3DVelocity wish to thank SiS for providing this card for review.

The Drivers

SiS' drivers are slightly different to what you are used to for other large rivals like ATi and nVidia. You install the Graphics Card Drivers and then you install the 3D Tool which gives you advanced properties of the card like Wireframe Mode and FSAA. A bit different, and hopefully it will be changed as I cant see the point in it personally. I think its better to keep it all in the Display Properties and not to clutter up the Start Menu more!

In the Advanced Properties under Display Options you get the main configuration (Utility Manager) of the cards hardware. This isnt the Graphics tweaking however, this includes options like colour correction and video out options

The Product and File information takes you to a screen which is simply an "About my card and drivers" screen, telling you what chipset you have onboard your Xabre including what drivers you have. On the screen shown below, if you click on either the Xabre chip or the SiS chip, it will change below to show the information on that particular chip.

Configuring The Card Itself

In the Start menu, you find the controls for the cards graphical options for games.
The first option, known as "Eagle Eye" is rather interesting. SiS have got a Transparency mode, not too far in the past ASUS had a lot of uproar for adding Transparency to drivers, which in turn created a rise in online cheating as you can see through walls etc. I dont know whether this will be an option that will stay or if it was just a "This is what the card can do". It gives a lovely effect though!

Transparency in action:

3DMark2001's FireFly

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3DMark2001's Dragon

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The Wireframe mode is something in its own though! I think this is one of the most amazing images you can see, but unfortunately its without textures! It still makes you wow though!

3DMark2001's FireFly

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3DMark2001's Dragon

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The second tab gives you the FSAA option. Instead of choosing between 2XAA,4XAA etc, you get a slider for what quality you want. The further to the left you pull the bar, the more performance you get, and the further to the right the more quality you get.

FSAA Full Performance

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FSAA Full Quality

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Finally on the last tab you get OverClock which is what it says! Overclock your memory and core independantly to squeeze that extra performance. Remember the memory is DDR, so double the speed it gives you to show your DDR speed (250Mhz x 2(DDR) = 500Mhz)

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