Systemlogic has posted a review on the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64MB
STMicro designed the Kyro II with ambitious goals - The processor was intended to be a budget solution that didn´t *act* like a budget solution. The key to the Kyro´s performance is in its use of HSR, or hidden surface removal. The simple explanation is this: Most 3D cards take the geometry data and arrange the scene without evaluating it beforehand. The Kyro II instead optimizes its rendering performance by removing any polygons that aren´t visible in the current frame. This saves memory bandwidth and performance cycles by making fewer polygons to be textured and lightmapped and drawn.Read more
There are upsides and downsides to this technology. If you play games like Tribes 2 or space shooters, then HSR isn´t going to do much for you because you don´t have surfaces hidden very frequently. On the other hand, in games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena (map-dependent), entire walls of polygons are often rendered unnecessarily. By taking these rendering shortcuts, the processor doesn´t have to do as much work, and can thus render frames faster.
