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S3 Graphhics Chrome S27 MultiChrome PCI-E Review |
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Written by Zombie
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Saturday, 20 May 2006 |
Hexus presents a review on the S3 Graphics Chrome S27 MultiChrome PCIe video card. S3 Graphics still exists. Just thought I'd throw that snippet of info out there at the beginning, just incase you'd forgotten, which you'd be forgiven for. Since becoming a part of Taiwanese silicon behemoth VIA, S3 have steadfastly produced new graphics products, but nowhere near the pace that ATI and NVIDIA set themselves, and which the consumer has largely come to expect. That their offerings are resolutely mid-range and low-end is fine, and just the way S3 like it we suspect, but it means S3 don't enjoy the top-down halo effect of a super high-end graphics board with all the performance, features, image quality and heatsink mass befitting such expensive bits of PC componentry.
 S3 Graphhics Chrome S27 MultiChrome PCI-E Review
Concluding on the current state of S3 Graphics Chrome S27 is pretty easy. There are better products out there for the same or less money from ATI and NVIDIA. And while it's not nice to say so, since another executing competitor in the mid-range and low-end consumer space would be brilliant, it's the current reality. Seems we have to wait yet another generation before S3 Graphics brings something to the table worth considering, versus what's out there from the top two. It's behind in DirectX, can't match the absolute image quality, has driver bugs and, most importantly isn't quite there on price/performance.
While the board itself seems cheap at $99 all in, the Radeon X1300 PRO is as cheap or cheaper. The GPU itself is frugal, largely by virtue of its tiny size and production process used to build it, and the cooling solution provided is excellent, but even if that were enough to spark a purchasing notion in someone interested, it remains mostly unavailable outside of the US and the Far East. MultiChrome doesn't work as well as SLI or CrossFire, leaving the purchase of a second board a far away notion. Video playback is currently flawed, despite some excellent software adjustability, and without the quality of its competitors.
The open-mind tactic didn't elicit the response I was hoping for with S3 Graphics' Chrome S27 and MultiChrome, sadly, and therefore we wait for the next generation to see if they have something that can better compete. From what we've heard from S3, they have something pretty sweet on the cards for Vista's timeframe and upcoming new Direct3D, but can't elaborate on it too much, especially publically. We caution S3 that, should the next lot of hardware be as good as we hope it is, they make sure the driver and supporting software doesn't have the rough edges the current driver and software does.
So an interesting product, one that improves on the old GammaChrome product generation pretty significantly, but one which doesn't move the game on enough to challenge competing products in the same price space. Too many flaws in silicon and software to recommend, we're sad to say.
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