Xabre looks good!

[spanky]

link

with drivers in it's infant stages... xabre is looking like a contender. this should be an interesting fall

 

[Idoxash]

That's for sure dude!

 

[rogue1979]

I am hoping Xabre gets the drivers to up to par with ATI and Nvidia. The hardware looks really good and I am sure the price will drop soon. While not a G4 or Radeon 9700 killer, it looks real competitive in the midrange. Even if I don't try one I hope it does well and drives down the video card prices in that segment. The Kyro II came out a little too late to be a big success, but it played a big part in price drops for the original Radeon and Geforce GTS back in the day.

 

[nemesismk2]

The Xabre has some serious limitations, it uses a fast form of trilinear filtering because regular trilinear filtering takes a huge performance hit. It's performance with "real" trilinear filtering is very poor and it doesn't even support anisotropic filtering.

 

[MournSanity]

I want a Xabre II. It looks to be cheap and powerful. Plus, I want to support Sis for trying to be a contender in this hard market. It;s realy awesome that they decided to go full force with this.

 

[rogue1979]

Don't dis the Xabre to much, while these limitations will affect the performance while comparing to a Geforce 3 or Radeon 8500, it will likely be priced closer to the Geforce2 Ti or Radeon 7500. It still manages to best the performance of both of those cards, and I think when and if they work out the driver shortcomings it will be much closer to Geforce 3 Ti 200 speeds.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Expected pricepoint?

 

[AdvancedRobotics]

Originally posted by: GoodRevrnd
Expected pricepoint?

$149 according to Tom's Hardware.

 

[saber800]

Man, with a $149 price tag. Why not just get a Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB for the same price or spend 20 bucks more for the 128MB?? The Geforce4 gives me guaranteed performance (better than the Xaber), solid drivers (with updates from Nvidia), and much less bugs (as toms hardware pointed out). What does the Xaber offer me over a Geforce4 other than 8x AGP?

I think it was a good try for SiS but its not a product I would buy when there are much better video cards on the market for the same price. (I'm going with the $149 price quoted above)

 

[Killrose]

They even fixed the problems with Via chipset motherboards evidently, because all reveiws up till this one said they would'nt run on a Via/Athlon platform.

 

[merlocka]

Man, with a $149 price tag. Why not just get a Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB for the same price or spend 20 bucks more for the 128MB??

Find me a Ti4200 with a MSRP of $149

Prices from online vendors will be lower than $149.

 

[saber800]

Originally posted by: merlocka
Man, with a $149 price tag. Why not just get a Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB for the same price or spend 20 bucks more for the 128MB??

Find me a Ti4200 with a MSRP of $149

Prices from online vendors will be lower than $149.

Well I hope so because thats the only advantage the Xaber has over the GF4 Ti4200.
The Xaber does have 8x AGP (no real advantage, see the article) and DirectX 8.1 support (I guess its good for future games).

 

[Jayczar]

I am not familiar with this retailer but their starting
price for the Xabre is well below $149.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

$106 for a 128MB board, not too shabby. I'd definately take and 8500 or 4200 over the Xabre, but the Xabre is focused at the lowend/mainstream segments and is priced to compete with the GF4 MX line, not the GF4 Ti 4200. The Xabre isn't targeted at the educated hard core gamer on a budget, as I think Tom mentioned that any gamer would dig deep for an extra $20 or so and go ahead and go with an 4200 or go with an 8500 instead of the Xabre...

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: saber800
Man, with a $149 price tag. Why not just get a Geforce4 Ti4200 64MB for the same price or spend 20 bucks more for the 128MB?? The Geforce4 gives me guaranteed performance (better than the Xaber), solid drivers (with updates from Nvidia), and much less bugs (as toms hardware pointed out). What does the Xaber offer me over a Geforce4 other than 8x AGP?

I think it was a good try for SiS but its not a product I would buy when there are much better video cards on the market for the same price. (I'm going with the $149 price quoted above)

it's not gonna be $150... thats the msrp. i recall the msrp for the ti4200 was like $199 or something... look at the prices now (like $150). also... the xabre is meant to be competition for the mx line. i think it does a pretty good job of holding it's own. i can't really say how sis will be with drivers, but according to tomshardware, they plan to have consistent updates. i am really impressed with sis.... first the sis735, and now this. woohoo!

 

[Rand]

The reviews I've read on the Xavre have come up with pretty mixed results . Some reviews have the Xabre 400 solidly matching the GF3 Ti200, while others have it performing a little below the MX440.

In any case it should have definite potential, though I'd like to see the price drop a touch for it to compete better against the competition.

I'd like to see the drivers improve however, many reviews have listed a number of compatibility/rendering issues with the Xabre... a little too many to make it a comfortable purchase as yet.
The texture quality also seems to be noticeably inferior to that offered by ATi/nVidia, and it's sub-pixel accuracy is relatively unimpressive even by the standards of gaming cards.

If SiS can working on texture quality a bit, and iron out some of the bugs I'd be willing to give it a chance.
It's nice to see SiS is seriously trying for the low end gamer crowd though, and the fact that they've already got the Xabre 2 listed on roadmaps indicates their serious about keeping track with the competition.

Lars Weinand needs to pay closer attention to his chart at the beginning of the article detailing the graphics card specifications, I counted 3 errors in a brief glance at it.
Specifically he definitely shouldnt be making errors in the Xabre specs on the chart given that's the board he is reviewing.
Contrary to his listings the Xabre does not fully support DirectX8.1, and indeed barely covers the minimum hardware capabilities for a DX8.0 compliant device.

 

[BFG10K]

I think the current sore spots of the card are the lack of features, pricing, driver issues and the controversial wall transparency feature. The last point in particular is totally unacceptable as it can totally destroy online multiplayer gaming if used enough.

For $149 I think I'd definitely have the much faster and world-class GF4 Ti4200, or for $99 a nice Radeon 8500.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
Don't dis the Xabre to much, while these limitations will affect the performance while comparing to a Geforce 3 or Radeon 8500, it will likely be priced closer to the Geforce2 Ti or Radeon 7500. It still manages to best the performance of both of those cards, and I think when and if they work out the driver shortcomings it will be much closer to Geforce 3 Ti 200 speeds.

Everyone seems to be blaming the drivers but drivers can only do so much. I've seen comments about the very weak TMU on the Xabre which if true could mean that some of it's problems are hardware related. Especially the large performance hit with using "real" trilinear filtering and lack of anisotropic filtering.

IMO I don't think the image quality problems will EVER be fixed, if they use real trilinear filtering the Xabre's performance suffers. Actually I've seen ALL of the Xabre's image quality problems with the older SIS315 chipset which is a major worry.

 

[rogue1979]

I can't find it now, but on one of the reviews there was a link to a vendor that had the Xabre 400 listed at $99

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Rand
The reviews I've read on the Xavre have come up with pretty mixed results . Some reviews have the Xabre 400 solidly matching the GF3 Ti200, while others have it performing a little below the MX440.

In any case it should have definite potential, though I'd like to see the price drop a touch for it to compete better against the competition.

I'd like to see the drivers improve however, many reviews have listed a number of compatibility/rendering issues with the Xabre... a little too many to make it a comfortable purchase as yet.
The texture quality also seems to be noticeably inferior to that offered by ATi/nVidia, and it's sub-pixel accuracy is relatively unimpressive even by the standards of gaming cards.

If SiS can working on texture quality a bit, and iron out some of the bugs I'd be willing to give it a chance.
It's nice to see SiS is seriously trying for the low end gamer crowd though, and the fact that they've already got the Xabre 2 listed on roadmaps indicates their serious about keeping track with the competition.

Lars Weinand needs to pay closer attention to his chart at the beginning of the article detailing the graphics card specifications, I counted 3 errors in a brief glance at it.
Specifically he definitely shouldnt be making errors in the Xabre specs on the chart given that's the board he is reviewing.
Contrary to his listings the Xabre does not fully support DirectX8.1, and indeed barely covers the minimum hardware capabilities for a DX8.0 compliant device.

Do you also think Lars Weinerand was told not to show how the Xabre does trilinear filtering or any of it's very obvious image quality problems? To anybody who doesn't know the situations with the Xabre will think it's an amazing problem free video card which just isn't true.

 

[merlocka]

To anybody who doesn't know the situations with the Xabre will think it's an amazing problem free video card which just isn't true.

Kinda like what some people thought about the Kyro2...

 

[Rand]

Do you also think Lars Weinerand was told not to show how the Xabre does trilinear filtering or any of it's very obvious image quality problems? To anybody who doesn't know the situations with the Xabre will think it's an amazing problem free video card which just isn't true.

No, I think Lars Weinerand just decided image quality doesnt matter much. From reading his past reviews at RivaStation and THG I've never gotten the impression he considered image quality to be worth comparing.
In the past he has with the occasional noteable exception pretty much ignored image quality in his first look at any given graphics card, so I'm not surprised he did the same in his Xabre review.
Lars Weinerand has never struck me as a particularly reputable or thorough reviewer in any case.

 

[spanky]

aw come on... no one wants to give sis a pat on the back for taking on big bad nvidia and ati?

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: spankyOO7
aw come on... no one wants to give sis a pat on the back for taking on big bad nvidia and ati?

I'll give them a pat on the back when they fix all of the problems with the Xabre!

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Rand

Do you also think Lars Weinerand was told not to show how the Xabre does trilinear filtering or any of it's very obvious image quality problems? To anybody who doesn't know the situations with the Xabre will think it's an amazing problem free video card which just isn't true.

No, I think Lars Weinerand just decided image quality doesnt matter much. From reading his past reviews at RivaStation and THG I've never gotten the impression he considered image quality to be worth comparing.
In the past he has with the occasional noteable exception pretty much ignored image quality in his first look at any given graphics card, so I'm not surprised he did the same in his Xabre review.
Lars Weinerand has never struck me as a particularly reputable or thorough reviewer in any case.

I don't remember reading any of his previous reviews and I hope I never have the misfortune of reading one of his reviews (if you can call them that) again!