdraw, the Kyro held its own against its competitors.

The Kyro II, being a tweaked Kyro, had amazing performance (almost up to par with the GeForce2 GTS), for a chip without T&L support. But when it came to DX7 feature-heavy games (e.g. Giants), the chip started showing its weaknesses.

Overall, the Kyro II is an excellent budget card, despite the driver problems (from the performance seen in JK2). The features are long dead, but fully taking advantage of the Tile Rendering approach is something game developers can dream about.