X-bit labs

Started by: I | Date 03/10/04

Comments: 14 | Last Comment:  02/28/08

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1. I see that you guys make interesting tests here.
Here is one interesting for me:
- Ati Radeon 8500 vs Geforce 3/4
- Ati Radeon 7xxx vs Geforce 2/4MX

As you all know nvidia at the time of those cards was the best, but ati NOW have much better drivers then before, so today, how much good are nvidia cards vs ati cards in today/older games, the difference is still there? Or ati hardware was already good, only needed good drivers?

What difference does older games have today comparing to 2/3 years ago drivers?
Was really Geforce a better hardware product at that time?

Ps: All this because i have played NBA 2003 on a integrated IGP340 and it was cool, nod bad really, only by updating drivers from Catalyst 2.5 to Catalyst 4.1.

We always consider different benchmarks and approaches. If at some point it makes sense to benchmark 2-3 year old graphics cards, we will do it.

Our main focus is to compare graphics cards using the most up-to-date drivers and modern games. These graphics cards offer new feature sets over the previous generation offerings and are available in the market, therefore, the main target is to tell readers what is the best choice now.

Well it doesnt make sense. I'm just curious, that's it.
Not every one has "new" cards, why not see if they have made a good choice in the past, today.

2. I think that you should have haded Geforce 5200 and radeon 9200 to the test! Those are the competion to S3, well depends on price.
Here every one buys geforce 5200 and even geforce4mx and they are non ultra versions and if you think thats bad imagine if they are "all" 64bit versions!!!!

Some buys 5600 ou 9600 but even so arent the ultra versions!!! Who can give mode than 150€ for a graphics card?
Almost every body goes for 5200 and 9200 65€ cards.

All in all the S3 chip is good at least thats what i think. Drivers? Well all have problems in that are some more than others.

Pricing will be set to DeltaChrome S8 - $139~$149 and S8 Nitro at $169. So, it hardly makes sense to compare the S3 DeltaChrome S8 VPUs to NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 and ATI RADEON 9200 series.

3. S3 should not try to position this card in the 3D gamers market. They can not expect us to buy these, since we can not expect them to deliver the performance we want/need.

However, seeing, that this card not only has excellent video-features but also a low energy consumption (meaining it might be possible to cool the GPU passive) I think S3 should try to open a new market, the market for multimedia-VGA cards. The crowd of HTPC enthusiasts my welcome it.

And with VIA they could simply position this as onboard chip for the next-gen EPIA series.

What could make S3 really famous overnight would be to open the source to their drivers under GPL.

Doing all this this product might become a sucess even: A MultiMedia card, that has full Linux support _and_ can play many of todays 3D games well.

Such a product would be without competition.

4. I would like to see benchmarks done in programs and games with this board - when the name of their executable files have been changed, like 3dmark03.exe becomes oogabooga.exe

I suspect they still have optimizations in their drivers

We renamed .exe files of benchmarks on both S3 and XGI. For S3 it did not get any speed drops or image quality improvements, for XGI renamed .exe gives lower speed, but higher image quality.

Other GPU companies don't play this kind of optimisation-games, therefore, if there are app-specific optimisations, they are hidden pretty well.

5. I was reading over the HDTV section of the review, and noticed an oversight.
In the land of HDTV, there's more than one format. WM9(VC9) is one of the formats for the new HD-DVD standard, along with H.264(mpeg-4 avc) and mpeg-2. The current HDTV standard format is mpeg-2, which I believe is what the S8 should be able to accelerate via DxVA, just like the Radeon and Geforce 4 and FX cards can today. It'd be most helpful ifyou could acquire a transport stream clip and see how the S8 handles that. You can acquire such clips from HDTV tuner manufacturer sites, like usbhdtv.com or dvico.co.kr.

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7. nitro video password

jbv

8. nesecitos los drivers

9. i am trying to use the latest version of d.x

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