Conclusions
MultiChrome leaves me feeling rather ambivalent. On the one hand, there are some clear positives. S3 has successfully cloned the functionality that NVIDIA and ATI have incorporated into their graphics portfolios over the past couple of years, and they've done so while apparently skipping the nasty teething stages that SLI and CrossFire had to endure while in public hands. I'm absolutely pleased with S3's decision not to lock down its multi-GPU tech to a chosen set of chipsets for business reasons, and I'm more or less convinced the choice to go "connectorless" and pass all data via PCI Express was the right one. MultiChrome scales well in the games it supports. Having played a handful of games on the Chrome S27 and MultiChrome over the past few days, I'm also gratified to see that S3 has avoided severely compromising image quality in order to boost frame rates. S3's graphics solutions are not in a class with those from ATI or NVIDIA, but they do appear to stand alone in third place, well ahead of the also-rans (including, notably, Intel's integrated chipset graphics.)

But I'm somewhat disappointed that the total peak performance S3 can offer when it combines two of its best GPUs isn't terribly compelling. I had really hoped going to dual GPUs would allow S3 to offer some form of solution that might appeal to PC gamers and enthusiasts. Too much has happened since MultiChrome was first announced, and that's simply not the case. There's just no way this is a $200 graphics solution on the order of the GeForce 7600 GT. Buy one of those cards and you'll be far ahead of what a pair of Chrome S27 cards can offer. Even the Chrome S27's seriously low power consumption is sullied by the fact of its performance—really, performance per watt isn't much better than that of the GeForce 6600 GT, an older 110nm GPU. And given that major game titles like Guild Wars and Half-Life 2 were throwing up warning messages about undetected hardware, I am wobbly on the prospects for S3 sustaining the kind of developer relations and game profiling efforts necessary to make MultiChrome a success over the long term. I hope they do it, and they deserve credit for getting as far as they have, but buying a MultiChrome rig for gaming is a big risk.

None of this is to say that MultiChrome might not have its place. As an upgrade from a single Chrome S27, MultiChrome is a solid option, so long as you're playing supported games. Also, if S3 maintains its support of this feature over the long term and further develops it, this technology could become a valuable tool when a newer, faster S3 GPU debuts in the future. Doubling up on a new product with a higher innate performance and a more competitive feature set could prove fairly potent—perhaps especially if they can squeeze two on to a single card. But for now, MultiChrome's virtues aren't sufficient to win an outright recommendation; you're better off looking to ATI or NVIDIA for a gaming graphics solution.