Review: SiS Xabre 400

A little while ago Hexus met with representatives from SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems Corporation), one of the top semi-conductor manufacturers in the world. Being your typical Taiwanese semi-conductor giant, they have a large range of products and had a lot to talk about but the main reason for our meeting wasn't to talk about the horrible British weather or a new SiS core logic chipset but a new range of GPU's!

SiS are keen to dip a toe into the low cost value graphics water, currently occupied by the likes of NVIDIA's GeForce4 MX and the ATi Radeon 7500 in one of it's many guises. SiS are a resourceful company currently enjoying some success with their Pentium 4 core logic chipsets and having released their own graphics products in the past, they had the know how to create a modern GPU to allow them entry into their target market.

And so the Xabre GPU was born. Now before we start, lets just recap so we are clear on what the Xabre is. We aren't talking about a GeForce4 killer here, the Xabre is SiS's entry into the value end of the consumer market for graphics cards. So bearing that in mind and bearing in mind that target market is huge, lets see what SiS have come up with to capture their little piece of it.

Onto the card itself!