EVEN WE are not sure about the
exact name of higher clocked Kyro 2 based cards.
We got some information from
Hercules that we can expect that Guillemot will continue to follow the Kyro
tradition.
This card certainly brought
them a sufficient amount of dosh because of its good price performance ratio
and the company has decided to continue this tradition.
The card will be published under
the name of the Prophet 4800, since it will be based on ST4800 higher clocked
version on Kyro 2 chip, also known as the ST4500. <> This chip was disclosed,
discovered or uncovered by company officials a few weeks back and we already
saw that it was going to be a higher clocked version of the original chip.
The higher frequency is not
a huge surprise to us, since after a few months of production of the chips,
the engineers can achieve lower yields in production. This leads to higher
clocked verisons on chips - just remember the Geforce 2 Ultra.
The Prophet 4800 cards, which
are basically Kyro II cards, are expected to have a core frequency above
200 MHz - much more than anyone expected. Some internal rumours claims even
225 MHz clock for this Kyro 2 Ultra - or whatever name the marchitecteers
decide to hang on it.
In terms of the PowerVR this
even could be accepted as a Kyro 3 but we learned that the real Kyro 3 will
use a completely new architecture. Remember that Kyro 1 and 2 only differed
in the higher clock - which leads to higher performance of course.
The cards will be around in
October or November, we learn and we expect them to be well accepted in
the market, given the better performance the technology will offer.
The market is ready, so fair
bird Guillemot, do your job until we finally see the Geforce 3 MX - NV17
which will be a direct competitor to the Kyro 2 Ultra.
