The Tech Report has tested the MultiChrome technology that combines two cards based on Chrome S27. This technology doesn’t use dedicated connectors and communications are made via the PCI Express. It is possible since these are entry / middle line cards and that resolutions / FPS are sufficiently low to have to make do with the bandwidth available from the PCI Express.
But the real benefit from the MultiChrome is that S3 Graphics doesn’t impose a restriction at the chipset level: only two PCI Express x16 ports are required. It is logical because of its outsider position, but it won’t probably change ATI and NVIDIA’s policies.
In practice, compared to a mono card configuration, performance gains are significant: 75% under Quake 4, 45% under FEAR and 36% under Battlefield 2. The only problem is that initial performances were rather low and that in the end it is only 15-20% faster than a simple 6600 GT. It is too low knowing that you have to spend 80 € for a S27 128 MB and 100 € for a S27 256 MB. For 200€, it is easy to choose between one 7600 GT and 2 S27 in MultiChrome.
