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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."
Is made up of last year's high-end graphics market.
They find a way to plug this into a C64 along with broadband
...the last vaporware product announced by the BitMap Brothers. Seriously, I think Atari will have a decent videocard out before either of these two previously-mentioned chuckleheads bring anything serious to the market. If you believe that, I have a spare Athlon64 Adapter for your TI99/4A I could sell you.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I havent seen one company out there that makes small BGA chips for handheld markets and PDAs. The chip must be taking VERY low power, should support OpenGL, and must have drivers including OpenGL 1.4 support in Linux, NetBSD, QNX, QTopia and WindowsCE.
I was trying to look for such a chip and found only the embedded versions of NVidia and Radeon which are obscenely grotesque for handheld devices. For resolutions maximum of which are 640x480 and color depths of max 16bits, there must be a 3d video chip that supports OpenGL 1.4. It will at least be used in the next GBA, NGage and other handhelds and cellphones.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
In an attempt to clear out all the old inventory closets, the new S3 card will be available in either ISA or Vesa.
Ahh, S3, the company that made the 3D cards that gave WORSE performance than using software rendering.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
'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."
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.