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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."
Welcome back S3..
Maybe it'll drive the prices down a bit.
Without some razzle-dazzle high end cards to "wow" people with, they probably won't get the publicity needed to sell these midrange cards.
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.
There is no god
I have been using out S3 supply (outrageously large) of these cards for servers for a long time. And it doesn't get any better then that.
Basically, we have tons of these things and they were used back in the day when we didn't spend all of our money on expensive computer peripherals.
I would recommend using these for anyone that does not use the computer as a workstation - such as a file server or in my case, a home machine that I ssh into. Heck, I don't ever turn on the monitor quite so often for that thing.
Go S3!
Wow.
There 3d cards sucked back in 96 when I bought my S3 virge. I figured it was going to be the defacto standard since Vodoo was new and never heard of. Just upgrading to NT4 and Linux from DOS, I assumed it was up to the game makers to provide the drivers and not up to directx and opengl to provide support.
But I have upgraded to 2 newer pc's since. I forgot all about them and assumed they went under. I doubt they will support FreeBSD/Linux and X as they did in the past with their own Xserver.
http://saveie6.com/
DeltaChrome. Sounds like a cheap mod you can buy for your Civic. I wish S3 would die and Diamond would come back.
...since VESA local bus (VLB) video died. Now THOSE were the days. Even AMD was really, really cool in a mainstream sort of way - anyone remember the 486DX2-80MHz? Or the 120MHz which was faster than the Pentiums at the time? A DX4 120 + a fast S3 VLB video kicked serious butt, at least in 2D and text modes.
But for only $150, nothing should hold this card back aside from name recognition. The $150 print point almost seals the deal for me, only that I'm holding out for better offerings from ATi and NVidia before moving up from my GeForce2 MX (I'm not much of a gamer).
.13 micron manufacturing process, the same as ATi and NVidia, which should allow them to crank out higher-speed cards within the next few months, at least allowing S3 to remain competitive.
Overall, I have to agree with the concensus that S3 is back, and may be primed to stay in the market for some time. The article mentions that they are using a
Either way, the video card market may just be heating up for 2004.
The Political Programmer
Right now, I have an NVidia card in my workstation and I hate it. Why? Because I have to choose between using the OpenGL renderer and staying true to my beliefs about software freedom. This basically means that I paid extra for a card that I can only halfway use.
S3, take heed. Give us a product that we can use and we'll support you. Do it. It's the right thing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Mid-range graphics cards seem a slightly pointless purchase, given that you can buy top-of-the-range cards from 6 months ago for a fraction of their original prices (not to mention the second hand prices).
Why buy something mediocre but brand new, when you could buy something that absolutely kicked ass six months ago for a similar amount of money?
Organic free-range music... yum!
Remember the Kyro II? The chip used a unique tile-based rendering system that produced performance similar to the then-current Geforce 2s (although some synthetic benchmarks indicated otherwise) while being priced more in line with the MX line of cards. After much reading and research, a buddy of mine decided to pick one up for his machine, his reasoning being that he wasn't a super hardcore gamer, but wanted to be able to throw down with us every once in a while.
Flash forward a couple of years, and while NVidia and ATI are still willing to release updated drivers for their cards of that era, the Kyro lingers unsupported, even though NEC (the chip designer) and Guillemot/Hercules (the card manufacturer) are still going strong. My friend wanted to play Halo, and even though the card should've been able to support the game (albeit at a lower resolution/framerate), he can't because his card is basically ignored and unsupported by the game manufacturers and the source comapnies for the card itself.
The moral of the story: S3 is a reasonably well-known name. So is Hercules/Guillemot/NEC. It's gonna take a hell of a price/performance ratio to get me to recommend a video card not based on Ati or NVidia after the Kyro debacle.
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*.
So they're releasing a card with serious driver issues, where the top of the line model is expected to compete in the mid-price range market.
Wouldn't this be the perfect situation to open the source and getting the community to squeeze every last bit of performance outta their chip? It helps them save money on paying people to code the driver, and it gets the most outta their hardware. IN addition, it would also give them a healthy community that would reccommend this solution to friends/family that aren't into the bleeding-edge gaming machines.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Perhaps someone with some real knowledge could fill me in here.. but does anyone else remember Matrox 'coming back' less than a year ago with the Matrox Parhelia? This S3 return sounds like it could be the same, unless they make good on their promise of lower prices (and considering the price you can get a GeForce 4 MX for now.. it's a hard fight).
It seems the Parhelia was a card that was priced at more than most nVidia cards, yet provided no-where near the performance.. yet people still bought them. Why? I remember seeing the benchmarks and the Parhelia was absolutely shocking. Supposedly the only great thing was the FSAA quality but... you don't buy a card just for that, shurely?
So, what was so great about Matrox coming back with the Parhelia? I must have missed the point.
mogorific carpentry experiments
... the new architecture is based on 31-bit integer datestamps and is expected to roll over to zero before it is released.
http://delphi3d.net/hardware/
Could one of the reviewers give us a report of what version of OpenGL the deltachrome supports? What extensions does it support? How many instructions long can the fragment and vertex programs be?
GLInfo (w32 application) gives a complete list of all this.
I want a new video card, but no one makes the card I want. I do not give a crap about playing games, I want the modern equivalent of a Matrox card, one that is cheap yet renders beautiful color for 2D apps. Hell I still prefer the ATI Rage card with all 8mb of ram to the crappy Geforce with 64mb. I want clean bright color, I do not care how fast the card is. I am willing to pay about 50 bucks for it. So where is it? Maybe I need to find some new old stock matrox cards? Any pointers towards those?
Dues Ex 2 players, generally, can expect their speeds to cap out at 15 fps, regardless of the video card in use or screen resolution.
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.
of Diamond/Supra/Micronics/S3/Sonic Blue/Rio/Via/Cyrix
I don't know who's who anymore!
Since when is $200 and under the midrange? Isn't that where video cards top out for most of the market?
I only purchased one video card in my life that was over $100 and it was noting spectacular compared to video cards in older systems I had around the house with half the video memeory. What are you people doing with video? Heck, I had a system with a 16 meg voodoo card that can play DVD's. And they are selling on ebay for 10 bucks.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I reciently bought a ATI AIW 9600 pro card, and It is one of the biggest computer let downs I have ever seen. The drivers were crap, and it took me the better part of two weeks to get all of the 'features' on the card to work.
Maybe now, with more competition in this segment of the market, the card makers will start putting out a good final product, and not make the buyers be the the BETA testers!
Don't us computer professionals deserve a usable video card for Eur 10,-- or so? Gamer/lamer crap and 5.1 Dolby sound has no place in the bulk of the computing world.
I recently quit one of the big 2 GPU companies to pursue other opportunities...which one is irrelevant, but this is an AC post none-the-less. This is a brief look at the business end...I'll leave the "it's great" or "it's garbage" discussions to others.
To use an overused buzzword, lets assume that the S3 chip has the best "price/performance ratio" of any chip. S3 still has little chance to gain any real market share, mostly because they have little chance to get in OEM systems.
Let me explain. The retail market (where you go to BestBuy or newegg.com) makes up a very small percentage of the overall market. I can't give real numbers (I don't know if they're NDA'd or copywritten by the research company, so better safe than sorry), but lets just say, it's the OEM sales that pay everyone's salaries and keep the investors happy.
Since OEM sales are so important, lets jump into the mind of the OEM. There are 3 major things that the OEMs care about when choosing the chip to put in their computers.
1)Does this chip perform SIGNIFICANTLY better than what we're already using?
2)Is there any benefit with using company X over company Y?
3)Are we getting a better deal from the new company?
So, what does this mean for S3 (lets throw in XGI also). To put it simply, change is difficult and expensive. Assembly lines need to be retooled, software needs to be changed and re-validated. There needs to be a good reason for an OEM to change.
Going down the checklist:
1) They do not, and never will, have a part that performs that much better than nVidia's or ATI's midrange part (if they keep the "we only want the midrange" strategy). This is because the big 2 can generate a better midrange part by either lowering the price on a higher-end part, or by tweaking the binning of the higher-end parts (a high-end part that fails may be able to run as a mid-range part). Obviously, the low and mid-range parts make up the bulk of sales (and therefore contribute most to market share), so there's no way ATI or nVidia would give up any market share without a fight...and both companies have much more ammo (graphics IP) than S3 or XGI.
2)Positive mindshare in the IT world is a HUGE thing. Most of the time it is more important than the quality of the product. Though, a good product usually generates a greater mindshare, it's not always the case (read: Microsoft...to the uneducated masses). In graphics, it's been shown that the easiest way to generate a positive mindshare is to have the fastest & most stable product. nVidia built it's reputation on it's Riva and GeForce lines. ATI got back in the game with it's 9700. For S3 or XGI to gain mindshare, it can't elicit a "ooh, it's competitive" remark. It needs a "holy shit, that's fast" remark...that or some kick-ass marketing.
3)This would have to be one hell of a deal. Switching involves a risk that they will not sell as many PCs (and make as much money) as they already are. If money alone is driving the deal, the OEM would have to feel that there is a good chance of them making more money while selling fewer PCs...it doesn't take an economics major to see what that would mean for S3's or XGI's profit margins.
So, how could S3 or XGI really take market share from ATI and nVidia? Simple, make the fastest part out there at a price that rivals what nVidia and ATI sell their high-end parts for. Can one/both of them do that? Maybe, but it won't be easy. If they can do that, then they will have a solid foundation for deriving the mid-range parts, and the mid-range parts will practically sell themselves.
Tech Report also has DeltaChrome preview with screen shots of just how messed up S3's drivers are in some applications.
Because the card is only an "adequate" performer so far. Of course, that review left a lot to be desired, synthetic benchmarks arent a good basis. More real games, less 3DMark2xxx. nVidia showed how easy it is to cheat at synth benches.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Ok, I just bought this card and it seriously took over a week to configure to get things stablize. I jumped around from the catalyst 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 before things would work decently.
I think if S3 can build a card with drivers stable on the first install... they'll have my money. From what I know the latest geforce FX5900 has the same problems. It's just mind boggling having to pay so much and still dealing with such a bad out-of-box-experience.
I am playing some of the most common games (RTCWET, battlefield 1942, call of duty) and they all took a massive amount of driver tweaks and install sequence to work right. The market is flooded with premature products if you ask me.
http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?date Publish=2003/12/19&pages=A7&seq=47
I don't know when the deltachrome will be on the market, but it looks like ATI and nvidia will have some new cards on the market possibly by April which will push the price of the 5900 and 9800 way down, which will in turn push the price of the 5700 and 9600 down which is going to put some serious pressure on everybody else.
I see XGI's Volari as the biggest compitition to S3's DeltaChrome.
What's the point to not releasing documentation, when your card is not "high speed"? What you have to hide?
By opening source of drivers and releasing documentation - company could gain:
And it means money, because better drivers and better karma means bigger sell.
Oh well, as cheap, junky, consumer-level computers are being made, S3 will always have a customer. Its all about the profit margin.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I've seen POST failures with an AGP card not pushed all the way in, but never with no card at all. Remember, the 8-but MDA / MDPA card was actually undetectable to the BIOS selftest routine {remember, even on your spankiest new 80686-class processor, all the BIOS stuff has to run in "traditional" 8086 emulation mode}, or at least indistinguible from a more powerful card. As long as there is a faint glimmer of a possibility that someone could actually wire up some old 16-bit slots to a motherboard and plug in one of these old cards, then motherboards will have to pass POST with the graphics card missing presumed MDA.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Overall, I have to agree with the concensus that S3 is back, and may be primed to stay in the market for some time.
Indeed.
I find this card interesting for home theatre applicatons, where 3d capabilities (while nice and IMHO necessary for a complete entertainment system, including xmame and 3d simution support) don't have to be cutting-edge fast. Of particular note is this card's component output capabilities and ability to do 1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc. Right now my home theatre PC has an ATI card connected to my TV's DVI input. However, the TV only has one DVI input, while it has three component inputs, so being able to connect the computer to a component input (and free up the DVI interface for an HDTV tuner) would be nice.
Of course, until and unless there are decent Linux drivers for the hardware it will be of absolutely no interest for those of us building truly DRM-free home entertainment systems. Which is where S3, like so many others, may shoot itself in the foot (more's the pity). Here's hoping I'm wrong, and we do so solid 3d, X11, and linux driver support for the mpeg2/mpeg4 chip, tv and component outputs.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I think that everyone who is comparing this chipset with the high end ATI and Nvidia chipsets is missing the point.
The stated market for this thing is OEM sales to Mainboard producers. Doesn't it seem obvious that the inclusion of passable 3d and the ability to output to HDTV natively is positioning this for the set top box market?
How many discussions have there been of the new set top box market, or how to build your own PVR, on Slashdot in the last couple of months?
This chipset isn't for playing doom 3 on your dual monitor winxp system (though it might do that too), it is for using as a capable midrange chip in mini-itx systems, etc.
Just my $.02.
K
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine