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S3's DeltaChrome Examined
sand writes "Firingsquad takes a look at DeltaChrome, which is a graphics chip from S3. The core runs at 300MHz and offers pixel and vertex shaders that go beyond DirectX 9, just like Nvidia GeForce FX. The really cool feature though is the integrated HDTV encoder, you can output from your PC or laptop directly to an HDTV or 1080p projector!"
TuxRacer on hdtv! Now I can die happy.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
This really doesn't help me. I have no AGP slots on my cheap motherboard...
The big question is, are there going to be any PCI releases faster than the GeForce 2 MX400?
I'd love to get a new system, but I'm tight right now...
What is the resolution of HDTV?
BlackNova Traders
I've got a desktop computer hooked into my HDTV media center (a Sony WH11HT HDTV projector with an Onkyo THX receiver). When I hook the output of the computer to the system via S-Video (and keep in mind this is a MASSIVE 120" screen in HDTV) I can only put the resolution as high as 800x600 before the text becomes too blurry to read. This should correct that.. hooray!!
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
Ooohhhh, ahhhh... I'm impressed really... Did I mention that the latest ATI All-In-Wonder has had HDTV out since it was released... some time ago.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I wonder if S3 is on the way back again in the market. I am starting to design a media station like system using a projector for my future house. Are there any decent frameworks out there for designing a network capable media center?
More power to them for bringing some more competition into the market (again)...
It's been stated that Doom 3 won't run at full frame rate on any of today's existing hardware. Does a card like this change that situation? What types of advances in graphics cards are going to be necessary to play Doom 3 at it's fullest potential?
There is no 1080p HDTV resolution. 1080 is only available in an interlaced format, hence 1080i. 720p is the highest preogressive output you can go.
Kent
Culling a bit out of the article...
--They won't say exactly how many, but the new card will have approx 1/2 the gates of Nvidia's FX.
--It will run at 60% clock (300Mhz) of high-end cards (FX again, as well as ATIs Raedon (sp?).)
--It will use DDR SDRAM.
--It won't be availible until end of Q2. (5 months or so.)
To be faster, you either need: (1) more gates, for more work per cycle. (2) More cycles, for more work per time. Looks like they have neither of these, plus they're not getting ultra-high bandwidth out of their memory... And it won't be availible for months...
With the NVIDIA FX coming out early Feb, it won't capture the high end...
What is the market for this thing?
It doesnt do really do anything more than the current run of cards does (ATI AIW 9700 pro), it does LESS than the upcoming run of cards (GeforceFX), AND its scheduled to come out like, 3-5 months from now, long after the ATI has dropped in price and the GFX has pushed down prices of the Ti4600?? ::yawn:: wake me when there is real news.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Is it just me or is Delta Chrome a better name for a faucet than for a video card?
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
The DRI project is working on acceleration for the S3 chipset at the moment, so you OpenGL performance should increase.
Also, the 2.5 kernel performes soooo much better than the 2.4.19 kernel with performance patches on my crap mobo.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Forgot to mention, yes, I did read the article. And frankly, I have no confidence in this chip as a desktop component, and S3 is once again fooling itself. I think the odds are about 1 that this will end up in cheap laptops, just like the Savage chips only significant showing is in laptops.
(It might end up in cheap crap Via motherboards, but only an idiot buys a desktop motherboard made by Via, no matter how cheap, as I've learned from repeated harsh experience.)
That's great news.
:(
As long as there is a follow-up post about new HDTV projectors that run for about $200. Otherwise, it doesn't affect me too much...
Who cares, deltachrome may be interesting, but it can't top this!
http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/
Step 1: Go buy yourself a Radeon 9500 128MB (non-pro only) $150US
Step 2: Apply this patch
Step 3: Watch your benchmarks, you just got a Radeon 9700 pro for $150!!!
X developers have been trying to accelerate 3d in the S3 chipsets for nearly a decade now. DRI might actually produce something, but I doubt we'll see any bleeding turnips anytime soon.
Somone on the DRI team has the chipset documentation without having to sign an NDA. So things are looking promising.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Maybe people like me?
The current top-end graphics cards are in the $300 range. The second tier is around half that, and the third tier half again. The real sales on the top-end graphics cards are rather small, and grow as you go down. But having that top-end card helps your lower tiers, because of the assumption that good top-end implies good rest-of-line.
In today's market that's not necessarily true. IMHO both nVidia and ATI short-cut the lower ends with the MX and 9000 lines, respectively. Both of those product lines have cut features from a previous generation, and ramped the clock to regain performance. Also, both product lines will show their age on newer (let's face it, DoomIII) games.
I recently bought a third-tier card - a Radeon 8500LE. It has all the features, a slightly lower clock, and a much lower price. The reasonable competition would have been a GeForce3 Ti200 for a little more. This is also a stopgap card - in a year or so I want to step up and get DX9/OGL2 features when they're available in the second tier. (I know OGL2 is still an unknown.)
The reason to pay attention to the top end is because it presumably brings features down to the bottom end. But both dominant suppliers today have broken that feature chain. So if someone else comes in with the features and performance I want, and linux support through drivers or documentation, I'll buy, even if they don't own the top end.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
We've all had ViRGE chips in our machines at some time or another. I can't say that I've every really cared for the S3 products. Drivers and tech support have always been poor. The chips have always fought over the bus and lagged down PCI devices such as soundcards. Savage 2000 was disappointing. The drivers and slow 32 bit rendering made it a horrible card to have, even for games based on the aging Quake 3 engine. I sure hope that they can change things in the future. They've always been able to put themselves into the value and OEM markets, especially since they were purchased by VIA. It's an easy way to slap these chips into integrated mobos, as long as they can put out performance that is better than the low-end nForce products.
;)
It's nice to hear about new products from alternative companies. What I am really looking for is a new product based on PowerVR's technology. I've really gotten a lot out of my Kyro II over the last two years, and the drivers have been quite solid under Windows and (now I use) Linux. I think that their series 4 products were canned, after STM anounced that it was selling its graphics business (which licensed PowerVR's series 4 technology). Series 5 was in development, but has had no real press.
My Kyro II experiences have been very good. The card puts out crisp and beautiful graphics, and rendering is fast. Unfortunately, it's time to upgrade for the up and coming games. Products from ATi and nVidia seem to be on my list, but I will probably end up waiting until the next nVidia chip gets released. Competition will drive down the R300 price.
Competition is a good thing, especially if the manufacturers provide Linux drivers.
Actually, that performance was in Windows with the 3DMax 2001 benchmark; I have little confidence that vast improvements can be made on that number with a driver change, no matter what the OS is. :-(
Okay, as far as I see it the video card race works like this: nvidia or ATI releases high end card at 400 bucks or so, and 1-3 mid-low range cards. The competitor follows suit, prices fall about 15-20 bucks every month or so, until the "next card" comes out, then prices plummet, and it all starts over. Sometimes a 3rd party enters (like S3 right now) and offers what is basically crap comparted to whats out, doesnt offer THAT big a price difference, and goes away, If a company REALLY wanted to take the "crown", wouldnt it make sense to release a card as good or better, at a rediculous price point, but still make money? like a 9700 Pro equivalent at 2/3's the price or something? Give me the SAME specs and good driver support, and I dont CARE who makes my card. Note, I have no idea the production costs involved with these cards, this is just an observation... feel free to correct me...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
They were making a big deal out of Alpha Chrome... it turned out to be vapourware. I have a feeling Delta Chrome will turn out to be the same.
I'd like to hear if the thing will have decent Linux support. 200 FPS at 1600x1200x32 in Quake3 in Windows means absolutely nothing to me if it can't do 3D acceleration in Linux.
So, two questions:
1. Will we see good 3D-accelerated drivers from S3 or funded by them? Open-source or not is irrelevant to me as long as they work well (ie, on par with nVidia or PowerVR).
2. Will S3 let S3TC be used in DRI drivers?
If the answer to either is no, they can take their chipset and shove it where the sun don't shine.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
While PAL is different from NTSC, it is not *significantly* different - The resolutions are in general similar.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Bzzt, wrong.
Toshiba is even shipping a 1080p TV.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Maybe, maybe not. I have an HDTV and had the ATI AIW card and no amount of frequencey tweaking could get HD/1080i out of the card.
HDTVs are not (god knows why) multi-frequency monitors. They require an exact specification or they don't sync at all. Using programs to adjust the various frequencies and polarities of the signals in theory could get you there, but after several days tewaking with all kinds of "help" from the net, I never did get anything above 480p which the TV itself could do with a normal TV signal from the AIW card.
I for one am looking forward to this "plug and play" HDTV out card!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Yes, major overscan issues. Most sets, including mine do at least 5% on all sides. Why? I have no clue. It seems like this was required back in the days when the signal was very noisy or the eletronics were very slow to lock to the sync plus so it kept the "garbage" off screen. But now I dont see any reason for it. Anyways, it'd be wicked cool if there were a driver option to compensate for the 5% overscan. What it would do, basically is, output the normal resolution, but force all screen content to be confined to the visible region. That would be very nice. Without that, it's just not usable. For playing movies, you don't notice too much, but when your taskbar is half off the screen, it kind of sucks.
Samsung has a 27" HDTV monitor you can find on sale for $700.00 at Best Buy. I have one, and like it.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Actually, if you want a reasonably priced graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0, get the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro or ATI OEM cards that is the equivalent of Radeon 9500.
The Radeon 9500 Pro (which sells for around US$190 to US$200) not only performs as fast as graphics cards that use the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4600, but also will support DX9 features in hardware. That means games coming out later this year that support DX9 will run quite well on the Radeon 9500 Pro.
To S3's credit, my 968-based card with 2 MB VRAM still holds its own against more recent offerings, at least as far as 2D work goes.
Yes, it seems that we may be able to hook our computers up to our TVs again one day.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As for S3 not having a chance, I don't agree.
Before the Radeon, ATI was barely hanging on with the 3D Rage Pro series and OEM partnerships (Dell shipped some, I have one).
Yet they came back with a card equal to what was actually ON the market at the time and at a decent cost. They seemed to have improved their drivers and, in short, became a major player.
I'm not saying that this card has any chance of shaking up the market in it's current form, but what could change between now and the release date? What if they up the clock speed, or the memory speed or amount? What if they mention it has Kyro-II style rendering which is VERY efficient? If I had an AGP slot, I wouldn't count it out yet.
Sorry it took so long to respond. No, there aren't any consumer oriented hi-def DVD's out there. You can make your own, but basicly, what that amounts to is encoding the content on your PC, and playing back on your PC. Unfortunately, the industry hasn't agreed on a standard for hi-def DVD's(i.e., whether to use blue laser DVD's or use better encoding, or both), so although the technology is there(at least as far as better encoding is concerned), it will be awhile before you can go to blockbuster and buy a DVD in hi-def, however, you CAN buy hi-def tapes. Currently, if you want to buy stuff that plays in hi-def format, you have to fork out about $900 for JVC's HM-DH3000U, which is a hi-def VCR. I think the tapes hold something like 28 Gigabytes of material, which will last for I think 2-4 hours in hi-def mode. That's the problem with current DVD's and mpeg2, there is no way that you can fit any appreciable amount of hi-def content on the current DVD format IF you are using mpeg2. Using Mpeg4 is one way to work around this. Another way is to increase the storage capacity, which requires a different medium.
As to your question of what broadcasters are doing. This is my best guess from what I have read, so it might not be entirely accurate, but I do know that they aren't getting their hi-def content through DVD. Most of their stuff is stored on tape or some other proprietary medium, such as keeping it on hard disks. With movies, HBO takes the movies and converts it to digital. Or, they take the master digital copy(if the movie producer already has it in digital format), and then optimize it for hi-def showing. With the advent of consumer oriented players such as the JVC unit described above, soon they will be able to ditch these proprietary methods and avoid having to do this work themselves.
ABC delivered football in 720p back when it was doing Monday Night Football in hi-def a couple of years ago. I think CBS is 1080i for everything, and currently they are broadcasting playoffs in HD. Fox uses their own crappy Fox widescreen, which isn't true hi-def. It's broadcast at 480p in 16:9 format. It's still better than interlaced, but not as good as hi-definition.
That was not the point. Saying we've come full circle implies that we stopped outputing to TVs at some point, and (to come ull circle) have started once again.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant