Time to use new 71.84 or 71.89 drivers for Nvidia

personaly it seems lower than a X300 the FSAA (Full Screen Anti Aliasing, what is done by video card to remove the jagged edges in lines. The resulting image is much smoother on the eyes>) {i had to look it up sad to say} it drops well below par..

Keep trying S3 (ive still got a S3 Trio64)

First i would like to thank Xbit for this exclusive review.

But i also have a couple of questions:

- You use a nForce4 as platform. Since this is an early sample card, i guess it has only been tested with an Intel platform. So maybe the instability can be solved with an Intel based motherboard with Intel chipset.

- Gaming Testing Methodology: you use high quality settings for the S3 and ATI card but leave the nVidia card to balanced. Since you are using early beta drivers, maybe it's for the best to leave it to default. This way the comparison to the nVidia card would be more fair. Same goes for the ATI card, it's best to leave it to default. Then all the result can be compared fair.

- Since we are talking about low-end/midrange card, using FSAA is only good for benchmarking since these cards are not meant to run games good with FSAA enabled. None of these cards is able to provide good gameplay in real games with FSAA enable. I find AF more usefull since the performance drop is less than with FSAA. Most of these cards can provide good performance with AF enabled and AF does give a big quality improvement. So maybe it's usefull to test AF by itself without FSAA.


After reading this review completly, i have to admit i didn't expect S3 to improve so dramaticaly. This card is much faster than the Deltachrome S8 and this with only four pipelines compared to the eight of the Deltachrome. I mean ... the Deltachrome S8 with it's eight pixel pipelines couldn't even compete with the Radeon 9600 (=X300) and the Gammachrome S18 does this succesfully.

Since this chip is made in januari, i guess it already has had another revision to get better signaling. The card used here is a sample card. The drivers are not even launch drivers, they are early beta's. These drivers are from februari. All these factors together give me the feeling the Gammachrome S18 Pro will be able to beat the X600Pro at launch.
Just to bad it will take S3 so long before they will launch the eight pipe version of this chip.

So i will stayed tuned for an update ... :-)

A new driver "COMBO CHROME" released

6.14.10.1960-15.15.08.c(05/04/14)
First Chrome WHQL Driver

on page 2 of your review you wrote:

"As you see, S3 followed the example of ATI and NVIDIA and switched to the open-die type of packaging."

well, the precise terminology that is used to describe this packaging technology is Flip Chip. This is a technology that has been widely used by microprocessors for several years. It is more expensive to manufacture than traditional "wire bond" technology. However, the prinicipal benefits that it provides are

a) reduced inductance on the power rails, since you don't have the L, or inductance, of bond wires to deal with. Therefore, the switching noise induced on the voltage rails on the die, is reduced because switching noise is directly proporitonal to inductance

and
b) much improved delivery of power to the core of the graphics processor. Bond wires are not a very good way to deliver power - there is a larger inherent "IR" (or current*resistance) voltage drop in that style of packaging. With the FlipChip technology, integrated circuit designers can add several rows of power and ground "solder bumps" to the middle of the die and enjoy much better power and ground delivery to the processor. You just can't do that with bond wires because, by definition, the "wire bond pads" are located along the outer edges of the die and are therefore limited in number.

Hope that explanation helps your readers understand exactly why FlipChip technology is so crucial to the performance of today's advanced processors.

Interesting product from S3. Comparison with a 6200 would've been more appropriate given the ROP/pipe layout of Nvidia products. Could've yielded some interesting results re: scaling, fragment efficiency, etc... As it stands, there's more Qs from this review than answers... Some pure synthetic benches eg gpubench may help with answers.

This is misleading as image quality is not shown.

Installing an S3 video card is recommended when assembling your most hated enemies computer! All hail S3's new flagchip (har har) GPU!

Well, it's interesting to see what S3Graphics has accomplished in this product. Let's not forget that about 12 months ago, this S18 GPU would have been a "upper midrange" category GPU, trailing perhaps only the 6600GT and the X700Pro. Of course, the world doesn't stand still and NVidia upped the stakes considerably with their GF6800 and 6800GT launches, not to mention the wonderfully brilliant SLI cards. And then, not to be outdone, ATI one ups them with the X850. This, folks, is the epitome of a hard fought battle for technological supremacy - there's none better to be found in the world of VLSI hardware.

But, back to the topic of S3Graphics. I think this scrappy company deserves a lot of credit for sticking with their philosophy of delivering good value at an affordable price. The 450Mhz GPU (Nitro version, recently reviewed on beyond3d.com) is delivering about 3X or 4X (depending on game or benchmark) the performance of the Intel 915G graphics. For about $109 or $119, that is quite a decent value. S3's board partner needs to deliver 128MB card products at this price - I think those will do extremely well in the marketplace. And S3 continues to impress with their driver improvements - I just recently got a driver which runs FarCry at over 37fps - that is a tremendous improvement over their Deltachrome product of 2004.

Keep an eye on S3 - they are just getting warmed up. They have a 700Mhz product coming up in the autumn which could approach the 6600GT in performance. If that happens, we can all rejoice because it will signal the emergence of one more seriously competent player in GPU hardware. This business is not for the faint of heart - and because everyone loves an underdog, I say - Go S3!

What about comparing S3 GammaChrome S18 Pro to Matrox P650 PCI-E for 2D Application? It seems to be a very good comparison, since they are no good in 3D in any situation. :-)