3DMark 2000
The release of 3DMark 2001 seems to have killed off the use of its predecessor, 3DMark 2000. However, since we're dealing with budget cards which tend to choke on 3DMark 2001's DirectX 8 routines, let's kick it old school for nostalgia's sake. Well, and for the sake of DirectX 7, which plenty of games still use.

While the 315 can hang with ATI's low-end Radeon VE, there's simply no catching the MX in this benchmark.

The Kyro locks up here—a sign of things to come. The Kyro card suffered driver problems throughout our testing.

Depending on how you look at it, there's either a striking penalty for running 32-bit color, or a hefty speed boost to be had by dropping to 16-bit color.

3DMark 2001
Now that we've seen these budget cards chew through an older benchmark, let's watch them try to keep pace with something a little more challenging: DirectX 8.

The 315 again lags just behind the Radeon VE, as the MX continues to outclass its competition in the value sector. This is a straight GeForce2 MX we're dealing with here, not a faster MX400 or a slower MX200. The MX200 is considerably slower than our our GF2 MX card, because the MX200 has only half the memory bandwidth. The Kyro completed this test properly, but it comes in last.

Moving to 3DMark 2001's individual tests, we'll see how the cards stack up in various environments. First up is the car chase demo.

All of the cards see a big drop in performance when we switch over to high detail. The 315 shadows the Radeon VE again. T&L makes a real difference, as the T&L-deprived Kyro takes a huge dive when we move to the high-detail scene. SiS deserves credit here not only for having a T&L unit, but having one that actually works.

Game 2's dragon ride is next.

The Radeon VE jumps ahead in this test; in the high-detail test, it even bests the GF2 MX. Our 315 hangs in, as the Kyro's performance makes it obvious T&L can have a very big impact on performance.

Game 3's Max Payne shootout scene is next.

The Kyro sprints ahead at low detail, while the 315 lags appreciably behind the field. The 315 manages third place in high detail, though. The Kyro's frame rate plummets with more polygons to draw.