Has anybody been brave enough to buy a Xabre?

[Warthog]

I noticed the Xabre's are starting at about $35. Seems to good to be true for even a low budget VC. So has anybody bought one?

 

[merlocka]

where?

 

[Warthog]

My mistake, I thought the Xabre was the same thing as the SIS 315 chipset.

 

[merlocka]

The xabre and 315 are completly different

 

[merlocka]

lol, i was about to get ya but you beat me by one minute

I'll get one when they are available (and cheap). I'll also be brave and get a SavageXP when they are out.

 

[Warthog]

What's the SavageXP?

 

[merlocka]

SavageXP will be the first new core from S3 Graphics (post aquisition by VIA). Is is based on the Zeotrope core which is supposed to be used in both a integrated solution (P4M333?) and a discrete desktop solution (SavageXP).

I'm a bit unsure of the specs, initially it was to be a DX7 part but according to here it will have DX8.1 Vertex and Pixel shaders.

Basically, Zeotrope seems to be a 2 dual-textured pixel pipe card with ~166MHz core. That's similar to a Geforce2 MX. They will probably pair it up with DDR memory though. You can see a pic of a Tyan SavageXP card here This seems to be nothing more than a "enhanced" Savage2000 with DX8 funtionality. Let's hope enhanced = fixed hardware with decent drivers.

Don't expect much in performance from Zeotrope, but it should be a VERY cheap card. It will also be a litmus test for the VIA / S3 team to see if they will have good driver support this time around.

More importantly, if they get the thing out and sell some cards they might actually get the Columbia chipset out. Columbia is supposed to be S3's attempt to get back into the performance discrete desktop martket.

 

[rApiDShoT]

The card doesn't seen too bad overall, maybe the image quality is not as good as other cards but the price would be around the MX440 area.

It has outperformed the Geforce 3 in some areas..and just beaten the Geforce 4 MX440 out of there!!

Maybe a little driver polishing and some here and there would get this SIS Xabre to be cheap and powerful..

I just heard that you can cheat with this card, there is a transparency option in their drivers, which will work kinda like wallhack I guess. It's hardware cheating lol...and I don't think HLguard etc..can detected it yet.. cause they really have to scan for that option on I guess...

Check out the atricle...

CS-Nation

 

[Killrose]

Unless SiS gets their Xabre to work with Via chipset motherboards, they are not going to do to good.