X-bit labs

S3 DeltaChrome S8 Gets Nitro Acceleration: Review of the Revamped S8 (page 9)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 03/09/2004 | 02:56 AM ]

Synthetic Benchmarks: Vertex Shaders

We also tested the performance of our testing participants when working with vertex shaders in FutureMark packages. Here are the results obtained in 3DMark2001 SE:

The 4 vertex pipelines allow DeltaChrome S8 Nitro to perform quite well in this test. Of course, it is rather far behind GeForce FX5700 Ultra, though it looks pretty OK against the background of other testing participants.

Well, DeltaChrome vertex shader processors are still not efficient enough. As the number of light sources in the test scene increases, the performance of DeltaChrome vertex shader processors drops very much below that of the RADEON 9600 XT vertex shader processors. The latter also benefits from the VPU working frequency equal to 500MHz, which makes up for few vertex processors.

DeltaChrome S8 Nitro doesn’t look that nice in the vertex shader processing test: it yields to all the rivals except GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. This is another proof to our supposition about the low efficiency of DeltaChrome vertex processors. Moreover, the memory of S3 solution is too slow and it limits the performance as well.

In the similar test from 3DMark03 test package the situation turns a little different. The test scene is quite complex here. ATI cards start suffering from their slower memory and they retain their leadership only due to higher VPU frequencies.

DeltaChrome S8 Nitro runs neck and neck with RADEON 9600 PRO and the regular DeltaChrome falls a little bit behind. Maybe the number of S3 shader processors makes up for their relatively low efficiency in this case.