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HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:
We tested the S3 DeltaChrome S8 evaluation boards on an
i875P based MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R motherboard, powered by an
Intel Pentium 4 3.2CGHz CPU. The first thing we did when
configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and loaded
the "High Performance Defaults". Then we set the memory to
operate at 200MHz in dual-channel mode, with the CAS Latency
and other memory timings set by the SPD, and set the AGP
aperture size to 256MB. The hard drive was then formatted,
and Windows XP Professional with SP1 was installed. When the
installation was complete, we installed the latest Intel
chipset drivers and then hit the Windows Update site to
download and install all of the available updates. Then we
installed all of the necessary drivers for the rest of our
components and Windows Messenger was then disabled and
removed from the system. Auto-Updating, System Restore
and Drive Indexing were then disabled, the hard drive was
de-fragmented and a 768MB permanent page file was created.
Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best
performance", installed the benchmarking software and ran
all of the tests.
Please pay
special attention to the legends in each graph, as the S3
DeltaChrome with the beta v15.08.09b drivers we used does
not support the levels of anti-aliasing as you might expect.
2XAA was the maximum setting available with the DeltaChrome
in Direct3D applications, while in OpenGL, no AA was
available at all.
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HotHardware's Test Setup |
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Intel
Powered - 3.2GHz System |
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Hardware:
Processor -
Mainboard -
Video Cards -
Memory -
Audio -
Hard Drive -
Optical Drive -
Other -
Software:
Operating System -
Chipset Drivers -
DirectX -
Video Drivers -
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Intel Pentium 4
3.2GHz
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R
i875P "Canterwood" Chipset
S3 DeltaChrome S8 Nitro (325MHz /
325MHz)
S3 DeltaChrome S8 (300MHz / 300MHz)
ATi Radeon 9600 XT
GeForce FX 5900 XT
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
1024MB Kingston HyperX
PC3500
CAS 2
Integrated SoundMax Audio
Western Digital "Raptor"
36GB - 10,000RPM - SATA
Lite-On 16X DVD-ROM
3.5" Floppy Drive
Windows XP Professional SP1 (Fully
Patched)
Intel INF v5.1.1.1002
DirectX 9.0b
S3
15.08.09b Drivers
ATI Catalyst v4.2
NVIDIA Forceware v56.56 |
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Performance Comparisons
With AquaMark3 |
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DX8
and DX9 Shader Ops |
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Aquamark
3
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Aquamark 3 comes to us by way of
Massive Development.
Massive's release of the original Aquanox in 1999 wasn't
well received, but it was one of the first games to
implement DX8 shaders, which led to the creation of
Aquamark 2 - a benchmark previously used by many
analysts. Since the Aquamark benchmarks are based on an
actual game engine, they must support old and new video
cards alike. Thus, Aquamark 3 utilizes not only
DirectX 9 features, but DirectX 8 and DirectX 7 as well.
We ran this benchmark at resolutions of 1024x768 and
1600x1200 with no anti-aliasing, then again with 2x AA
enabled. Throughout all of these tests, 4X
Anisotropic filtering was enabled from within Aquamark
3's control panel, which is the default setting for this
benchmark. |
Throughout this
article, we've compared both of the DeltaChrome cards to
similarly priced competing cards in the Radeon 9600 XT and
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. To see how they compare to
something a little more expensive, we've thrown in some
numbers from a GeForce FX 5900 XT as well. As you can
see by the above graphs, the DeltaChromes didn't perform
very well in the Aquamark 3 benchmark, versus its comparably
priced counterparts. At 1024x768, with and without AA,
the DeltaChromes were the lowest performing cards, coming in
between 20% - 30% behind the nearest competitor. At
1600x1200, the gap shrunk considerably, but their
performance was again below that of the competition.
The spread hints at S3's current driver immaturity and less
efficient memory controller, since
clearly as you throttle performance back with higher fill
rate demand, the Delta Chrome gains back some of its losses.
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Benchmarks
With
Halo |
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Halo
- No Xbox Here! |
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Halo
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For
many gamers, the release of Halo marked the end of a
long wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox
exclusive a few years back. No additional patches
or tweaks are needed to benchmark with Halo, as Gearbox
has included all of the necessary information in their
README file. The Halo benchmark runs through four
of the cut-scenes from the game, after which the average
frame rate is recorded. We ran this benchmark
twice, once at 1024x768 and then again at 1280x1024.
Anti-aliasing doesn't work properly with this game at
the moment, so all of the test below were run with
anti-aliasing disabled. |
The S3
DeltaChrome S8 and S8 Nitro performed at a level a bit
closer to their direct competition in the Halo benchmark,
but they still pulled off the two lowest scores in this
test. At 28.18 frames per second, the S8 Nitro came in
a full 16.8% behind the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra at the lower
resolution. The performance delta between the S8 Nitro
and the next fastest card at 1600x1200 shrunk down to 11.3%
- which is a considerable margin at frame rates this low.
As expected, the lower clocked DeltaChrome S8 came in a few
frames per second behind the S8 Nitro, and the much more
expensive GeForce FX 5900 XT blew past all of the
competitors. We should also mention that both of the
DeltaChrome cards had some problems rendering all of the
scenes in the Halo benchmark. At random areas in the
test, textures would flash on the screen. This is a
common problem with beta drivers, however, so we expect S3
will be able to clear this issue up before cards actually
ship here in the states.
Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing
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