Chip Promises Dramatic Improvement In PC Visuals

By employing what is said to be the industry's first full-featured PC graphics and video accelerator, the Kyro 3D chip reportedly combines excellent 3D graphics image quality and stunning 3D graphics performance with crisp 2D graphics, studio-quality video playback, and DVD support. Based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR Series 3 technology, the chip's use of Tile-Based Rendering reduces by more than two-thirds the memory bandwidth required by conventional 3D accelerators, freeing designers to develop more realistic environments. Kyro also supports full-scene anti-aliasing, on-chip pixel operation rendering at a full 32-bit Internal True Color resolution, and Direct3D environment bump mapping. Other features include a fast 128-bit 2D engine, hardware video playback and DVD decode assistance, 128-bit SGRAM/SDRAM interface with up to 64-Mbyte support, and an integrated Palette DAC. Extensive software support is also available. Kyro 32-MB boards are expected to retail for under $200.