Before we get to the numbers, here are test test system's specifications.  Normally we would include some scores from competing products in the upcoming benchmarks, but because we have not yet tested any other video cards on this same test system, we feel a direct comparison would be unfair.  There are too simply many other variables that could affect overall performance.

Strictly for a frame a reference, you may want to peruse our recent review of the Kyro II powered Hercules 3D Prophet 4500, it was tested on a similar system...

Test System Specs Some AMD Luvin'

• 1GHz AMD AXIA Athlon T-Bird @ 1000MHz.

• GigaByte 7DXR  AMD 761 / VIA 686B Hybrid

• 2568MB Corsair PC2400 (16-8-8-2-5-2-2)

• GeForce 3 (12.41 Drivers)

• Netgear FA310 NIC

• Hercules Game Theater XP

• IBM 7200RPM 30GB HD x (2)

• Creative Labs 52X CD-Rom

• Standard Floppy Drive

• Windows Millennium

• DirectX 8.0a

• Via 4-in-1s v.4.32V

• AMD Chipset Drivers

Benchmarks With the Abit Siluro T400 Not bad for under $80 beans...

First up, we ran MadOnion's 3D Mark 2000 and 3D Mark 2001.  The MX400 chipset powering the Siluro T400 is a DirectX 7 accelerator, which is why we ran 3D Mark 2000.  However, to give you an idea how of this card will perform with some future DirectX 8 titles, we also ran 3D Mark 2001.  3D Mark 2001 is used to test performance under DirectX 8...

3D MARK (DirectX):

All three of the above tests were run at 1024x768.  3D Mark 2001's default benchmark was run (1024x768x32).  The Siluro T400 performs adequately in all of the tests.  If you're used to seeing GeForce 2 Ultra or GeForce 3 numbers, you may not be impressed, but you definitely get your money's worth with the Abit Siluro T400.  It's tough to gauge actual game performance looking at a 3D Mark score, so to satisfy my curiosity I installed Max Payne and played for a while.  Although I don't have any scores to report, I can say the game was perfectly playable at 1024x768x32.

MDK 2 TIMEDEMO:

Next we'll take a look at some OpenGL gaming performance using MDK 2's built-in timedemo.

MDK 2's Omen engine benefits greatly form hardware T&L acceleration.  With all of MDK 2's image quality options enabled and set to maximum, the game remained perfectly playable all the way up to 1024x768..