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S3's DeltaChrome Graphics Chip
Noob Jones writes "The Tech Report has an article about a new video card in the works at S3. 'S3 Graphics is back with a new chip, dubbed DeltaChrome, which looks like it might just be strong enough to become a player in the mid-range consumer graphics market.' With a third player back in the graphics market both Nvidia and ATi are going to have things to worry about but this can only spell good news for customers."
Maybe they're looking at creating bargain chips, a la AMD's entry into CPU development that promises to unseat Intel, but the price differential between Intel and AMD is far greater than that S3 could possibly achieve between its chips and those of nVidia/ATi.
To be honest, it's mostly fanboys that are buying up all the new cards anyway to squeeze another frame or two per second out, so it's possible S3 could do something like offer longer warranties on older technology to drive the price point down while delivering all the graphics power anybody could need. It'll be interesting to see what happens, of course, but it's good to see S3 back regardless.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I wasn't aware that there was still a consumer graphics market. From what I've seen, most MB's have a chip built in which is fine for most apps. From what I can tell, the only people buying graphics cards indidually these days are hard core gamers.
'S3 Graphics is back with a new chip, dubbed DeltaChrome, which looks like it might just be strong enough to become a player in the mid-range consumer graphics market.'
Yeah! Just like the S3 ViRGE!
And the ViRGE GX2!
And the Savage!
And the Savage4!
And the Savage2000!
Seriously...they've said the same *damn* thing every time. The only inroads this chipset *might* make would be in low-cost laptops, where S3 already had a sizeable market until the GeForce 2 Go and Radeon Mobility started kicking butt.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Sucks. Is slow as a Geforce MX and expensive like a radeon 9800pro.
Doesnt have any drives providing the (limited) DX9 features the card has, like 10Bit/channel.
And it wont get any, because they said so and they fired the driver team this spring.
Well, it does have good 2D and triplehead, which would make sense if the card was 5 times as fast as it is (of course you can play Q3 or any other 4 year old game, no probs, but try something newer..)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
S3 will be as much a 3rd party in graphics as Cryix C3 was in the CPU buisness.
ATI and nVidia with their 6 month product cycles have produced a market where they have to find ways of convincing lots of people they need a new powerful and expensive piece of hardware atleast once a year.
This has produced so much 'mid' and 'low' end harware for bargin bin prices that market is saturated. (a GF4 Ti 4200, that will run any game out there, can be found $80). Unless S3 can pull something that is both affordable (~$150) and brings something new to the table, i don't see them grabbing up a market share with this.
THe only reason i have to buy a Radeon 9600 over the GF4 TI is the DX9/ARB shaders make it look pretty, not because i need the speed.
And unless S3 can provide something to make me want to buy them over the big two (ie better features, faster performance, cheaper price) i'm sticking with a card that has been a solid and proven performer over the product of a company i remember as second tier hardware before they took a 7 year break.
Actually I do hold a grudge against NVIDIA for killing 3dfx. Personally I had excellent performance with my Voodoo cards. When I was forced to switch to an NVIDIA when I built my new PC, I was disappointed beyond belief. Strange that they absorbed 3dfx, but didnt noticably incorporate anything of theirs into their design. Someone needs to get into the monopoly to keep the players honest.
With technology, you could stamp a chip on the card that contains the C64 all in a neat little silicon package. Though, why would you want to?
Life is not for the lazy.
It wouldn't have to be the latest, fastest, most expensive board out there. The really hard-core gamers are the only ones who need to spend $100+ on a video card, and I suspect that most of them run Windows.
S3 wouldn't even have to write the drivers themselves! I'm sure that if they published the spec's needed to write the drivers, that some Linux geeks would write better drivers than S3 could, and it wouldn't cost S3 a cent. Since we're talking about middle-aged technology here, there shouldn't be any worry about ``intellectual property'' leaking out through the spec's.
I'd ditch my GF2 in a minute, and pay around $80 (that's what I paid for my old Nvidia) to get opensource, no-hassle drivers, and a card that's no worse than the old GF2.
See what I've been reading.
Actually, S3 sold their graphics division to Via a while back. They then renamed themselves Sonic Blue, and shifted focus to Entertainment appliances such as the Rio, and ReplayTV brands.
And yes S3 had a rather nice patent portfolio, but only the graphics related patents transfered to Via AFAIK.
The new S3 is not the same as the old S3. The new S3 is something Via put together with assets purchased from the old S3 (now Sonic Blue). But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
IMHO The old S3 had some decent hardware paired with some pretty shitty drivers. Lets hope the new S3 learned from the mistakes of the old. Hopefully they will spend more time on driver development this time around, otherwise they may as well not even bother.