De mannen van GA-Hardware hebben een review geschreven van de VideoLogic Vivid videokaart. Deze videokaart is gebaseerd op de Kyro chip, en maakt derhalve gebruik van tile-based rendering om de performance flink te verhogen. De core liep op deze kaart op 115MHz en heeft geheugen wat theoretisch op 143MHz kan lopen (maar aangezien het synchroon loopt met de clocksnelheid loopt het op 115MHz). Als je dus gaat overclocken zal het geheugen je niet in de weg zitten. De kaart die GA-Hardware in handen kreeg bleek niet zo'n fantastisch overclockwonder en kon maximaal op 125MHz/125MHz draaien. Op deze snelheid is de kaart, afhankelijk van de kleurendiepte, in de meeste benchmarks rond het niveau van een GeForce SDR. Aangezien de prijs op GeForce MX niveau komt te liggen, en de performance alleen nog maar beter kan worden is het zeker een interessant budget kaartje :
I am wary of drawing any conclusion about the Vivid considering the fact that they will be improving the drivers before the time of shipping. There are a few conclusions that I can draw though. The first is that the technology behind this card is astounding. I was amazed by the fact that a card with so little actual fill-rate could compete with cards that had twice the amount. If this card is an indication of what VideoLogic has in store for us in the future then we will surely see some great things come from their neck of the woods.
The card also has some very nice features that would surely influence my buying decision. The Internal True Color technology makes a definite difference in 16bit image quality, though why anyone would run this card at 16bit when the performance hit you take for moving to 32bit is minimal to say the least is beyond me. The card also supports Environment Mapped Bump-Mapping, a feature that used to be unique to cards from Matrox. If you have ever seen EMBM in action you know how much of a difference in can make in overall visual quality.
My final conclusion is that this is only a preview. While the card does show some promising features and speed, it would be unwise to make your purchasing decision based on the information contained within this preview. I would recommend however that if you are in the market for a budget gaming card and are considering a GeForce2 MX based board you might want to wait a few weeks. The Vivid's price point is about the same as MX based boards in the United States and is actually lower in Europe and the UK. As soon as I get the shipping drivers in (which I have been assured I will be) I will write up a full review of this board and make a definite recommendation.