Here is what we can say: the 16MB of SDRAM memory, 25OMhz RAMDAC and 125MHz graphics clock-speed (up from the original spec of 100MHz) PowerVR Series 2 Neon 250 is racing well against parts running at higher speeds (Voodoo3 3000 at 166MHz) and with more RAM (TNT2 with 32MB). This would tend to vindicate the PowerVR architecture quite nicely and bodes well for both the success of Series 2 and the future of Series 3.

With an OpenGL mini driver application (Quake 2), speed was better than expected: at 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768, the board ranked somewhere between a TNT2 and a Voodoo3 3000 for Quake 2 'TimeDemo 1' and 'Massive1' benchmarks. The pre-production Neon 250 with Beta 1 drivers we played with actually beat both of these top-of-the-line boards on the more strenuous 'Crusher' benchmark. At the very least, it proves the soundness of the design. All you die-hard tile rendering fans out there have not kept the faith in vain!

Even without 'single pass' multi-texturing, the Quake 2 performance seems to be a high-point for the Neon 250. With the image quality being on par with the current crop of 2D/3D accelerators, the Neon 250 looks like being a nifty board for 3D first person shooter games that use the Quake 2 engine. Sadly we couldn't give the Quake III: Arena Test a go, since the drivers weren't yet optimized.

The beta board/driver combination is not yet stable. Due to an error in the drivers, we were unable to get results for 32-bit or at 1600 x 1200 resolution (although we've been told that this has since been fixed). There also seems to be a conflict with at least one motherboard (not unusual, a recent pre-release 3dfx board/driver set had a similar issue, since resolved). At this time, D3D performance is not the top. Each of these drawbacks seems to be driver related and should be curable. Until they are, we shall reserve final judgment on where the Neon 250 ultimately ranks in terms of performance.