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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."
Without some razzle-dazzle high end cards to "wow" people with, they probably won't get the publicity needed to sell these midrange cards.
Well given their rep it'd almost have to, since they're not going to be driving up quality.
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?
Prices are already pretty reasonable. Unless you play cutting edge games, a $75 video card will do everything you want.
Heck, even if you play cutting edge games, even that $75 card will serve you well unless you absolutely must have 1600x1200 resolution with 32bit color and 435FPS.
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.
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 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.
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)
$200 to me seems like WAY to much to pay for a graphics card
Especially in a day and age where a hundred bucks more can buy you an entire PC.
Hahaha, that's great. After the TNT I bought a TNT2Ultra made by Guillemot (which was a great card) and a few years later donated it to my brother. He had been using that card to play every single new game (including Max Payne) up until a few months ago when he built a new PC from the ground up.
One nice thing about Nvidia's driver upgrades over the years is that each release has improved the performance of damn near every card they make. My assumption is that the drivers are 50% of the card's performance..which would make sense in the context of them being unable to fully open-source the driver.