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The Return of S3
flynn_nrg writes "Just saw this article on ExtremeTech about S3's new graphics card. S3 is back on the scene with its first new GPU architecture in five years. Rather than take aim at the high-end, S3 has set its sights on the midrange price/performance category, which is currently dominated by ATI's Radeon 9600 XT and nVidia's GeForce FX 5700, both of which are under $200. Today S3 unveils the DeltaChrome S8 GPU, which represents the midrange of its upcoming line of DeltaChrome GPUs."
http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2003q4/deltachrome- s8/index.x?pg=1
It looks like they have half a product. Good enough hardware, absolutely horrible drivers.
And I'm not talking about drivers that don't run quickly. I'm talking about drivers that render things incorrectly or even crash! Ugh.
At least with Intel's Integrated Graphics (or Nvidia or even ATI these days) even though they may not be the quickest on the block at least their drivers *work*.
Someone's math is a little off here on how long it's been since the last S3 video card. The last card they produced(not counting numerous mobile parts) was the Savage2000, a DX7 class card designed to compete with the GeForce256 in late 1999/2000. The S2K of course had its infamous issues(defective T&L unit, S3/Diamond was accepting S2K's in trade for TNT2U's), but the point is that it has barely been 4 years, not 5.
Well, it depends on the game really. A game is not a game is not a game.
In some games, Myst for instance, there's really no such thing as frame rate at all. In others, like shooters, the cpu requirements to handle the physics are fairly minimal and nice graphics sells games. These are the ones that require the latest hot card. If you're into sims though, like IL-2 or NASCAR 2003 the physics calculations put the hardest load on the system and for these the hottest cpu, particularly the math coprocessor, will give you the best performance overall.
Everything is always tradeoffs and compromise. Many games even have "favorite" video cards, right down to the particular model and driver. The best you can really do is optimize for your favorite game and play the rest as is possible.
KFG
I can't speak for everybody, but personally I've never owned an S3 card that I was unhappy with. nVida has been hit or miss, and ATI has been a nightmare.
The sad part is that I suspect that ATI's hardware is (and always has been) absolutely top notch. They just don't seem to put much focus on debugging the drivers.
ATI video cards have been banned from my workplace for several years now, and I've not seen a reason to change my mind on that. (Yes, I get to make decisions like that)
Do we really have to go over this again? The reason NVIDIA can _not_ open source their driver is that parts of their hardware (and possibly software) that is driven by it is licenced from other companies, and that licence states that the source code, and even the specifications of that engine may _not_ be released.