Mercury 3D (Rendition v2200) from Skywell Technologies Tuesday - January 28, 1998 - Hilbert Hagedoorn Hardware used Asus P2B Motherboard Software used Windows 98 General VSYNC is Synced to Monitors refresh rate The beginning - It sure does getting used to do a step back in all the video-madness we lately have. With the ongoing power of Voodoo2/3/banshee/TNT etc. we are forgetting that there still is a consumermarket for products that do not have all that 3D violence in it. Yes my friends, low-end consumer products are still big bucks. Today we will be testing Skywells Mercury 3D. It is a 8mb 100 Mhz SGRam AGP based Rendition v2200 2D/3D multimedia accelerator. If you are a really serious gamer but you want to do the basics then this card is a good option for you. Compared to a banshee it really lacks in Frames per Second, but on a reasonable machine this card will bring you to a normal gameplay with good quality performance and image-quality. While testing this card i discovered a likeness to the Intel 740 graphics card. Compared to Voodoo i can say that the acceleration speed is about the Speed of Voodoo1 (in D3D). Rendition Verite 2200 - Like the Verite 2100, runs at a higher clock speed. The card has full windows compatibility and can even decode DVD (MPeg 2) at 24FPS with a standard Pentium II machine. The V2200 has great image quality. It is also considered the best 3D chip for low end CPUs, thanks to its good triangle setup engine (on high end CPUs its relatively low fill rate will limit speeds). 2D speed is lower than most cards, but not significantly so (it is still better than most of last year's cards). Here are some benchmarks for you viewing pleasure,
As you can see the fillrate is about
50Million triangles per second
Conclusion It is quite obvious that the Mercury 3D was targeted at the low end market. Its a very cheap card wich gives you serious bang for your bucks, however remember .. Do not even think of comparing this card next to a Voodoo2 or TNT. But hey ... At this time its selling for USD 60 ! Now tell me, weher can you find a chipset like this with 100Mhz 8Mb SGRam on it ?! You can visit and contact the lads of Skywell here: English/Chinese: skywell.com.tw Copyright of all documents and scripts belonging to this site by Hilbert Hagedoorn 1997 - 1998. Most of the information contained on this site is copyrighted material. It is illegal to copy or redistribute this information in any way without the expressed written consent of the author. The Author does allow items from the site to be used as a reference piece for what they are working on, but this is more for your own use, and not for public consumption or print/electronic media consumption. This site is NOT responsible for any damage that the information on this site may cause to your system. |
Hotshots (Click to enlarge)
Technical Specifications
Chipset: Rendition Verite V2200 RAM: Data Path: Horizontal Sync Signals: Vertical Refresh: RAMDAC: 230MHz TV Output: Optional TV-In/TV-Out Video Playback: Supported Resolutions: Supported Refresh Rates: |
