B3dD's Xabre 400 review..

[Hellbinder]

I must say there is some pretty disturbing information.. questions raised.. etc in this one. I found your conclusion to be really .. um.. *kind*...

At one pont you openly Question the number of pixel pipelines actually in the hardware, then in the next paragraph say that *all the hardware is there*... eh???

IMO, a budget card is not the same thing as a *Cheap* card. Page after page of that review gave me kind of a dirty feeling. Virtually no area of this card performs as expected. T&L absent in come cases, Extremely shoddy filtering, outright decietfull AA, sub par performance.. cheap hacks in drivers that hoze IQ and gain *minimal* speed increase... the list goes on.

There is litterally not one single posotive, or desireable aspect to this card. Don't Both ATi and Nvidia have products in this category that perform bettter, look bettr, Deliver on features, and are similarly priced.

I simply cant believe that SIS could not have done a better job. Seriously. I am for competition, more options in the market and all that.. but...

[Hellbinder]

After a quick priocewatch check..

Powercolor Xabre 400 = 102$.. cheeapest price...

Radeon 9000 98$ = Cheapest price.

Simply no comparrison between these two cards..

[Chalnoth]

From looking at those performance results, I will have to admit that ATI's drivers are most certainly amazing compared to what SiS offers. If you know what I think about ATI's drivers, you can be sure that I have absolutely no respect for SiS at this point...

Yeah, this card doesn't come even close to the Radeon 9000.

At the same time, the GeForce3 Ti 200 is also in the same range...I'd rather go for that one.

Btw, I don't know where you were looking on Pricewatch. Here are the prices I dug up:

64MB cards:
Chaintech Xabre 400: $69
Atlantis Radeon 9000: $63
Aopen GeForce3 Ti 200: $69

128MB cards:
Apollo Xabre 400: $95
ATI Radeon 9000: $85
Asus GeForce4 Ti 4200: $111

[Clashman]

This is one area where I think a lack of comparative benchmarking at B3d can really hurt a review. When a card performs abysmally in comparison to its direct competition, but still has what should be considered 'acceptable' framerates, image quality, etc, readers might end up being misled into believing that by purchasing this card they are getting the best bang for their buck. If the Xabre were compared to a similarly priced card, (ala 8500, 9000, or GF3 Ti 200), the value the card actually represents to the consumers would more accurately displayed.

[Hellbinder]

The price i listed was by looking for the actual Powercomor card reviewed. And a ATI Retail 9000.

[Hellbinder]

Heck Chalnoth.. Forget the GF3 ti 200 and Get the Full Radeon 8500 for 66$ in that case.. Runs circles around it ;)

On i side note..

I find your apparent position regarding the current stte of ATi's drivers to be Rather Forced** and undeserving.... But I digress.


** denotes looks for the slightest little thing to completetly bow out of proportion

[Brent]

The Xabre 600 doesn't fare much better then the Xabre 400 either lol

i'm currently reviewing this pile of junk haha

well, i shouldn't say junk

performance is playable, if you don't mind horrible IQ with TexTurbo at 3, which basically turns off Trilinear filtering and produces very pixelated textures :p but if you put it to TexTurbo 1 for semi-decent IQ the performance hits the bucket

No Anisotropic

AA at 4X looks ok, but performance is not

2X AA doesn't seem to do anything visually, heh

SiS really needs to take a step back and re-evalulate what they got here

the Xabre 400 and Xabre 600 are not worth money spent at all

you can get a much better card from the Radeon 9000/Pro 8500/LE at a competitive price compared to the Xabre 400 and 600

[Althornin]

At the same time, the GeForce3 Ti 200 is also in the same range...I'd rather go for that one.

Right, why would you want more features and performance from a Radeon 8500?
Nice call, chalnoth!

[Dave Baumann]

First off, can we keep the comments where they are supposed to be kept (http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3719).

As I just wrote in the previous thread, this thing will live or die on price, its simple. If it undercuts other DX8 boards to a reasonable degree it will survive, if it doesn’t then it won’t.

Clearly the board vendors that produce Xabre boards are not getting the same kind of market penetration in the US and Europe as the larger players, so (as the price watch searches show) they are not going do much there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the case all over the place.

Clearly, anyone in Europe / US who is looking for a cheap DX8 board will opt for the 9000.

AA at 4X looks ok, but performance is not

That’s because its supersampling. Its kind of a shame that The 9000 uses SSAA as well since its AA performance isn’t that great because of this either. I’ll wager that 2003’s budget boards from ATI and NVIDIA will both use MSAA an colour compression, which will make AA much more of a viable option on the low end (and also make it more difficult for the little guys to compete unless they are doing something similar).

2X AA doesn't seem to do anything visually, heh

As I put in the review, 2X just appears to be mixing samples from neighboring pixels – however, I don’t think that’s the case in both OpenGL and DX.

[Chalnoth]

At the same time, the GeForce3 Ti 200 is also in the same range...I'd rather go for that one.

Right, why would you want more features and performance from a Radeon 8500?
Nice call, chalnoth!

Much better antialiasing performance.
Better anisotropic image quality.
Poor experience with 9700's drivers.

Quite frankly, I think the GF3 is a much better deal. While you may have to run at a lower resolution, it will render properly far more often than the 8500 will. At the same time, if you're looking at retail parts, the GeForce4 Ti 4200 is a significantly better card, and isn't that much more expensive than a "Radeon 9100." (About $20)

[Nite_Hawk]

Chalnoth:

For what it's worth, I upgraded from a ti200 to the 9700pro. I've had a couple of minor driver problems, but nothing really as terrible as you make it sound. I think you are giving ATI a rather bad rap.

Nite_Hawk

[Hellbinder]

Much better antialiasing performance.
Better anisotropic image quality.
Poor experience with 9700's drivers.

Quite frankly, I think the GF3 is a much better deal. While you may have to run at a lower resolution, it will render properly far more often than the 8500 will. At the same time, if you're looking at retail parts, the GeForce4 Ti 4200 is a significantly better card, and isn't that much more expensive than a "Radeon 9100." (About $20)


IMO this is complete popycock, Which would be no big deal if you did not work ata well known internet site...

First.. from this rather old comparrison..
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1558&p=8

You can see that with AAand AF the 8500 and Ti500 are on pretty even ground, with Ati's AA method clearly being superior in AA. Obviously the Ti 200 is going to lose this battle. Unlike what you have claimed.


it will render properly far more often than the 8500 will


That statement.. Is not even remotely justifiable,,, And frankly BEYOND irritating.

Radeon 9700...
There is virtually nothing wrong currently with the 9700's drivers. I noticed some disturbing (to say the least) comments you recently made at Nvnews about min frame rates in UT 2003. Completely and Totally misinformation imo. Especially considering all the discussions on the matter at this site.

You continually chose to ignore any aspect of Nvidia drivers, releases at all and Intentionally Blow even the Slightest issue with ATi as far out of proportion as you can. Problems with the the GF2, and especially GF3 with lockups, game errors and the like were Quite rampant for at least the first 6 months of release. The 9700 for *Most* people including myself have nearly no issues at all.

It really disturbes me that I get called an ATi fanboi all the time, simply from spending all my time Defending ATi from crap like this posted at well known Sites.

[RussSchultz]

Weee...another round of Hellbinder vs. Chalnoth.

Begone! In the immortal words of Gandalf: "You shall not pass!"

Of course, he then gets sucked into the abyss...

[Joe DeFuria]

Bah...

I prefer the immortal words of the Black Knight: "None shall pass!"

Of course, he is then treated to a series of "flesh wounds..." :wink:

[Novdid]

I have to take Hellbinders side on this one. I have used cards from both ATI and nv and I have come to the conclusion that the common thought that nvidia drivers are better and more stable than ATI's is a myth. It's just some unfortunate old legacy that remains in peoples minds.

And people keep in mind that the Geforces the last couple of years have been the "de facto" standard and the inevitable result of that is that some games get heavily optimized for the various GF's while running less than satisfiable on Radeon's. All I want to say is that in many cases it's just the game that's poorly coded!

[CarstenS]

Does anyone mind coming back to the discussion of the Xabre? Remember, this dirty little **** is neither nVidia nor ATi, so no reason here to start a flame war.

I think the review is pretty interesting, albeit a little bit late. Of course, not many 128MB Xabre400 cards were openly available for quite some time, the sample i (http://www.computerbase.de/article.php?id=139) reviewed back in September also had only 64MBs to it, but i think, that's not the point.

SiS did not live upt to the expectations, their marketing department kindled in some people out there. It just chokes on it's fillrate vs bandwidth ratio in combination with an apparent inability for it's TMUs to fetch enough texels for real trilinear filtering in an adequate amount of time, no higher clock rates (Xabre6000 with all its new marketing bells 'n whistles) will cure that.


One thing on the 3DMark2001 single-texturing fill rates:
Drawing all it's 64 layers in single- (1 Texture!) passes really taxes bandwidth, and thus advanced memory-controllers (and SiS' lacking of it) will show clearly.

[Nappe1]

DaveBaumann: second vote for "boxing corner."

Chalnoth & HellBinder: make a favorite and start a own website called "RageNews FlameWars" and go there argueing. I am pretty much finished with both you. IMO, both companies suck big time (both on their "...own irritating way..."-Spirit, Stallion of Cimarron), but because lack of other reasonable choices, human usually gives his leg not getting completely to hell. (after coming just from one called "AIW" )

[Hellbinder]

Typical.. :roll:

You guys need to open your eyes.

[Chalnoth]

]IMO this is complete popycock, Which would be no big deal if you did not work ata well known internet site...

I don't really work there. I'm very loosely affiliated. You shouldn't consider anything I have to say on the boards to coincide with nvnews. I never write on the boards with any thought to how it might impact that site, so it shouldn't reflect that site in any way, shape, or form. That will be different when I write anything for the site.

You can see that with AAand AF the 8500 and Ti500 are on pretty even ground, with Ati's AA method clearly being superior in AA. Obviously the Ti 200 is going to lose this battle. Unlike what you have claimed.

Well, the 9700's AA method is clearly superior. The 8500's has continually had problems. That, and the performance is very poor.

Radeon 9700...
There is virtually nothing wrong currently with the 9700's drivers. I noticed some disturbing (to say the least) comments you recently made at Nvnews about min frame rates in UT 2003. Completely and Totally misinformation imo. Especially considering all the discussions on the matter at this site.

There's quite a bit wrong with them (off the top of my head):
Forcing of bilinear/trilinear with anisotropic enabled for point-sampled surfaces (blurry text)
Banding in many OpenGL games
z-buffer errors in Morrowind

You continually chose to ignore any aspect of Nvidia drivers, releases at all and Intentionally Blow even the Slightest issue with ATi as far out of proportion as you can. Problems with the the GF2, and especially GF3 with lockups, game errors and the like were Quite rampant for at least the first 6 months of release. The 9700 for *Most* people including myself have nearly no issues at all.

Lockups and game errors are far harder to track down, particularly since they can be due to any number of reasons. It's the rendering errors that I find inexcusable. I've been having far more instability issues with the Radeon 9700 (actually, mostly just reboots when a game is started), but have tried not to comment on those because it is a rev 1.0 board (One of the two main reasons why I'm not using the 9700 right now...).

[Dave Baumann]

Unless you've got a SiS (or possibly Via) chipset MB then Rev1 boards are fine. I've been using one since the release.

[OpenGL guy]

z-buffer errors in Morrowind
Maybe you should try the new leaked drivers...

[Doomtrooper]

Don't bother...ATI could produce the best drivers in the world and Chalnoth would find something wrong with them (i.e the text in the control panel is too small, I don't like it :) ), yet on the Nvnews forums with lots of bug issues with NV stuff he completley ignores it as if it doesn't exist...I can't wait for NV30 to release I'm gonna take a snapshot of Nvnews forum and dedicate that too him.