Making the most of S3 - two S27 video cards in the MultiChrome mode
Date: 10.05.2006
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Overclocking
The nominal frequencies of Chrome S27 are 700/1400 MHz for the GPU/memory, respectively. But that is not yet a limit. Due to the good-quality cooling system, we were able to overclock the VPU to 875 MHz! Unfortunately, the card failed to overcome 900 MHz, and upon loading 3DMark'05 there were blurs and artifacts on the screen. We were able to overclock the video memory to 1600 MHz mainly due to using Samsung chips. Therefore, the total GPU overclock proved as high as 25%, and 14% for the video memory.
Preliminary Notes
Prior to getting familiarized with the test results, we should make some important remarks. Unfortunately, for quite a long time S3 video drivers have left much to be desired. In the tests, we used the latest drivers available on the web site of S3 Graphics - version 15.18.05l dated 12 April 2006. Below you can see a tab to adjust the driver settings for Direct3D applications
As you can see, the pack of settings available to adjust is not that wide.
This is a tab to adjust the driver settings for OpenGL applications. Here, a list of settings is fitted within 3 lines. Interestingly, there is an option to enable the anisotropic filtering (up to AF16x), but you won't be able to enable anti-aliasing for OpenGL applications.
We ran the tests just with the settings shown on the screen shots. That is, without the FSAA and AF enabled. Our attempt to enable FSAA in Direct3D resulted in a catastrophic drop of performance - as many as 6 times for Half-Life2. Nor the attempt to enable anti-aliasing manually in DOOM3 helped either. There was no drop in performance, nor there was any change in the image quality. The most probable cause of such behavior of Chrome S27 is just in the demanding modes - presumably, in the drivers. Engineers at S3 Graphics definitely have something to work at, although much has been done so far. In the NO AA/AF mode, the video card was running stably, without any artifacts. So, while engineers at S3 Graphics are conjuring about performance in the demanding graphics modes, we decided to test the video card in the NO AA/AF mode.
Benchmarking
Here are participants of today's tests:
- S3 Graphics Chrome S27 - 8 pixel pipelines, 4 vertex pipelines, nominal frequencies - 700/1400 MHz.
- S3 Graphics Chrome S27 - 8 pixel pipelines, 4 vertex pipelines, frequencies after overclocking - 875/1600 MHz.
- GeForce 6600 with DDR2 video memory - number of pipelines 8/3, frequencies 350/800 MHz
- Radeon X1300Pro - 4/2 pipelines, frequencies 600/800 MHz
- Radeon X1600XT - 12/5 pipelines, frequencies 590/1380 MHz
Such a selection of rivals may seem somehow strange. Indeed, on the date of writing the review the price of Chrome S27 was 99$, according to US large online shop www.newegg.com. At the same time, X1600XT costs about 150$, and X1300Pro - about 80$. Of course, in terms of price it would be more appropriate to choose X1600Pro for comparison, but it was not available at the time of running the tests. Of the video cards reviewed today, the closest to Chrome S27 in terms of price is the GeForce 6600 DDR2. Its price is just at about 100$.
Anyway, we did use just these cards for comparison. The performance of Chrome S27 quite strongly varies with application, so we selected such a vast range of comparison. Now let's look at the test results.
Test setup
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PCI-E
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CPU
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MB
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Memory
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OS
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WinXP + SP2 + DirectX 9.0c
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PSU
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For tests we used NVIDIA 84.21 WHQL, ATI CATALYST 6.4, and S3 Graphics 15.18.05l (04/12/2006) drivers.
The results produced for ATI video cards are presented in bright red, for NVIDIA - in green, and Chrome S27 - in yellow. The values in brackets stand for the nominal frequencies, and those with the character @ - for results produced after overclocking.
As we expected, at 3DMark'05 the video cards ranked as per the speed of executing shaders. Of course, Radeon X1600XT which along with high frequencies has 12 pipelines takes a lead at this test. Then, Chrome S27 follows. There was an unpleasant surprise for us to see that the result produced through overclocking Chrome S27 is merely 5% although the GPU frequency was boosted by 25%, which mainly determines the result at 3DMark'05, let alone the 15% memory overclock.
At 3DÌark'03, the results for Chrome S27, albeit slightly, but take a lead over those for GeForce 6600 DDR2 and X1300Pro. Judging by the results of synthetic tests, we can assume that it will be rather hard for Chrome S27 to hold its grounds even in center of the middle-end range in the sense it is currently understood by the main players on the market, i.e. ATI and NVIDIA. This is especially true because the low-end presented by X1300Pro is not so distant.
Now let's see what Chrome S27 is worth of in real games.
That's a surprise, isn't it?! Despite the very high clock speeds and greater number of pipelines, Chrome S27 loses at Half-Life 2 to all the rivals, including the low-end X1300Pro. Even overclocking can't help. It seems like pipelines are different.
At DOOM3, the situation is somehow better. Chrome S27 is very close behind X1600XT and shows quite decent FPS up to 1280õ1024 inclusive. Since S3 Graphics had problems with OpenGL drivers for quite a long time, the produced result can be called simply fantastic. Such a radical improvement just at DOOM3 suggested the idea - "aren't there any optimizations just for this game?". To verify this hypothesis, we renamed the file doom3.exe and ran the integrated test demo1 once again. In the end, at 1024õ768 after renaming the file we got not 55 FPS but merely 44. That is, there is optimization just for DOOM3, but the OpenGL driver from S3 is quite on par either.
   Since F.E.A.R. makes quite intensive use of shaders and Chrome S27 offers high clock speeds enough to execute shaders fast (judging by the 3DMark'05), we could expect that at this game Chrome S27 would show good results. But.. it didn't work. The results for Chrome S27 and GeForce 6600 DDR2 are practically equal, despite the twofold superiority of Chrome S27 at frequencies.
Final Words
Chrome S27 leaves a dual impression. On the one hand, it offers a low price, good manufacturing quality, good cooling system, high clock speeds and decent enough speed of shader execution, which gives hopes for good performance in modern games. On the other hand, we could observe an inefficient scaling of performance over the frequency, which is a sign of imperfection of the internal architecture, or - imperfection of drivers (I would "prefer" the second option, since there is still hope that after the driver improvement the high clock speeds of Chrome S27 might show their worth). Another shortcoming of Chrome S27 is more likely potential - that is, support for Shader Model of merely version 2.0.
We still have time to fight!
Nevertheless, we should admit that despite all of its shortcomings, Chrome S27 is quite an efficient product, although it can't pretend for high-end despite its top ranking in the product line. Not quite a long time ago, it seemed that S3 Graphics would no longer be able to produce something really working. Our high respects to the company's engineers. We appreciate their hard work and perseverance. The most interesting is that engineers at S3 Graphics decided not only to stop "sitting idle" but also presented their own technology for merging performance of two video cards, named the MultiChrome. You will know what it is and how it works on the next page.
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