SiS 6326
Encyclopedia
The SiS 6326 was a graphics processing unit
(GPU) manufactured by Silicon Integrated Systems
. It was introduced in June 1997 and became available to the consumer market in the end of that year. Although it had a low performance compared to the GPUs of its age, eventually it became very successful, specially integrated in many motherboards designed to the corporate market, where the low cost is decisive and the 3D performance is not a priority. SiS shipped over seven million units of the SiS 6326 in 1998.
RIVA 128
or 40% less than an ATI Rage
Pro in terms of frames per second in Direct3D benchmarks and simply couldn't play Quake due its lack of OpenGL
support. . Yet, the same article says that even the "slow and unknown graphic chip" could still produce a "quite nice image quality".
A beta driver codenamed Java was released as late as 1999, being the only version with an OpenGL ICD included, which finally allowed it to run some OpenGL applications such as GLquake, Quake2 and GLexcess. it still crashes in Quake3 though, due to its incomplete 3D features.
The SiS6326 was even capable of running relatively newer 3D applications such as 3Dmark2000/2001, with no significant image flaws to be found despite its abysmal speed.
except the drivers developed independently by Thomas Winischhofer. Since the driver does not support OpenGL
, not even the Windows one provided by SiS, this driver is only for 2D acceleration.
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
(GPU) manufactured by Silicon Integrated Systems
Silicon Integrated Systems
Silicon Integrated Systems is a company that manufactures, among other things, motherboard chipsets. The company was founded in 1987 in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan.-Business:...
. It was introduced in June 1997 and became available to the consumer market in the end of that year. Although it had a low performance compared to the GPUs of its age, eventually it became very successful, specially integrated in many motherboards designed to the corporate market, where the low cost is decisive and the 3D performance is not a priority. SiS shipped over seven million units of the SiS 6326 in 1998.
Architecture
The SiS 6326 was available in discrete, with an AGP 2x or PCI bus, and integrated graphics. It had a 64-bit 2D/3D graphics accelerator, a DVD decoder, a TV coder as well as the AGP interface. It was available in 4Mb or 8Mb of memory.Performance
Since this chip aims cost over performance, it does not have a good performance, even compared to contemporary products. According to a test of Tom's Hardware of January 21, 1998, it could perform roughly a third of the performance of a NVidiaNVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
RIVA 128
RIVA 128
Released in late 1997 by Nvidia, the RIVA 128, or "NV3", was one of the first consumer graphics processing units to integrate 3D acceleration in addition to traditional 2D and video acceleration...
or 40% less than an ATI Rage
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
Pro in terms of frames per second in Direct3D benchmarks and simply couldn't play Quake due its lack of OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
support. . Yet, the same article says that even the "slow and unknown graphic chip" could still produce a "quite nice image quality".
A beta driver codenamed Java was released as late as 1999, being the only version with an OpenGL ICD included, which finally allowed it to run some OpenGL applications such as GLquake, Quake2 and GLexcess. it still crashes in Quake3 though, due to its incomplete 3D features.
The SiS6326 was even capable of running relatively newer 3D applications such as 3Dmark2000/2001, with no significant image flaws to be found despite its abysmal speed.
Linux support
There is little support to LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
except the drivers developed independently by Thomas Winischhofer. Since the driver does not support OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
, not even the Windows one provided by SiS, this driver is only for 2D acceleration.