X-bit labs

S3 Chrome S27 Graphics Processor Review: Worthy Performance for Its Class? (page 10)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 12/29/2005 | 12:11 PM ]

Other Tests

The Ragtroll test shows you the balance of a graphics card, i.e. its ability to distribute the load between the central and graphics processors. The CPU processes the physical model in real time mode, while the GPU works with vertex shaders, i.e. renders the models. Ragtroll can be viewed as a check of the performance and scalability of the vertex processors. Despite its fast 700MHz memory with a bandwidth of 22GB/s, the S3 Chrome S27 suffers the same performance drop in high resolutions as the GeForce 6600 does. The RADEON X700 and especially the RADEON X1300 PRO do not lose their speed so quickly.

Video Playback Performance

To check the video decoding capabilities of the S3 Chrome S27 with various formats we carried out a few tests using the popular Windows Media Player 10 (with the patch that enables DirectX video acceleration for WMV HD content available here ) and our standard selection of video clips:

• BBC Motion Gallery Reel (H.264, 720p)
• Magic of Flight (WMV HD, 1080p)
• A DivX clip, 640x480
• Starship Troopers DVD, PAL

The CPU load during video playback:

We didn’t observe any big differences from the S3 GammaChrome S18. The CPU load at video playback was almost the same and some discrepancy in the results is within the measurement error range. As for decoding the H.264 clip, the CPU load was 35% on average, similar to the result of the graphics cards with the RADEON X1000 architecture. Overall, the S3 Chrome S27 is sufficiently skilled at video acceleration, but is still somewhat worse than the RADEON X1300 PRO which comes with the advanced Avivo video-processor.