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S3 Tries to Get Back Into PC Graphics
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of S3's attempt to get some traction in the lower-end graphics card market, the Chrome S27. Though its specs look great--256MB memory, 700MHz core clock rate, 1.4GHz memory clock, and 22.4 GB/sec memory throughput, it still manages to underperform similarly priced video cards from the red and green graphics companies."
Supply full GPL/BSD licensed source code to the X.org and kernel.org for inclusion in mainline. That will trigger a lot of positive support.
Besides, I don't really see a downside, because who, besides free software lovers, would be motivated to buy something non-nvidia and non-ati at this point?
Cheers
Simon
With the advent of xgl, compiz etc. we really NEED a decent 3D card with open drivers on Linux. I couldn't care less about gaming but xgl sure as hell looks awesome! I don't need a full-blown NVIDIA or ATI card for that. Open your drivers S3 and I promise you I'll be buying at least 6 of these cards as they become available.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
> Besides, I don't really see a downside, because who, besides free software lovers, would be motivated to buy something non-nvidia and non-ati at this point?
People who do not play high-performance games might not want to pay $100-$600 for a graphics card. Joe User is far more interested in multimedia playback than 3D graphics. Intel's sells their embedded graphics cards for $7, and they are the biggest seller of graphics cards. Plus, they have open source drivers. There is plenty of room in the low-end for S3, although they have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to compete with Nvidia and ATI.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
However, I do sympathize with linux users who want quality drivers for all types of graphics hardware. I doubt, though, that NVIDIA or ATI will ever release open-source drivers for linux. I think they can and should take the desktop linux market seriously and release high-quality, closed drivers, even if it affects the OSS purity of the linux operating system.
For decent article reviewing some of these issues, see this.
Is a stable interface in Linux so that the graphics card companies can write closed source drivers that don't need to be updated with every minor kernel revision. The problem is that graphics drivers contain proprietayr, licensed code. There's no real way around it if they want to support all the features. Even OpenGL itself must be licensed. Well, they can't just go and relicense the code and open it up, even if they want to.
So this is a situation where Linux needs to make a concession, if they want better support. This attitude of "open source always!" needs to give way to an attitude of choice. One where you provide all the tools necessary to do open distribution, and open distribution of your own tools, but the option to use closed source for those that want to.
If you don't want that, fair enough, but then you can't be too angry when the graphics companies won't accomadate you and your rather small marketshare. If you won't be accomadating to them, don't look at them to be accomidating to you.
First they compare a $115 card to cards costing $125 and $129
The ATI Radeon 1600Pro can be had for $99. The GF6600GT is $115.
they didn't pan it for performance, but for basic flaws?
Where'd you get that. In their conclusion they very clearly pan it for performance. It's not even the 2nd best card in its price range -- it's third best. By a large margin.
Ok, AA doesn't appear to work for GL, that is bad but will almost certainly get fixed in the drivers pretty soon.
Well that'd be new and different -- S3 actually fixing their drivers. I wouldn't hold your breath.
And it's worse than that, if you bother to read the review (or even the conclusion) -- AA/AF doesn't work in a number of other games, and when it does it generally causes performance to drop into the useless category.
That would be because SLI mode doesn't work? What sort of idiot would buy a $99 card for SLI work?
They state, clearly, that SLI isn't common at this price point, but that's irrelevant. This is S3's own implementation of it and it doesn't work worth a damn. It's a selling point on their card, so it should work.
It looks like S3 is trying something interesting, throw high speed but dumb hardware at the problem of 3D instead of trying to put more compute power than a P4 on a board
What on earth is that statement based on? They appear to have as much hardware as the competition. In fact, more than the competition does in the same price range. And they appear to have similar hardware algorithms (fast Z-clear, occlusion culling, etc.) as the competition. Whoever modded you up not didn't read the article, they don't understand graphics hardware in the slightest.
I know I'd certainly switch from ATI Radeon 9250 (most current 3D with Open drivers) to this new S3 tech if it had an open driver.
Better hope that 9250 doesn't die then, because that's not happening anytime soon. Go read one of my other posts in this article if you'd care to know why.
Mod flamebait, it's obviously designed to provoke controversy. As others have stated, you've gotta start somewhere. With a company that has so little marketshare to begin with, they go with the largest share of the pie first, and that is the Windows market. Course a little nudge nudge wink wink could do wonders with getting them to write Linnox drivers.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
I, for one, cannot understand why Yugos have such a bad rap in the United States, considering that its the country responsible for Dodge, Oldsmobile, Buick, Chevrolet, Lincoln, etc. Has anybody noticed that nobody buys American-brand cars (Fords, Jeeps, American-owned foreign car companies excepted) outside the US?