SiS 315 and 305 Video question

[RU482]

I've heard that cards equipped with the SiS 315 chipset perform near Geforce2MX 200...is this true?

Also, what would be the Nvidia equivalent to the SiS 305 video chipset?

 

[holdencommodore]

The SiS 315 performs inbetween a MX200 and MX400 (leaning more to the MX400 side than the MX200 side)

I think the SiS 305 is about the same as a TNT or *maybe* a TNT2 M64 or Vanta

Cheers

 

[Peter]

The 305 is a stripdown of 315, with half the RAM bus width, for the absolute low end display card
market. You get the same feature set and driver, but less RAM bandwidth - read: lower 3D performance.

regards, Peter

 

[antmanbee]

If you do not play games is there any advantage to the 315 over the 305?
I just need cheap cards for K7S5A ECS motherboards that have good 2D for general applications with a little Photo editing and also to watch DVDs

 

[aswedc]

<< If you do not play games is there any advantage to the 315 over the 305?
I just need cheap cards for K7S5A ECS motherboards that have good 2D for general applications with a little Photo editing and also to watch DVDs >>



I wouldn't expect the SiS cards to have a great 2D image quality because of their extremely low price, although I have no experience with them. A safe bet would be a Radeon SDR because they are known for good image quality

 

[vss1980]

You can get some Radeon VE (or Radeon 7000) cards with just 32MB of RAM for a fairly low price now. These carry the same kind of 2D performance from the normal Radeon cards and still also feature the integrated DVD hardware assist. Also, as its been around for quite a while now, the drivers are mature.
In 3D terms, it may probably loose out to the SiS 315 especially with newer games that require a T&L (dont think the 305 has one though) unit, but the Radeon VE should still perform around the TNT2 Ultra / GF2 MX200 region.

 

[Peter]

Well technically you can get good 2D out of every graphics chip ... getting the analog line filters right is the important thing in making a graphics card give good 2D quality. There is no extra cost involved.

That said, I've never seen an ATi card with bad 2D, but I've seen too few SiS chip based cards to judge. Those I saw were OK, but given their cheap nature, I've never seen them combined with really good monitors ... people who need to save $20 on the graphics card usually don't have $500 monitors ...

regards, Peter

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've built a half dozen systems for clients using the ECS AG315T 64MB Video Card with TV-Out - RETAIL BOX from Newegg recently and using This review's reg tweaks and overclocking it using powerstrip(200/190) been able to get MX400 like benchies from it. I've had it playing MOH:AA adequately on 800x600/16bit/low detail and it plays QIII very well. BTW, I played DVD's on my big screen with that card and it looks very good.