Recently, SiS introduced the SiS 315, a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) targeted at the budget conscious entry-level gaming segment. Other competing chipsets in this market include the Geforce2 MX 200/400 from nVidia. We got a commercial board based on this chipset named Evil Sam.
First a little about the chipset–its GPU has a 0.15-micron process based core, and runs at the same speed as its memory at 166 MHz. It supports hardware T&L (transformation and Lighting). While this card will be available in both SDR and DDR configurations, ours came with 32 MB SDRAM. Total memory bandwidth stands at 2.7 GB/sec for our card, which was twice as much as Nvidia’s MX-200 core, and same as the MX-400 core. Ours came with a DVI port as well, that can be used to power another display.
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For testing, we used a PIII 700 MHz processor and an Asus CUV4-X motherboard and pitted it against cards based on GeForce2 MX-400 and 200. These were the Asus V7100 Magic and Deluxe. Evil Sam couldn’t perform as well as the MX-400 in most of the benchmarks, but gave the MX-200 a tough competition, as shown in the results. Overall, it looks like a promising chipset. The only thing that remains to be seen is its pricing.
Quake 3 Arena (1280x1024x32 resolution) |
3D Winbench 2000 (fps) |
3DMark 2001 |
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Evil Sam | 22 | 54.7 | 1799 |
GeForce2 MX-200 | 17.3 | 37.7 | 1231 |
GeForce2 MX-400 | 34.3 | 68.6 | NA |
Anuj Jain