S3's DeltaChrome S4 Pro

Name: S3's DeltaChrome S4 Pro - Page 8
Brand: S3's

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, July 14, 2004, 12:00 PM EDT

Performance Comparisons With Novalogic's Comanche 4

Combat Helicopter Sim

Comanche 4

To give you sim fans a small taste of what these cards can do, we used Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator Comanche 4 for our next batch of DirectX tests. Comanche 4 uses DX8-class pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used throughout the game. Unlike a few of the previous tests, though, this benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and system memory performance, especially at lower resolutions. However, when the resolution is raised and anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled, the current crop of 3D accelerators tend to slow down quite a bit.

The scales tipped in favor of S3 DeltaChrome S4 in the Comanche 4 benchmark when no anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering was used. Here, the S4 led the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra by about 10% at 1024x768 and virtually tied with the FX 5200 at 1280x1024. Turning on 2XAA and 8X Aniso, however, took its toll of the DeltaChrome S4. It was still able to outrun the underpowered Radeon 9200 SE, but the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra more than doubled the S4's performance when AA and Aniso were enabled.

Tags: S3, Chrome, Delta, S4, rom, pro, AC

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com