Integrated Video Chipset Roundup - January 2001

DVD Performance

There is no question that the fact that SiS' integrated solutions include hardware motion compensation and iDCT support help the SiS based chips perform so well in our DVD playback tests. In value systems, it is normally difficult to get good software based DVD playback due to the high amount of processing power this requires. By including both hardware motion compensation and iDCT onto the SiS 300 graphics controller, the SiS 730S and 630S chips essentially dominate the competition.

The Intel i815 solution performed surprisingly well, providing rather low CPU utilization. The Aladdin TNT2 performs next best, with the ProSavage line chips, the KM133 and PM133, resulting in the highest CPU utilization. This is most likely due to the fact that the ProSavage chip seems to be using the Savage4's hardware motion compensation that is most likely not supported in our DVD tests.