SiS 315: Budget Champ or Bargain Bin Chump?

In this video we take a look at the SiS 315, and a Deluxe model at that! This graphics card from late 2000/early 2001 went after the budget market, and we pit it against rivals from ATI and NVIDIA while giving the card a bit of our usual brand of context.
Platform specs:
Athlon XP-M 2400+ (Barton) @ 2.25GHz
512MB PC2700
MSI KT3 Ultra v1.0 (VIA KT333)
Aureal Vortex 2
SD to IDE Adapter w/64GB Sandisk Ultra SDXC Card
Windows 98SE
Drivers:
-GeForce2 MX200: Forceware 45.23
-Radeon VE/7000: Catalyst 4.1
-SiS 315: 3.51a
0:00 Intro
0:41 The SiS 315
1:40 Some background on SiS
3:07 SiS's earlier graphics cards
4:49 More about the 315
6:46 The driver experience
10:25 The tests
14:04 Conclusion & Summary
16:05 Outtro
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Intro Animation By Ken Gruca Jr - Inquire at [e-mail]

[@PixelPipes]

Minor correction on the Radeon VE specs @ 10:40 The memory is 32MB DDR 64-bit That is all. Carry on.

[@niewazneniewazne1890]

It might not have an option to control Vsync. But at least it doesn't tease you with one like the Nvidia 128ZX. (The driver option doesn't work and the Nvidia 128ZX doesn't support openGL extension for triple/double buffered vsync).

[@PixelPipes]

@@niewazneniewazne1890 true

[@philscomputerlab]

Welcome back! 😊🎉

[@DNS_G_Espanol]

wow 1st comment

[@PixelPipes]

Yes! Thanks! :D

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Welcome back! We missed GPU June this year. I just picked up a 3870x2 myself.

[@LionWithTheLamb]

I have one of those in my closet, what are you going to use it for?

[@Baulder13]

YOU'RE BACK! Missed you man!

[@theerrantwanderer]

Yeah, it's definitely been a long while

[@exaltedb]

Really glad to see a new PixelPipes video, really happy to see you’re back

[@jonchapman6821]

2:01 Except for the SiS 735 chipset found on the legendary K7S5A which offered much better value than any competing mainboard at the time could offer. Admittedly, this is the lone example of SiS releasing such a well received product that I can think of, and I’ve been deep in the PC world since 1996.

[@Raptor3388]

The newer SiS 746 was also pretty good, giving super budget AMD motherboards with good performance and stability. I mean a new AsRock K7S8X was 40€ in 2003 and had everything you needed.

[@jonchapman6821]

@@Raptor3388 👌🏻

[@0mongo0]

The SiS chipsets for the 486 were some of the best available.

[@hblanksjukebox]

SiS also makes the best universal AGP chipset for P4s, the 645DX

[@moruzx]

I had a SiS 735 board. It was a very good chipset at that time indeed, and very affordable. I liked SiS, in general, but never had a GPU from them.

[@SummerSideTea]

where in the world were you, I missed your cool gpu reviews

[@Jivemaster2005]

SiS actually made chipset for highend products. Their chipsets was frequently used in the early 90's in server and workstation motherboards with Eisa slots

[@PixelPipes]

Good to know! If anyone wants to know more about SiS chipsets (especially older ones) there's definitely better videos out there for that. My take is really only going to give you the graphics side of things.

[@AngelDemonn]

Yes! Also their 486 chipsets were one of the best in stability and performance alongside UMCs!

[@danielarnestad5509]

SiS also made a quad channel RDRAM chipset for Pentium 4, the SiS R659. Unfortunately I don't think it reached any production boards. There's some mention of an Asus P4S13G with the chipset but I can't find any evidence that it got released.

[@anasevi9456]

This video is very interesting to me. Intel Arc released last year finally, and the closest 'analogue' to it was SiS. When launching a new videocard line, Both Intel and SiS were massive companies whom had years of experience developing GPUs... but despite SiS having far more experience under the self branded and then Xabre cards; the ill repute IQ followed the Volari Duo... bombed and was considering a failure down to the uArch level... Yet the A770/750 have a respected uArch and rapidly improving driver wise even over a half a year later. Welcome back, hope life goes well!

[@AFFL1CTED1]

Woah! Thought your channel was dead. Glad you're back.

[@deathdoor]

Ooooh, I had one of these. One stand alone, integrated on the SiS740 chipset for my Athlon XP. I remember liking the performance a lot, never let me down for the things I wanted to play. I also remember it performing and looking better that the integrated GeForce 2 my cousin had, which surprised my when I noticed.

[@fartcruncher98]

Forgot I was subscribed to Jack Black's tech channel 😂 Love the beard, keep up the great content!

[@leotide1990]

Thank you so much for covering this card!

[@jwoody8815]

Long time no see, still love the "old world" content. SIS didnt make terrible chipsets, some of theyre budget offerings werent terrible, and they were a fairly common videochips for some blade servers (if i remeber right) and were a fairly common players in the Mobile PC video chipset space. in the late-90s, early 2000s.

[@romanrm1]

In ~2008 the "SiS 315 Pro" has been used for the onboard video in the Chinese "home-grown" MIPS architecture mini PC called Lemote Fuloong 2F. There have never been any 3D-capable drivers for MIPS or GNU/Linux in general, so it was not possible to use any 3D acceleration on that PC. Leaving everyone puzzled why they chose to integrate that chip to begin with.

[@PixelPipes]

Wow that's interesting

[@Hardin9745]

Can't wait to see your take on the SiS Xabre with a multitude of graphic options, including a basic skeleton framework that "allowed" you to see through walls in First person shooters. It had everything but performance.

[@PixelPipes]

Oh wow yeah that sounds interesting!

[@LionWithTheLamb]

At one time my Dad had a Xabre 400 64MB what a disappointment.

[@ugzz]

This was awesome, and just when I was starting to jones for some pixel pipes too! I worked for a school back in the early 2000s and they were all about matrox dualhead cards.. I'd love to see some old matrox coverage!

[@eduardoribeirobuenonetto59]

Amazing video, Nathan! Please, dont stop! You are really great on doing such videos! I have memories from SiS and you have nailed it on your observations! Thanks!!!

[@alensabanovic747]

Very nice! Finally a 315 from SiS on your channel. It may be slow but these kinds of alternatives are always interesting historical pieces.😁 These cards have texture filtering issues. Similar to what you showed, texture blockiness can be noticed in Quake III in particular.

[@SPNG]

Great to see another review! While I can't say I'm impressed by the performance here part of me was still expecting much worse 😅

[@BadManiac]

So this video was just another excuse to enjoy a bit of Kyro? Welcome back, we missed you!

[@PixelPipes]

Any excuse will do!

[@davidtattersall7684]

Another great video which brought back memories of gaming in the early 2000s. Such a choice of cards back then...

[@antraxbeta23]

This was my first agp card when i was young and dumb , i went to a pc shop back in the day , i knew about gforce but the shop seller there literally made me buy this , saying its much better then anything, i didn't know much back then , because tbh i had a lot of problems with it , but it did got me to play games like serious sam , quake 3 arena and so on.

[@eugenb9017]

As an hardcore videocard collector... I like this. Those cards (SiS, Trident, PowerVR, etc) might not be the best, they are mediocre (at best), but they are also quite rare, compared to Nvidia, ATI or 3dfx. And I love them, that era was awesome.

[@enilenis]

I went from Cirrus Logic in the 90's to Matrox and then onto Nvidia in the 2000's. Ages later, going through a nostalgia phase I loaded up on all the brands that I missed out on, except SiS. They're quite rare in my neck of the woods.

[@jirkazima1126]

I used to have a SiS 6326 and it was a good choice among low-cost cards. The 3D visual quality was "less broken" :) Later, whem people around me started to switching to cheap laptops, SiS 630/650 was definitely a good choice compared to other IGPs with shared memory.

[@Lemurion287]

Loved seeing an Apollo card on there--I had an Apollo-branded Voodoo 2...

[@vetzRetro]

Good someone sheds some light on the SiS 315. This was certainly alot of new info for me. Very nice video!

[@PixelPipes]

You're modest! I hardly think there's anything I know that you don't know 5x over!

[@vetzRetro]

@@PixelPipes No, its true. I don't own this card myself and I never looked it up much in detail, especially on the performance figures. So was surprised when you presented the figures and that it compared to a Geforce 2 MX.

[@Hunter4042012]

Great to see you back with a new video.

[@nelizmastr]

I remember SiS graphics, certainly not fondly. I had an Acer laptop with Mirage 2 graphics (M760GX) and it couldn't even run CS 1.6 at 640x480 with over 30fps, UT99 was good-ish at that resolution. It's a miracle they got the Mirage 3 certified for Windows Aero in Vista, as even the GMA950 could barely do that with a beta driver.

[@koritec4151]

I am glad to see you back. Thanks for the video.

[@mistermudpie]

Great to see another video! Some GPU suggestions: Sis Xabre, XGi Volari, S3 Deltachrome...

[@RiksRandomRetro]

Heeey, welcome back! Fantastic video as always, and a fascinating look at card I sure wasn't aware of. It's... almost decent!

[@atheatos]

Nice magic trick you pulled out there with the fan spinning.

[@draggonhedd]

You're back! yay! Love your videos. Also love your shirt, fantastic. Rockin some classic vaporwave

[@KitelessRex]

Nathan! So glad to see you back. I get so many compliments from my follow nerds about my Card & Drivers T-Shirt! Will be wearing it at VCF West at my exhibit booth about computer generations next weekend. Also power back feeding off AGP?!?!?! What is this madness!???

[@PixelPipes]

Nice!! You're the first person I heard from that bought that shirt! Glad you like it! It's probably my favorite. Have fun at the event! Wish I could be there

[@KitelessRex]

@@PixelPipes Rock on man! Thanks so much for the reply. Wish you could be here too! Cheers.

[@infinity2z3r07]

A few years ago I lucked into a free 1999 Gateway tower on Craigslist. From the model number it was a Pentium III and I could barely see a gold PCB in the AGP slot. Was hoping to get a RIVA TNT or maybe even TNT2... NOPE! SIS 305 16mb. I still haven't played with that card haha

[@shinya1215]

I remember during late 90s, almost all budget PC came with SIS 6326/TNT2 M64(vanta)/SIS 305. I had one SIS 305 also and the thing is just works, no fan needed, OC all the way to the max and it just take it like a champ.

[@ksjoet]

Awesome video Nathan. Keep up the good work!

[@TechAmbr]

PixelPipes' triumphant return! And what an odd card, too! Love it!

[@O.Shawabkeh]

Great edit/direction, which made a boring card a fun to watch from start to end of the video. Radeon VE, bad memory. I never forget ATI for that :)

[@ThorburnJ]

So glad you're back making videos again, and a really interesting one on a card I can barely remember. Hopeful for more in the (not too distant) future!

[@cardboardsnail]

I lived with SiS integrated graphics (661FX chipset) for a few years in the early 2000's. Not great, but I didn't do a lot of 3D gaming at the time anyway. C&C games, flash games, and Runescape were playable, and that was good enough for me. Attempts at 3D gaming, like HL2 and CS were...unfruitful. Literally sub-10FPS.

[@krz8888888]

I miss the competition in GPUs

[@andrebachmann1475]

Thank you for this fantastic video, I especially liked the Outro. :) Please make more videos, I really like your style.

[@johnellis3383]

Great video, so happy to see you back!

[@SilverX95]

SIS, my first experience of using a computer for the first time. i miss my one compaq system that was my first computer, the SIS GPU was fast enough to run need for speed porsche unleashed at 800x600 if i remember. it was one of those best buy bundles that we got somewhere between 97/98. that ending bit was funny, must be voltage back feeding from the HDMI.

[@manner1983]

Glad to see you back. Thanks for the Video

[@VdWck]

Very informative! I love this time period.

[@RETROHardware]

Lot of kind drivers you can find on CDs to MB with SiS chipset ... for example. Many times these low cost brands just did one uni CD for all their stuff (GPU, MB, controllers). Its good to search year by year for more versions.

[@PixelPipes]

That's exactly what's on the disc. I actually filmed a segment looking through the files on the disc but I felt it was too long/boring so I cut it

[@mattpierce5009]

Woohoo PixelPipes is back!

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

First of all, allow me to say *Welcome back!* It's good to see you again 🎉 Second, that _feature_ at the end sure feels like something that was an edge case nobody at the FCC tested for, bexause that was weird. 😅 Third, I have to admit it's a funky looking card. But it does explain _why_ this card was slept on. Even so, _if_ you had an Xabre or Volari Duo on hand , i would be most curuous how well it did challenge its contemporaries.

[@PixelPipes]

Volari Duo would be a dream come true to cover. I do have a Volari V3XT, and Xabre 200 though

[@alexanderjoachim9990]

Stoked for the new video! Thanks!

[@SUCRA]

I have a friend that had his parents choose their PC parts and ended up with stuff like this, from Pine or what not. I really like seeing how these budget and not well know video cards perform now that we can objectively see how bad they are, or not 😂 I'm glad you're back, thanks for this one, it was fun!

[@ohtravo997]

Haven't seen one of these old GPU videos in a loooong time!! These always get me stoked on old hardware

[@labrat810]

I think I had a SiS card for all of 3 days once. Wouldn't even run all the rendering features of Q3A-engine'd Jedi Knight 2, and returned it to Fry's. (guessing it was an 'E' w/o T&L) Needless to say, it was a quick lesson in 'paying attention to specs'

[@novanima]

Woah, so glad to see a new video from you! Really love your channel! BTW, I have the Elitegroup card that you showed, advertising AGP 4X. Despite what the box says, it is in fact a 315E card. When I go to the AGP Information page in the driver, it does show that the card supports 4X. Perhaps the 315E added 4X support?

[@Cpt_Wolf]

Good to see you back Nathan :) !

[@detmer87]

As a child I thought to upgrade my 3dfx voodoo 1 4MB for a 8MB SIS 6326. I luckly brought it back the same day. It was super bad! 😂

[@MadsonOnTheWeb]

I own one of these but it doesn't have DVI out from what I can tell. Also it has a bigger PCB. About games, I didn't notice any problems with Unreal and Quake in that. NFS V is perfect as well. To be honest I was kinda shocked how well it worked

[@RetroTinkerer]

Hello Nathan, nice to see you again, yes I remember I associated SIS with bargain bin, cheap as possible motherboards and cards, maybe they were something else back in the beginning, back to the 386/486 days, but when I started being interested in putting computers together by myself they already had that worse than low end smell all over it.

[@joeconti2396]

Oh man I remember you posting that video at the end to Twitter!

[@sgtjarhead99]

I had a SiS based graphics card. It used the SiS 6326 chipset under the Diamond Speedstar A50 brand. Lots of fond memories actually. Initially bought it as an interim solution after I junked my ATI Rage IIc card, but found that I liked it enough as a 2D only card, I kept until I finally replaced it with a Creative Labs TnT2 Ultra. I already had a 12mb Voodoo2 SLI servicing my gaming needs. Not the best desktop card at the time, but it was significantly cheaper than the Matrox cards I wanted at the time. Also, using the Voodoo2 pass through, I doubt I could have taken advantage of the Matrox image quality to the extent I could have without the Voodoo2 pass through cable.

[@ccleorina]

Welcome back PixelPipes!!!!!!!

[@waterheart95]

Heck yeah!, a new pixel pipe video and its on interesting card.

[@bringbackdislikebutton6452]

My first order of business in the morning is this video. Man alive!

[@ruxandy]

welcome back, man!

[@kidman2505]

That's wild the fan spools up from the monitor connection.

[@techdistractions]

Pleased to see new content from you :-)

[@maximuscesar]

The first computer I ever had was a second hand Pentium 2 350. It came with a Sis 300 something, 305 or 315, something like that. I played the shit out of ePSXe with it back in the day.

[@jlgroovetek]

I made do with SiS 6326 for ages on a hand-me-down PC from my cousin. Oh the memories.

[@DanielCardei]

128MB? That`s privilege 😆 Awesome review.

[@thepcenthusiastchannel2300]

Yey! A new video :)

[@kommandokodiak6025]

Welcome back, Commander

[@SianaGearz]

I actually like SiS products as a whole. Their big success was SDRAM/DDR controllers which were industry leading in performance, and overall the SIS chipsets were... largely not particularly buggy. And i thought SiS6326 was somewhat promising, like, i have seen worse efforts from other companies. The chipset-integrated 300-series graphics, i might have one of those. It's an 8" size mini-laptop built by ASUStek and branded in different regions either as ASUS or as JVC. Being a single chip north bridge, south bridge and graphics with 3D/Video capabilities, 3 large chips rolled into one, the whole board could be made that much smaller, enabling this product class to begin with. A uniquely good platform family for MID/UMPC, which didn't have to be powerful, just competent, power-frugal and take up little board space. Maybe they were a little ahead of time on that even? Love the power backfeed, cute engineering oversight :D

[@dualpapayas]

As someone who had the extreme displeasure of using an integrated S3 UniChrome Pro (came out in 2004 yet only had DirectX 7 support with no hardware T&L), I wonder if SiS or S3 takes the cake for worst integrated graphics? Also 15:35 is me! Without that horrible experience, I would have never become a GPU enthusiast.

[@MarcWeavers]

i remember the first 'new' hardware i bought, it was a mobo with SiS6326 8MB built in, and a Cyrix MII 300 (225MHz i think) it was amazing compared to the quite old used junk i had before, i was actually able to play Startrek: Starfleet Academy, and StarTrek: Borg ran with 16bit color :D

[@LionWithTheLamb]

My Dad had a SiS 6326 8MB PCI graphics adapter. It was in a K6-2 380 Mhz, 64MB PC-100 Ram, 6.4GB Seagate HDD IDE, a 16x CD-ROM IDE, and a 33.6Kbps USRobotics ISA Modem. He later upgraded it to a 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 16MB graphics card. I had a Rendition Verite V2200 8MB AGP in my PC back then. He had a SiS Xabre 400 video card as well that was a real disappointment.

[@PixelPipes]

Funny enough the two cards you might have considered the most disappointing are the most valuable now. The Vérité V2200 and Xabre 400 are pretty collectible, and I find the Vérité cards in particular to be interesting. Super looking forward to doing a video on those some day

[@MajorTomgames]

We used to use SIS AGP cards a lot, they were a good choice to pair with 3DFX cards at the time, they were never exciting but were dependable and good value

[@djdoo]

Great video! I miss my Kyro 2 64MB which was an AGP 2.0 (2X) card and not compatible with nForce chipsets AGP 3.0 (4X-8X) , I learned that the hard way... It was with VIA ones KV800 I think for AMD 64 cpus and probably SIS chipsets. I say you should dig at VIA - S3 products next, I also had an S3 Savage 4 card 32MB AGP 4X which had half the power of Kyro II but was interesting as a card.

[@PixelPipes]

I want to but Rik's Random Retro did an excellent video on the Savage 4 recently, so I'll probably choose something else next

[@xBruceLee88x]

I bought the 32mb 315e off tiger direct back in middle school, 2002 or so. Sadly my only agp socket 7 could only go up to 400mhz on my k6-2. (66x6)but it was still an upgrade in performance over the other with the sis530 chipset. Handled project 64 emulator just fine. I also had the 6326 8mb... It was... A thing lol. Later ended up with a agp board that supported my k6-2 at 550,but not the sis. So stuck in an i740 lol

[@TwoScoopsofDestroyer]

The fan spinning when you comnect the DVI cable reminds me of those Displayport issues where power from the monitor causes boot issues.

[@Medal152]

Yeeeee. Welcom back😊.

[@beagsx3]

Can remember buying a PC back in the 90s and was on a budget, so I opted for one with an SIS chipset and ohhhh boy it was bad. Struggled with most games, even on super low resolutions. Even tried a dedicated graphics card in it and it refused to work 😋

[@TurboMMaster]

Not gonna lie, the ending was quite funny "WTF" moment. On paper, performance comperablt to Geforce 2 MX in late 2000/early 2001 looks quite impressive, but then you have to remember that MX 2000 is using 64 bit SDR memory interface, so SiS 315 bearly competes wih Geforce 2 MX butchered beyond belief.

[@homelessEh]

sweeeeet pixle pipes its been a while

[@Capital_KP]

🎉🎉

[@ironhead2008]

Sounds like the old story of AIBs dropping the ball. Worth noting SISs chipsets are actually pretty good. They tended to be very highly integrated, to the point of having a single chip solution that supports both DDR and SDR for the Athlon XP. Intel's Hub architecture that integrated damn near everything onto the Northbridge (excuse me, "MCH")? Yeah, SIS beat them to it bay a few years.

[@classic_jam]

They did make some pretty good chipsets. Even their budget stuff tends to work well, it's just not as good. They are pretty much always rock-solid stable, unlike VIA. They just kind of stopped making them though. I think the point was more that they produced largely budget stuff though. There are certainly some exceptions though, and some of those Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 chipsets were on-par with or exceeded performance of the mainline, high-end consumer Intel chipsets. (Almost never with enthusiast tweaking features though)

[@steveg5122]

welcome back.

[@russofris]

I recall that installing the chipset vendor's GART driver allowed for AGP4x operation. I do not recalling it making a huge difference.

[@shad0wguy]

Id love to see your take on the xgi Volari. I had one back in the early 2000s but i dont remember much about it.

[@PixelPipes]

Eventually!

[@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r]

I remember at some point finding an SIS graphics card and upon using it surprised that it actually wasn't just plain terrible... Well at least compared to their integrated solutions. It was however quickly replaced with one of whatever better cards I had laying around at the time.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

Looks very similar to my SiS 315E, the Apollo 3D Thrill 315E. Difference between that and my SiS card ends up being the svideo out, and the ECS 315 still having all 4 TMU+the T&L engine. Bungie didn't lie about Halo not being supported on the 315. The results are spectacularly broken, unlike on the SiS 630 chipset.

[@PixelPipes]

I couldn't even get Halo to launch.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

@@PixelPipes Could be specific to the card or system. I was running mine in the Duron 1000 PC that I got from my uncle (stand in for its dead MX400 until a better example was affordable), albeit under Windows XP, because that is what the PC had been used with and some games just don't work well under 98SE (eg. Dragon Riders Chronicles of Pern broken under 98SE with all of my Nvidia cards and drivers, fine under XP).

[@PixelPipes]

Ohh I wonder if the game is more forgiving under XP then

[@dabombinablemi6188]

@@PixelPipes More than likely - I would not call Halo playable on the dedicated 315 however - years of fun on my first desktop with its iGPU, the weirdest output I've ever seen on the card (the 315e also has the same display errors, and then locks up). At the same time, Quake 1 was unplayable for me due to how the screen misbehaved with either card, and it was a chore to get the cards working under XP as I had to get the SiS drivers installed first before using the card, as the default resolution set by XP resulted in a black screen.

[@mirific87]

SiS did launch some good chipsets for motherboards once in a blue moon: SiS 735 for socket A and SiS 645 and updated versions of it for Pentium 4... nothing notable in video cards sector. Xabre was a notorious flop as well, labelled a gf4 mx killer in Q3 and that's about it.

[@brainymarte1566]

I have a Low Profile 315 SIS card myself and from someone who dismounts pcs that go to trash let me tell you that they are pretty common

[@pantyukovk]

недавно прикупил несколько 315E, они как и старшая xabre позволили повеселиться на серверах CS 1.6 в режиме прозрачных стен %)

[@TheDman216]

i used to have a combo SiS305/315 that I used for years on an old 98/2k box. It worked perfectly but started getting errors and failed after many many years of use

[@Objectorbit]

Do you plan on reviewing a Xabre?

[@PixelPipes]

Yeah eventually. I just have the 200

[@sedrosken831]

Does the halved memory bus matter on the 315E if it's configured with DDR memory? Seems to me that it'd perform about the same as a full-fat 315 with SDR, to my mind. I have one of those cards and my biggest issue is that I can't figure out how to turn off VSync -- even PowerStrip doesn't do the do for me. It's like a Quadro but with even less options!

[@PixelPipes]

If not for the texturing performance also being cut in half with the 315E

[@akelsZM]

I had one back in the day, on my Windows 98 PC. I remember a screensaver with a montagne rousse with the sis logo on it. Does anyone know where can I find it?