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Hardware

Xabre Graphics Card Reviewed 120

Posted by timothy from the first-fun-to-read-graphics-card-review dept.
Daniel Rutter writes: "Graphics cards using the SIS Xabre chipset don't seem to have quite made it to the retail market in most of the world yet, but they're on sale now here in Australia. I've checked out Triplex's shiny XabrePRO card. It's weird. Not just because it's silver, in typical Triplex fashion. It's also got weird drivers. Not bad drivers. Just... weird. And it makes a weird noise. Seriously." Check out those screenshots, and wonder.
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Xabre Graphics Card Reviewed More

Xabre Graphics Card Reviewed

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  • Bad pun alert! Bad pun alert! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27, 2002 @05:34PM (#3592324)
    So is the noise they make just Xabre rattling?

  • Quick! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lostchicken ( 226656 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @05:37PM (#3592334)
    Name a "wierd" driver that makes your life easier.
    If the only way to describe something that one should never, ever see is 'wierd', something is wrong.

    It shouldn't be wierd, it should just work. I don't notice my sound card's drivers, and that's how it should be.

    • Re:Quick! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You obviously haven't met my girlfriend... she's a very weird driver.
    • It shouldn't be wierd...

      No, it should be weird



      (Sorry :-)

    • Just because something is weird doen't make it bad. The way linux works is still 'weird' to me (sorry, but I just haven't had the time to sit down and tool around with it), yet I'm sure many people here would say that linux is not bad, and I don't think it is either.

    • Re:Quick! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by rabidcow ( 209019 )
      Except most of the "weirdness" is the control panel UI. Describing that as weird (and it is, just look at it!) is somewhat less important. Who cares? How often are you gonna be in there?

      It's the noise I'd worry about.

  • Slashdotted Already (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not posted 10 minutes and its already slashdotted.

  • Yay, dansdata! (Score:2, Informative)

    by moonbender ( 547943 )
    Hey, I didn't know that guy actually submitted his reviews to Slashdot. I love his reviews, he usually doesn't do cutting edge stuff like Tom's Hardware or Anandtech do, but tests periphery equipment and fans (his HSF comparance is awesome). He writes quite entertainingly, without taking himself or the topic too seriously. The site could use a makeup, though, but I prefer the disorder to the clickfests of THG and AT. Sorry if this comes up as advertisement, I swear to god I'm not affiliated with him in any way, I really just like the site. :)
  • From the viewpoint of a newbie gamer geek, I'm sick of all these hardcore graphics cards with a million widgets on the control panel.

    I'd like to have a simple interface and an explanation of what does what coupled with a high-performance graphics card.

    Hence "weird drivers" shuns me away.
    • Just don't use 'em. The default installation of most drivers, certainly the Nvidia ones, is really quite optimal.
      There are a lot of tweaking options and 3rd party utilities with even more options, but none of them really do anything worthwhile to the performance. Some settings are nice to have in uncommon situations, when running legacy software or something, but really, 99% of the users are fine never touching them.
      I doubt this card is any different, although dan is certainly correct in advising against buying one now - first version software and hardware is usually best avoided.

    • Re:Driver GUI (Score:3, Funny)

      by foonf ( 447461 )


      I'd like to have a simple interface and an explanation of what does what coupled with a high-performance graphics card.


      Then you should switch to linux. The vi interface is extremely simple, and its all you need to configure XFree86.

    • Re:Driver GUI - You've missed the game (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But, you're missing the OTHER game we play.

      You spend hours tweaking out Doom III just so on your so-new-the-surface-mount-is-still-wet video card. It looks good.

      Your buds come over and their jaws hit the floor. They run out and buy the game.

      It doesn't look as good on their box at home.

      They buy a new monitor. Still doesn't look as good.

      They get the new card, drop a month's pay doing it. Still doesn't look as good.

      They swallow their pride, and come crawling for help. You kick back, read Pitr's copy of "Evil Geniuses for Dummies" and leisurely decide how to respond.

      And that's the best game of all...

  • Mirrored (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27, 2002 @05:48PM (#3592388)
    Here: http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~glmclear/xabre/ [uwaterloo.ca]

    (and some extra stuff to keep the lameness filter at bay.)

  • My favorite part (Score:3, Funny)

    by SpamJunkie ( 557825 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @05:50PM (#3592394)
    My favorite part is the "About Xabre"... legend. Is this even marketing? Some of the best parts:

    "For 500 years, demons tyrannized the world of human vision with omnipresent control. The demons competed among themselves, and the winner set the rules for domineering the world of human vision while human beings paid a high price for their enjoyment."

    500 years? Very creative description of the current (and fairly recent) video card market. Then the story borrows heavily from the sword in the stone myth:

    "Xabre entered the forest of visual fantasy bordering the land of the demons, where he discovered the 8X8 twin sword."

    Those screenshot are weird, but this story of a graphics processor that is a 500-year old mysterious night is truly bizarre.
    • Maybe SiS marketing was smokin' the same crack that caused them to pair up with a company named "Triplex" -- say the three-syllable pronunciation for that name, instead of the two-syllable one they probably intended.

      Hm. A demon-slaying knight who creates a visual paradise and partners with *cough* Triplex *cough* I wonder what sort of visual feast was intended, really.
  • My graphics card makes noise too. All I have to do is open up some document in Acrobat Reader (in Linux of course), press the mouse anywhere in the document, and move it up just a pixel or too. Then there is a slight noise coming from something in the computer as long as you hold the mouse button. It sounds kind of like when a hard drive seeks, only muffled. And with very few variations - almost a constant sound.

    I know it is not the harddrive that makes the noise (it is much louder), and it is not the fan on the graphics card. It is not a conflict with the sound card (because the sound is produced even with all speakers off). It is not the PC speaker (I disconnected it), but it could be the buzzer on the motherboard (that replaces the speaker when it is disconnected). But it could also be the graphics card. It is a Leadtek NVidia Riva TNT card by the way.

    • My system itself makes noise. It seems to be tied to "stuff happening" inside the box, though I've not been able to track it down precisely. It makes it during virtual memory swapping under Windows, but it also makes it when booting Linux in framebuffer mode. It makes it, but not as loud, while playing Return to Wolfenstien under Linux. It makes loud (audible from the next room, with the case on) noise when playing Warcraft 2, and makes a rhythmic tick-tick-tick-tick when playing MP3s. Based on all this, I almost believe it's something on the motherboard itself, because the noise remains after switching RAM, CPU, power supply, and videocard. It's definitely not coming from the speakers or motherboard buzzer. It started happening about 3 months after I built this system and hasn't stopped since. It's louder in cold weather than in warm, and it's driving me nuts!
      • Your computer is quite obviously possessed. ;) Sprinkling holy water on it while it's making those noises will likely put it to rest, permanently. :)
        • Sprinkling holy water on it while it's making those noises will likely put it to rest, permanently. :)

          Try explaining THAT to Microsoft Support... "Yeah, my data is still there, but all the system files are now gone!."
      • My system itself makes noise. It seems to be tied to "stuff happening" inside the box

        I think this is a lot more common than people think. I converted an old PC into a "quiet" PC, well router. Then I started noticing high pitched noises coming from the thing at night. And it was synced with netowork activity. At first I though it was just some errant radio waves getting to the TV. Unplugged it, still there. Unplugged everything but the router(old PC) and a couple network devices, still there. Unplugged the network, still there but much lower.

        Later I listened for it in the day time, and it was there, just drowned out by the higher level of white noise. It was probably always there, just too many fans muffling it. I've also had brand new power supplies(A HP Journada ones for one) that made a horrible and sometimes loud noise.

        I'm guessing that some small change in the temperature profile of the chip, or maybe the monitor signal filter will get rid of the noise future models of this video card lineage. But I don't recall learning anything about engineering around this type of bug as an EE.
      • i get the noise out of my system once in a while also, but it magically disappears when i mute the line input on my sound card.
    • If you have a CPU utilization indicator, I think you'll find that the noise correlates with the CPU utilization or, more precisely, with the power drawn from your power supply. (Can also be a result of thermal fan control, but if it's high pitched or whiney, it's probably an artifact of the [switching] power supply.) To get rid of the noise:
      1) you need a bigger power supply; or
      2) you need a better power supply.
    • Sounds like the pc speaker to me, if there is a buzzer on the m/b then you will still hear it without your other speaker.. Most likely it is a conflict with the video card / mouse, ive seen similar things before, do you know if it is the same sound as you get when your computer locks up and you keep moving the mouse until it starts clicking?
    • Seems like a not entirely uncommon problem. It is interesting hear from others with the same problem.

      Anyway, I tried again to locate the problem - now listening inside the box when the noise was made. And I still couldn't find the exact source. It could be coming from the harddrive or the 300W powersupply (it's only a 2x400MHz P2 box with only one harddrive, so it shouldn't really need 300W).

      I did a 'strace -f' when running acroread, and it appears that when you drag the mouse a lot of information is shared between it and the X server via some socket. The CPU load is pretty high. So it could very well be the power supply.
    • Does it have a Creative Labs logo on it?

      This may be part of the problem.
  • at first i thought

    The eight memory chips (there are another four on the back of the card) are all Etron Technology EM658160TS- 3.3s.

    read: The eight memory chips (there are another four on the back of the card) are all Enron Technology EM658160TS- 3.3s.

  • I think everyone begs to ask the question: does it support linux?

    • NO LINUX SUPPORT (Score:2, Informative)

      by Master Bait ( 115103 )
      SiS will not release chip docs except under NDA. They are also NOT writing their own X Window driver. One person, Tom Winischofer [winischhofer.net] is cobbling together support based on SiS's older X Window drivers. If you get a Xabre or have a 315 video card or SiS 740, 850-based motherboard, please download his drivers and test them for bugs.

      • We tried prying the data from them for the 3D support- and Coollogic HAS an NDA with them. So far, no go- all we got so far was the 2D and MPEG stuff from them. I'm going to give it another go shortly, hopefully with at least marginally better results.

  • Curse of AOTC ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @06:39PM (#3592531)

    Perfect, Nvidia's drivers aren't. About as good as you can get, they are.

    Reviewer like Yoda speak, yes? Graphics chip reviews inverted sentences need like head with hole ... hmmm?

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • I think I'll wait until the ideas in This article about the future of video cards [somethingawful.com] come to munition.

  • Vsync, and all that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday May 27, 2002 @07:56PM (#3592804) Homepage
    People who benchmark by redrawing faster than the display refresh rate are missing the point. The question is how much you can draw per frame time, not how many times you can redraw the same simple scene in a second. That measurement stopped being meaningful when display boards became fast enough to draw useful screens in less than a frame time.

    The two aren't that closely related. Just because you can draw X polygons N times per second doesn't mean you can draw 2X polygons N/2 times per second. You may run out of onboard memory or some other resource.

    There's also a time penalty for switching from the back buffer to the front buffer. In full screen mode, this is generally a switch, but in windowed mode, copying is usually involved, and some boards do that copy much faster than others.

    The "ooh, shiny heat sink" approach to board evaluation is also amusing.

    • Re:Vsync, and all that (Score:2, Insightful)

      by smash ( 1351 )
      Granted, it may not be the best measure of performance, but it *does* give an indication of the cards maximum polygon/texturing throughput.

      Given that most people who buy these cards don't give a crap about windowed performance (ie, they just play games), the window content copying isn't so important (those who are, are more likely to be getting a professional card). Also, the time spent doing a copy of a windowfull of data is likely insignificant when stacked against the GPU cycles spent rendering. (4-8meg copy at 7gig/sec .. oh no :P)

      I think part of the reason the quake3/etc benchmarks are used is because Joe Gamer can easily relate to them, and they're a "real world" application that is close to what he will use the card for.

      Anyway, interesting point, but I think its just a case of using a benchmark that Joe gamer will understand..

      smash

  • Noise? (Score:1)

    by lmfr ( 567586 )

    And it makes a weird noise.

    So does my notebook's, and the darn thing doesn't even have a decent 3d support!

    Oh, but it just happens for a short period of time after my notebook is carried along. I guess it must be some sort of security thingy (i moved! i moved!)....

  • "first-fun-to-read-graphics-card-review"

    Um...all of Mr. Rutter's reviews, video card and others, are fun to read. Check them out.
  • I've bought one of those board after reading all the raving reviews about them and that supposed-leaked marketting thing with Nvidia bashing them, I thought maybe they were good. I went out and bought a 64Megs with TV-out for less than 100$, it ran okay for games, offering decent performance, but as soon as I touched Lightwave3D (i.e. professionnal 3D application that requires OpenGL acceleration) it SUCKED big time, the layout wasn't even updating correctly and the scene was breaking down and smudging like hell. I emailed tech support, their answers?? (that should be a classic a la "where's the any key")

    "when you use Autocad or Lightwave or any pro 3D apps, you have to go in the properties->hardware acceleration OFF"

    (implying also that if you want to switch from working to gaming you need to go to that control pannel everytime... PAIN!!!).

    So basically you buy a 3d accelerator that has no 3d acceleration for software that requires 3d acceleration.

    Those of you that will say "yeah but calm down beavis, that card is for gaming, what else do you expect from a 3d board??"

    well 2 things: if it DOESN'T accelerate my pro apps, at least make it not BREAK them at least, and second, every NVIDIA product works in all 3d software, so if one is doing it, the others would be damned not to follow.

    Anyways, I returned the card and went to buy a Geforce 2MX for the time being...
  • Xabre was created to take advantage of the Xtra features in Ximian sometime in the future.
  • What's the point in buying a "pretty" version of a piece of hardware if all it's going to do is hide inside the case of your PC? Now if I had one of those cool see-thru cases that may be different, but most of us don't. This just seems like a big waste of money. I say buy OEM and buy ugly ;)
    • You have a point, however at LAN parties I often take the side of my case off to show my "install". Its sort of like "popping the hood" at a cruise or car show...... Quite sad really I know. Po
  • I've got a noisy card, too - the original Voodoo Graphics cards make a loud 'clunk' noise when you used them. Not as worrying as a continuous high pitched noise, though :(
  • $242 AUD ~= $136 USD

    I just bought me a GeForce3 Ti200 from compuplus.com for $79. If only I'd waited, an extra 50 bucks would have bagged me an inferior, untested card with screwy drivers.

    Seriously, how can they sell even one of these cards? Of course, they will. People generally don't know what they're buying anyway.

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