PCI Express Interface Performance
The PCI Express interface brings a theoretical system to graphics interface bandwidth of 4GB/s upstream and 4GB/s downstream simultaneously. Using the "Serious Magic" test, which renders an image then reads that back from the graphics chip to the system, we can assess the upstream PCI Express performance of the S18 against ATI and NVIDIA's PCI Express performance.
| Serious Magic Image Download (MB/s) | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| S18 Nitro | 190 | 124 | 79 | 48 | 33 |
| X600 PRO | 167 | 110 | 69 | 42 | 29 |
| 6200 | 190 | 126 | 80 | 48 | 33 |
| S18 % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| X600 PRO | 13.8% | 12.7% | 14.5% | 14.3% | 13.8% |
| 6200 | 0.0% | -1.6% | -1.3% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Looking at the rendering performance of the Serious Magic test we see that the fill-rate performance is limited across all resolutions, but as the X600 PRO is the lowest this is not due to graphics rendering performance but it is limited by the rate that it can be read from the graphics board. We see there that the S18 is performing very close the the 6200.
| Serious Magic Image Download (MB/s) | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| S18 Nitro | 838.0 | 854.0 | 914.0 | 921.0 | 954.0 |
| X600 PRO | 573.0 | 593.0 | 599.0 | 604.0 | 607.0 |
| 6200 | 875.0 | 939.0 | 957.0 | 993.0 | 1006.0 |
| S18 % Faster Than: | 640x480 | 800x600 | 1024x768 | 1280x1024 | 1600x1200 |
| X600 PRO | 46.2% | 44.0% | 52.6% | 52.5% | 57.2% |
| 6200 | -4.2% | -9.1% | -4.5% | -7.3% | -5.2% |
Somewhat confirming what we see from the rendering performances, the quantity of data uploaded from the graphics to system also highlights that whilst the 6200 has the highest performance the S18 isn't that far behind.
