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APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E REVIEW

"Apollo 3DThrill 315E review comparing the Apollo 3Dthrill 315e to the Videologic VividXS Kyro 2 and Palit Daytona GeForce2 MX. Video cards tested on a system using a 1.3Ghz Athlon and a JETWAY 663AS PRO. Software used was:- Max Payne, Quake 3 Arena and Serious Sam."

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E

The Apollo 3DTHRILL 315E supports the following advanced features:-

SIS315E chipset
32MB memory
143Mhz core clock speed
143Mhz memory clock speed
AGP 4X / 2X / 1X support
Integrated 375Mhz RAMDAC
Hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) with FSAA
2nd generation hardware transform engine
2nd generation hardware lighting engine
2nd generation hardware visibility engine
2 dual-texturing pipelines, mapping 4texels per clock cycle
Full acceleration for Microsoft DirectX 8 and OpenGL 1.2 ICD
Vivid NTSC / PAL TV-Output with flicker filter

NAME TECHNOLOGY GPU SPEED MEM SPEED COST (UK/US)
GeForce2 MX 0.18 micron 175Mhz 166MHz SDR £55 ($39)
PowerVR Kyro2 0.18 micron 175mhz 175mhz SDR £59 ($49)
SIS 315 0.15 micron 143mhz 143mhz SDR £48 ($27)

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR AMD ATHLON 1.3GHZ
VIDEO CARD APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX 32MB AGP
VIDEOLOGIC VIVID XS KYRO 2
SIS DRIVER v2.04
NVIDIA DRIVER DETONATOR v23.11
POWERVR DRIVER v1.04.14.0028
MOTHERBOARD JETWAY 663AS PRO
MEMORY 256MB PC133 SDRAM
OPERATING SYSTEM WINDOWS 98 SE
DIRECTX VERSION v8.1

QUAKE III ARENA

FASTEST

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E116
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX123
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2115

NORMAL

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E71
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX103
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2107

HIGH QUALITY

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E30
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX70
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2100

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

COMMENT - "At the lowest resolution and image quality available the SIS315 actually beats the Kyro 2. This is due to the SIS315 using hardware t&l which gives it a boost at lower resolutions. It's also because the SIS315's limitations (lack of bandwidth) aren't such a problem. Even at the normal setting it's performance is an impressive (for the SIS315) 71fps. However using high quality the SIS315 can only deliver 30fps which is very disappointing."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

Default GLdriver
GL Extensions on
Fullscreen on
Demo001 Benchmark

FASTEST QUALITY

512x384 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Vertex Lighting
Geometic Detail Low
Texture Detail 50%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

NORMAL QUALITY

640x480 Video Mode
16Bit Colour Depth
16Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
Geometic Detail Medium
Texture Detail 75%
Bilinear Texture Filtering

HIGH QUALITY

800x600 Video Mode
32Bit Colour Depth
32Bit Texture Quality
Lightmap Lighting
High Geometic Detail
Full Texture Detail
Trilinear Texture Filtering

MAX PAYNE

640x480

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E37
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX62
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 263

800x600

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E25
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX46
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 262

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

COMMENT - "Max Payne is a quite demanding game and this shows with the SIS315 only getting 37fps at 640x480 and then 25fps at 800x600. 37fps is playable but 25fps is not."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

Truck Exploding Demo
Normal Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled


MAX PAYNE

TRANSFORM AND LIGHTING BENCHMARK

640x480x16

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (HARDWARE T&L)57
APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (SOFWARE T&L)43

800x600x16

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (HARDWARE T&L)52
APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (SOFTWARE T&L)42

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (HARDWARE T&L)
APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (SOFTWARE T&L)

COMMENT - "To see if SIS315's hardware transform and lighting was doing anything we ran Max Payne using hardware t&l and then using software t&l. As shown the hardware t&l on the SIS315 is working quite well, with it disabled performance suffered badly."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

Truck Exploding Demo
Normal Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled

SERIOUS SAM

640x480

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E22
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX75
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 283

800x600

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E15
PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX47
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 280

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E PALIT DAYTONA GEFORCE2 MX
VIDEOLOGIC VIVIDXS KYRO 2

COMMENT - "Look at the graph, need I say more?"

BENCHMARK SETTINGS

Normal Setting
UHSS Timedemo
Huge Texture Size
Detailed Textures Enabled
Huge Shadowmap Size
Standard Lens Flare
No Wait Vertical Retrace
Wide Screen Disabled

16BIT PERFORMANCE

MAX PAYNE

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (16BIT)57
APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (32BIT)37

SERIOUS SAM

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (16BIT)35
APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (32BIT)22

APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (16BIT) APOLLO 3DTHRILL 315E (32BIT)

COMMENT - "The SIS315 takes a large decrease when using 32bit and is bandwidth limited even at lower resolutions. At 16bit Max Payne is very playable now and Serious Sam is more playable."

MAX PAYNE SETTINGS

640x480 Resolution
Truck Exploding Demo
Normal Setting
Trilinear Filtering
Fogging Enabled
Sounds Enabled
Task Switching Disabled
Triple Screen Buffers Enabled

SERIOUS SAM SETTINGS

640x480 Resolution
Normal Setting
UHSS Timedemo
Huge Texture Size
Detailed Textures Enabled
Huge Shadowmap Size
Standard Lens Flare
No Wait Vertical Retrace
Wide Screen Disabled


CONCLUSION

GOOD POINTS

• It's cheap if you live in the US, only $27 on www.pricewatch.com
• Good 2D image quality and performance
• Bilinear filtering works as it should woohoo
• TV Output is watchable

BAD POINTS

• Poor 16bit image quality
• Poor 32bit performance
• Poor driver support (last update 4months ago)
• Trilinear filtering isn't working correctly
• Textures not displayed correctly
• FSAA disabled in drivers even though video card supports FSAA


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