Xabre "review"

[OpenGL guy]

Re: Xabre

I don't know about their hardware, but they sure know how to tell fairy tales

I think you summed the hardware up nicely as well

 

[Nagorak]

Hey, I think their marketing kicks ass :

Jitter-Free Anti-Aliasing

Mind-boggling hyper-insane image performance and quality without worries on those dreaded "jaggies" without slowing your computer down. The "Jitter-Free" Anti-aliasing engine can support 1x, 2x and 4x blur, Oversamlping and jitter anti-aliasing to display the most eye-popping clear images available.

K~

LOL! That's totally hillarious. I almost want to buy a Xabre just so I can take the box and hang it on the wall. It'd give me a good laugh daily.

 

[Althornin]

I just read the article, and let me get this straight:
If i buy a card, they will give an SUV to each memeber of my family?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Mind-boggling hyper-insane image performance and quality without worries on those dreaded "jaggies" without slowing your computer down. The "Jitter-Free" Anti-aliasing engine can support 1x, 2x and 4x blur..

I'm particularly interested in 1x blur mode! Finally: FSAA FOR FREE! (Then again, taking a thumbful of vaseline and smearing on the monitor probably costs the same, and is more effective...)

 

[Althornin]

(Then again, taking a thumbful of vaseline and smearing on the monitor probably costs the same, and is more effective...)

That is actually the correct method. George Lucas used this fab method to remove the wheels from underneath the landspeeder.
As it is obviously the choice of the pros, ATI must suck for not including a can of vaseline in each retail box.

 

[jjayb]

Hehe. Althornin, you are starting to sound like chalnoth. "but, but, but...the gforce has vasiblur and the Radeon doesn't. I told you it sucked!!!!"

 

[Ailuros]

Vaseline?


What brand?

 

[MuFu]

Vaseline?


What brand?

Erm... Vaselineâ„¢, maybe?

 

[Ailuros]

Not the only brand available; I thought maybe somebody would like to argue about which brand is better after all

 

[Clashman]

If it's not the Vaseline brand, then it isn't Vaseline at all. Then it's "petroleum jelly".

 

[Ailuros]

Same thing/ different name.

 

[jb]

K-Y Jelly?

 

[Colourless]

K-Y is not petroleum jelly. It's waterbased.

-Colourless

 

[BoddoZerg]

I wonder how many people are going to run out and buy the Xabre because it has so many more features than anyone else's videocards. ^^

 

[mboeller]

A new review with Turbo-Mode0 and Turbomode3 image comparison. It seems SiS was able to improve the drivers and image quality too :

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/xabre/index.html

 

[Joe DeFuria]

That's a decent quality improvement!

Is it possible that "turbo mode" auto-generates mip-maps instead of using supplied ones?

That's not particularly a "good thing", but it is something I consider an acceptable option for a sub $100 video card.

The more decent DX8 $100 video cards, the better!

 

[GraphixViolence]

The comparisons are still pretty bogus. Sure the Xabre outperforms even a Radeon 9000 Pro... but only when it starts mucking around with the texture quality. To be fair, the Xabre scores with TurboMode enabled should be compared to the Radeon boards with the control panel sliders turned all the way to the "performance" setting in the new CATALYST drivers. You can do this on the 8500, so I assume it works on the 9000 and probably the 7500 as well.

And it's one thing to get good 3DMark scores, but I'd be interested to see how well the Xabre does in actual games. It's a lot easier to optimize for one common benchmark than it is to get everything else running fast and stable.

 

[Ante P]

To be fair, the Xabre scores with TurboMode enabled should be compared to the Radeon boards with the control panel sliders turned all the way to the "performance" setting in the new CATALYST drivers. You can do this on the 8500, so I assume it works on the 9000 and probably the 7500 as well.

Actually ATi's sliders doesn't "go that low".
Ie "Optimal performance" on both is not even remotely close to setting the LOD to 3 on a GF.

But hey, the new drivers cleaned it up pretty nicely. I could "go with that" if I was looking for a card in thise price range. (And I expect most buyers won't even know the difference, I'm just glad more people have DX8 cards so we can finally get this "programmability" show on the road. )

 

[GetStuff]

http://www.mikhailtech.com/articles/video/ecsag400/ecsag400-gamma.gif

The gamma correction box isn't particularly interesting here. Not sure what Europe Proofing and US Proofing means, but I can definitely tell you that neither look very good.