Not quite true.....

You have 2 chips. A game chip and a Reel chip.

The reel chip determines the paytable, reel strip order and payback percentage. It is not uncommon to get 98.5% payback chips.

If you indicate what game theme you have I can tell you whats available.
Or you can check out the IGT online game bible here.
http://www.newlifegames.net/igtbible/

The tournament chips are only available for certain themes. In this case you replace both the game and reel chip. The chips have 2 modes that are user selectable with the white self test button. You either have standard play or you have tournament play.

In the tourney mode you can play a set number of plays or a timed game. You use the jackpot reset key to reset the game and play again. In either case once your are in this mode all wins go to credits as a score. Highest score wins. I usually play in timed mode. I also have a IGT progressive that is behind the pay out sticker. In tournament mode this displays the time left.
I have three machines... and one of the tournament games is Wild Cherry. I have both Wild Cherry and Cartoon Wild Cherry - other than the glass and strips the games are clones of each other so I use the tournament chips and play both at the same time. In the casinos they have all the reset keys tied to a big relay switch to start people off at the same time. As this is timed it really doesn't matter if you start at the same second as the game ends when the time runs out. I do get two people to turn the reset keys at nearly the same time.