Computex 2001 Exclusive: New Graphics Chips from SiS and Trident — THG.RU

<!—#set var="article_header" value="Computex 2001 Exclusive:
New Graphics Chips from SiS and Trident» —>

introduction

We had only one day left until the end of Computex 2001, but our work never seemed to end. It was worth it. We managed to get you the scoop on AMD’s 760MP, NVIDIA’s nForce, and even a breakthrough on Tualatin.

So, how could we resist reviewing two new 3D graphics chips which weren’t stamped either NVIDIA or ATI? We headed for lab in Taipei, and had less than a day to give the SiS 315 and Trident Blade XP a run through our benchmark tests.

NVIDIA’s pace in introducing new technology is giving the industry a hard time so, Trident and SiS are both trying to gain market share by concentrating on a strong price/performance ratio — they don’t even try to compete with NVIDIA or ATI in the mid or high-end sectors of the market. As a result, although you won’t find these chips a must have for hard core gaming, or high-end industrial design, they do offer an attractive price, and a very strong focus on a particular segment of the market. We categorize Trident’s Blade XP and the SiS 315 as both targeting NVIDIA’s MX 200 as well as ATI’s Radeon VE. Definitely worth taking a look at how these two chips perform.

SiS 315

After the successful introduction of the SiS 735 Athlon chipset, the company is following it up quickly wth the SiS 315 graphics chip. For our part, we didn’t have all the time necessary to go into as great a depth as we would have liked in our reviews, but our first looks here should provide you with a strong assessment of what the SiS 315 and Trident Blade XP are capable of.

Looking at the 315, it has some attractive features:

• 256 Bit architecture
• 0.15 micron, 529 balls BGA package
• 166 MHz chip clock
• supports 16, 32, 64 and 128 MB
• supports synmmetric and asymmetric SDRAM or DDR configurations
• 128 Bit memory interface (2.7 GB/s with SDRAM, 5.4 GB/s with DDR)
• AGP 4x support
• 4 bilinear filtered textures per cycle
• FSAA support
• 375 MHz RAMDAC, up to 2048×1536
• TV encoder interface
• DVD decoding with motion compensation

SiS 315, Continued

In addition, the chip supports two-monitor setups using an add-on chip called the SiS 301:

• VGA and VGA
• VGA and TV out
• VGA and TDMS flat screem (up to 1280×1024)

Thanks to the flexible memory interface supporting both symmetrical and asymmetrical chip setups as well as memory sizes between 16 and 128 MB, the chip will make sure that graphics cards manufacturers can go for the most cost-effective memory configuration, providing a wide performance range. Besides Club 3D, ECS and some others are also going to sell cards with the 315.

Check out the SiS website for more information: www.sis.com.tw or www.sis.com.tw/products/multimedia/315.htm

Trident Blade XP

Trident Microsystems, Inc. is a graphics chip manufacturer that has been around for many years. I memember my graphics card from ten years ago had a Trident chip with 512 KB of video memory. Trident is a public company, one of the few graphics chip companies still standing (NASDAQ Symbol: TRID), but it has focused primarily on the value segment of the market, mobile graphics, and integrated chipsets.

Still, Trident has some interesting technology in its Blade graphics core, which is to be expected considering the company has a wealth of experience in graphics. For Trident, the only way back to the top is hard work, good timing and a little luck. Currently, it has two graphics chipsets ready that are both based on the Blade core. Let me first list the features that both chips have in common:

• 256 Bit architecturs
• 128 Bit memory interface
• 16 or 32 MB SDRAM
• 0.25 micron
• AGP 4x
• DVD decoding with motion compensation
• 300 MHz RAMDAC

The two chips differ in their core and memory clock speeds. While the Blade XP runs at 166 MHz, the little brother Blade T64 has to live with 143 MHz and a memory interface which is only 64 Bits wide, running at 125 MHz.

Unfortunately, Trident does not presently support OpenGL. That’s the reason why I could not get any results in Quake III or Dronez.

Check out the Trident website for more information: www.tridentmicro.com or www.tridentmicro.com/Blade3D_APAC/home_blade3d.htm

Test Setup

We had to run these benchmarks in our makeshift Computex lab so, we didn’t have our standard testing rigs in Taiwan. A GeForce2 MX200 would have been the 1st choice for a budget 3D card comparison, since both the SiS and the Trident chip target the low-end market. Unfortunately, we were only given those prototype boards for one day, so that there was no time to get any other graphics card except the MX400 for comparison. Also, we had to use a 15″ TFT display during our testing, resulting in a maximum resolution of 1024×768. However, as the newcomers are not meant to be high-end products, this resolution should be enough to give you a fair picture of how the final products will perform.

Quake III Arena, Dronez

None of these two companies ships a working OpenGL driver now, so I could not run Quake III or Dronez.

Expendable Timedemo

The Expendable Timedemo is one of the older benchmarks we use. Yet, it is excellent for these kind of comparisons, as the frame rate depends very much on the graphics card. Any faster model than the GeForce2 MX 400 would provide even better frame rates.

The SiS chipset is clearly faster than the Trident chip. And the image quality is better, even if you only use the medium quality mode.

3DMark 2001

As long as you make sure that you only compare those 3DMark results which have been measured on the same test system, this benchmark is a powerful instrument to determine graphics performance.

There is a huge performance impact if you switch from the default medium quality setting to the high quality setting in SiS’s driver set. The Blade XP is not able to keep pace either in terms of image quality, or in its 3D performance.

The fill rate chart shows clearly the tremendous gap with respect to the NVIDIA MX400. As I already mentioned, an MX200 would have been much fairer competitor for this comparison, but we didn’t have one available at the time these boards were made available to us, and we only had them for a short time.

Conclusion

Trident and SiS have one advantage: As their products usually do not perform as fast as NVIDIA or ATI chips, hardly anybody would have high expectations.

Currently, SiS is releasing new drivers every few days, thus the performance of 315-based graphics cards could increase before the first cards hit the shelves. From the software point of view, SiS provides a timely package including some options to influence performance and image quality.

A problem that both chips have to fight with is the lack of OpenGL support. Of course hardly anybody is going to purchase a graphics card based on one of these chipsets to run professional OpenGL applications. Yet there might be some people who would like to play Quake III or run other software based on OpenGL.

Though both chips are not completely finished, it’s already quite clear that the SiS chipset should be the better choice, even if it is more expensive. The flexible memory interface leaves you the option to chose either SDRAM or DDR memory in several configurations.