S3's DeltaChrome S4 Pro
Overclocking the S4 Pro
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S3 provided us with a beta version of Entech's excellent PowerStrip video card tweaking utility that had preliminary support for the DeltaChrome architecture. With this version of PowerStrip, we were able to experiment with overclocking the DeltaChrome S4. Although the actual experience was quite frustrating, because this beta version of PowerStrip seemed to have trouble setting actual clock speeds, we had decent results...
As we mentioned earlier, the DeltaChrome S4 we tested had stock core and memory clock speeds of 300MHz / 300MHz (600MHz DDR), respectively. Using the version of PowerStrip S3 provided, we slowly raised the core and memory clock speeds until we began to see visual artifacts on-screen during the benchmarks. In the end, we were able to take the DeltaChrome S4 up from its default 300MHz core and 600MHz (DDR) memory clock speeds to maximums of 336MHz / 702MHz. We then reran the 1280x1024 Comanche 4 (2XAA / 8X Aniso) and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (8X Aniso) benchmarks with the card overclocked to see how the increased clock speeds affected actual in-game performance. While overclocked, we saw a respectable 7.8% increase in frame rate with Comanche 4, but the S4 was still only able to break the 10 FPS barrier. The S4's performance in Wolfenstein jumped about 13.5%, however, and it was almost able to catch the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra.
