X-bit labs

S3 GammaChrome S18 Pro Graphics Adapter Review (page 12)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 04/19/2005 | 07:19 PM ]

Performance in First Person 3D Shooters

Doom 3

The GammaChrome takes a nice start, leaving the RADEON X600 PRO behind in all the resolutions. The efficient use of the Z buffer and the availability of four vertex processors must be the main factors contributing to the success. But on the other hand, the GammaChrome yields just a paltry 21 frames per second in the lowest resolution – we can’t call this fast. The GeForce 6600 is the only card in this test session to run Doom 3 at an acceptable speed.

We didn’t use the “eye candy” mode with enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering because Doom 3 is an OpenGL-based application and the current driver from S3 doesn’t support full-screen anti-aliasing for this API.

There are no monsters on the d3dm4 map, so the frame rates are overall higher. There’s a wider gap between the S3 GammaChrome and the RADEON X600 PRO than in the previous case, but comfortable play is only ensured by the GeForce 6600.