Conclusion

In reviewing the Xabre 400 we've seen some elements that are not particularly good, such as its willingness to alter its texture filtering under OpenGL, its lack of 32-Bit textures under OpenGL, the fact that FSAA does not appear to actually be producing the number of samples that its billed as. We've also got some areas in which there are some questions, such as why does T&L not appear to be in operation when we'd expect it to? Why does the 3X FSAA performance drop so much at 1600x1200 under OpenGL and increase under DirectX? And, Why does 3DMark's theoretical tests gives results that show only half the number of pixel pipes that we'd expect?

It would appear that with WHQL certification SiS have cleaned up their drivers for DirectX and the output is pretty much as you would expect it to be, and on the whole quite good. However Microsoft probably do no certify the quality of OpenGL and hence SiS are still using a few optimisations in there to assist performance.

It has to be said that SiS have done a reasonable job of bringing a DirectX8.1 part to the market, considering they haven't had anything in the video for so long. Even though there are a few shortcuts in the drivers, the actual hardware appears to do everything that is asked of it. This could be a reasonable basis for the future is SiS decide that they are going to pursue the graphics market into DX9 class chipsets.

As for the PowerColor board, they have done a solid job. The 3D quality of the board is going to be constrained by whatever SiS provide in their drivers, however the 2D output was fine and it's also good to see that 128MB of RAM is included on the board.

In reality this board is all about price. Although it doesn't always offer the best 3D output quality under OpenGL it is capable of rendering full DirectX8 features and only a few boards in this market position can. If you are after a low cost board capable of reproducing these effects then the Xabre 400 is worth a look.

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