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S3 Graphics Comes out of Hiding with Chrome20

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the more-fodder-to-drive-the-prices-down dept.

Steve from Hexus writes "S3 Graphics, having been quiet for a while, has today announced a new graphics solution, Chrome20, with which they intend to take some market share away from ATI and Nvidia. From the article: 'We were offered a chance for some hands on play with a mid-range Chrome20 series desktop board - the machine was loaded with over 40 top games. A quick run of Half Life2 , Far Cry , Halo and a couple of other titles demonstrated that S3G's new 90nm mainstream card was working without any visual problems and with very playable frame rates.'"

8 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Solution, or a card? by DavidNWelton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is it a "graphics solution" or a PCI card? Sheez.

    --
    http://www.welton.it/davidw/
  2. "Playable framerates" by vasqzr · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Read: Nowhere near the performance of ATI/NVIDIA.

    Unless they plan on taking over the integrated graphics, $300 PC market, why bother?

  3. Re:If you mean like ATI's I'll stick with Nvidia.. by arose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Exept when they break their drivers for months on old and low end cards. Solid support my ass, polictics are important for a reason.

    --
    Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  4. Yet more magic pixie dust... by L0neW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this the way S3 does it every time? Let's see:

    Step 1: S3 introduces a new graphics card. The name is similar to one they've previously made, but you've never seen that card before because no-one wants to produce and sell one. Specs seem similar too. As usual, it's supposed to be a mid-level card that won't "take on the big boys" but is supposed to have mainstream performance.
    Step 2: Hardware review sites get a prototype board. They either experience a number of driver glitches, or performance that is vanilla enough that no-one is all that excited.
    Step 4:Joe Gamer reads the review, and buys a tried-and-true midrange solution from ATI or nVidia that doesn't have the driver issues S3 was famous for in cards that actually made it out the door.
    Step 5: S3 has teething troubles with the GPU, or the drivers, or production, delaying the chip's release until its performance is at the low-end, yet priced $20-40 above others' low-end cards.
    Step 6: The lackluster performance of the GPU relegates it to boards made by one dinky little vendor nobody has heard of and doesn't trust, with nonexistent support. S3 has to lower their prices on the GPU to get any sales at all.
    Step 7: S3 doesn't profit.

    I'm just curious...how does S3 manage to keep their graphics card business afloat? Aside from a few integrated solutions on VIA chipset mainboards, I can't see any products they manage to make money on.

    --

    Never look down your nose at others. Someday, someone is bound to see your boogers.
  5. Re:If you mean like ATI's I'll stick with Nvidia.. by mjrauhal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Solid support is *much* more impotant to me then politics. I use Linux because it works for me and works well, same reason I use Nvidia cards under Linux.
    I find it funny that you immediately followed this up with:
    They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
  6. A tiny market, but a loyal one? by Grendel+Drago · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a small market, true, but what exactly would S3 lose by opening up its drivers? They'd instantly become the graphics card for anyone running Linux. It's a small but real benefit---and what, then, would be the cost to them?

    Apple users are a small market, but they're incredibly loyal. Why wouldn't S3 get in on that action?

    --grendel drago

    --
    Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
    1. Re:A tiny market, but a loyal one? by myslashdotusername · · Score: 5, Insightful

      what exactly would S3 lose by opening up its drivers?

      Several lawsuits, as technology used in writing those drivers is patented, and they've likely cross-licensed the patents to even be able to write a modern 3-d driver.

      now you could strip all the patented code, and fix it into a working driver, and provide source for it, but ATI already has been doing that for years, yet all I see from the /. community is a bunch of Nvidia fanboy ravings of how good the closed source Nvidia drivers are.

      So I hope this answers your question, as to why they cannot do what you seem to think would be so easy. And hey, even if patents were a non issue, the drivers would still be a 'trade' secret, giving that away to your competetors for free means that they will always know how to make there product perform better than yours.

      --
      Everyone whom you love, loves no one else. You must be special.
    2. Re:A tiny market, but a loyal one? by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why is this modded insightful? It's outright wrong.

      Ok, so let's assume you're right and the technology is patented. So what? This means that there are NO secrets allowed by the government in this product. The whole point of getting a patent is that you have to disclose your invention fully in order to obtain legal protection for it. If I want to see this patented technology, I can just look it up at www.uspto.gov. So this cross-licensed patents argument is a pile of BS.

      Strip the patented code... why? Again, if it's patented, there's no secrets. Now maybe the companies holding the patents won't license them in such a way as to allow open-sourced drivers, but this is a licensing issue, not a patent one.

      Trade secret: well, are they patented or aren't they? You can't have a trade secret on something that's patented. The two are mutually exclusive.

      You might want to learn about the various IP protections and how they differ before running your mouth.