S3's DeltaChrome Graphics Chip 193
Noob Jones writes "The Tech Report has an article about a new video card in the works at S3. 'S3 Graphics is back with a new chip, dubbed DeltaChrome, which looks like it might just be strong enough to become a player in the mid-range consumer graphics market.' With a third player back in the graphics market both Nvidia and ATi are going to have things to worry about but this can only spell good news for customers."
The mid-range graphics market (Score:5, Funny)
Because there's nothing else (Score:2)
Actually, there's no disadvantage to the community when GFX card manufacturers implement DirectX features, as they are still accessible via OpenGL extensions. For example, Doom3 is an OpenGL game, but wil
If only . . (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If only . . (Score:2)
Believe me, your better staying with the VIC. It has *much* better TV-out than anything S3 could do.
*shudders at the memories of the Savage 3D*
Re:If only . . (Score:2)
*shudders at the memories of the Virge 3D*
Re:If only . . (Score:2)
The world's best 3D decelerator.
All fifteen bazillion... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If only . . (Score:1)
Yea but..... (Score:1)
S3 is about as much of a threat as... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:S3 is about as much of a threat as... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:S3 is about as much of a threat as... (Score:2)
Maybe that's who I meant. BitBoys, BitMap Bros., I dunno. Maybe the BitMap Bros. were that British coding team from the late 80s who did all those Amiga and ST games ports. But I digress. Whichever group of guys it was who kept on claiming they'd bring out graphics chips that would trump any of Nvidia's and 3dfx's chips. I guess by now they truly can beat the Voodoo2 SLI mode...
Re:S3 is about as much of a threat as... (Score:1)
Yay! Obscure computer reference!
(If it weren't for the fact it was my first computer, at 3 years old, I wouldn't have remembered it at all.)
-B
Re:S3 is about as much of a threat as... (Score:1)
The ti99[9?]5 and friends were pretty good... (Score:2)
There are other markets (Score:5, Interesting)
I was trying to look for such a chip and found only the embedded versions of NVidia and Radeon which are obscenely grotesque for handheld devices. For resolutions maximum of which are 640x480 and color depths of max 16bits, there must be a 3d video chip that supports OpenGL 1.4. It will at least be used in the next GBA, NGage and other handhelds and cellphones.
Re:There are other markets (Score:2)
on the other hand, if you really look you will find PowerVR MBX and the new Bitboys chip.
Guess who who does? (Score:3, Informative)
Now I know their previous products have had a rather strong vapour but maybe they've finally found their niche.
Re:There are other markets (Score:2)
Re:There are other markets (Score:2)
Whatever can you mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
S3 isn't going to make a dent unless they can seriously compete with what ATI/Nvidia have out on the top-end market.
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
These days you don't even need a Video card, just get a board with onboard/shared memory graphics card. S3 cant compete for the low end because in most respects it does n't exist anymore.
Did n't someone buy S3 out because they had some rather nice patents that they purchased from another dead company?
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, VIA. S3 coming out with new 3D hardware is entirely driven by VIA having complete converage of a computer.
All of the comments so far have neglected to figure that S3/VIA are selling EPIA boards like hotcakes. With 3D hardware worse then this chip included. Expect to see this part on the next gen of EPIA boards.
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:2)
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:2)
So a decent video chip they now can put on their own boards without having to pay a 3rd party for it and one that doesn't completly suck? Mmm, yeah I could see a business case for that. Anyone wanna bet we are going to finally see
The Whole Da#n thing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Whole Da#n thing! (Score:2)
That said, there was a EPIA prototype over on mini-itx.com after the last show that was an Envy on a itx board! very cool!
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:1, Insightful)
And yes S3 had a rather nice patent portfolio, but only the graphics related patents transfered to Via AFAIK.
The new S3 is not the same as the old S3. The new S3 is something Via put together with assets purchased from the old S3 (now Sonic Blue). But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
IMHO The old S3 had some decent h
Depends on your metric. (Score:4, Interesting)
Using the broader metric of this much larger whole market, the S3 could very well have a significant impact. It would only take the right deal with a major PC manufacturer like Dell or HP and suddenly S3 would have probably >50% of the graphics chip market, regardless of the quality or performance of the chip.
Would it take the best performance and price ratio to win such a deal? No. It would take barely acceptable performance at a great price and , perhaps most importantly, the ability to meet the manufacturing demands while maintaining a low failure rate. Of course, playing golf with the guy in procurement at Dell probably wouldn't hurt too much either.
S3 could pull it off if.... (Score:2)
With the resources of VIA Technologies behind S3, they have the potential to be a major spoiler in the low to midrange market.
Re:Whatever can you mean? (Score:1, Informative)
I really wouldnt mind a third player.... (Score:5, Informative)
Prime example: Parhelia.
On release 256bit memory interface,8 texel per clock -> everybody thought it would rock.
reality: Horrible drivers, DX9 drivers "will not be made", abysmal memory performance because of lack of bandwith saving gimmicks, ect.
S3 in particular hasnt got a very good track record. The last time they released a product that was supposed to reach nvidea&atis performance, they ended up with a chip chose T&L never worked and was emulated in a driver that sucked in every aspect except producing render errors...
Our Inventory's Got to Go! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Our Inventory's Got to Go! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Our Inventory's Got to Go! (Score:3, Funny)
Typical exclusionism. My PS/2 and I will be over here. Let us know when the MCA version is ready.
3rd Player? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3rd Player? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesnt have any drives providing the (limited) DX9 features the card has, like 10Bit/channel.
And it wont get any, because they said so and they fired the driver team this spring.
Well, it does have good 2D and triplehead, which would make sense if the card was 5 times as fast as it is (of course you can play Q3 or any other 4 year old game, no probs, but try something newer..)
Bah, another flop I bet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bah, another flop I bet. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bah, another flop I bet. (Score:4, Informative)
Good to see competition... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they're looking at creating bargain chips, a la AMD's entry into CPU development that promises to unseat Intel, but the price differential between Intel and AMD is far greater than that S3 could possibly achieve between its chips and those of nVidia/ATi.
To be honest, it's mostly fanboys that are buying up all the new cards anyway to squeeze another frame or two per second out, so it's possible S3 could do something like offer longer warranties on older technology to drive the price point down while delivering all the graphics power anybody could need. It'll be interesting to see what happens, of course, but it's good to see S3 back regardless.
Re:Good to see competition... (Score:2, Interesting)
A card that can't be quiet (as in, lower Db's then a system fan) is not in my lane. ATI is heads first right now, and until nVidia gets this thermo-thingy right (alas, low-noise), it sucks from my perspective...
And for S3: Well, it's always good to see some competition. S3 was the first for me in my 286, and then in a VESA version for a 486. Never really bothered with them again...
Matrox failed at it's pricing. I would have had a paraphelia (
Re:Good to see competition... (Score:1)
I remember the Virge chips, wildly popular, but by most accounts the world's first 3d decellerator. I wish the best to S3 because another choice in the marketplace can obly be a good thing, but their track record does not inspire confidence.
LK
Re:Good to see competition... (Score:3, Insightful)
You got it backwards, nVidia has the biggest market share but ATi is technically superior (seen some recent benchmarks lately? twice as fast in DX9 PS2.0, ditto with ARB2/OGL).
Hah... (Score:2, Interesting)
S3 3D decellerator (Score:5, Funny)
Re:S3 3D decellerator (Score:1, Informative)
Re:S3 3D decellerator (Score:1)
Re:S3 3D decellerator (Score:3, Informative)
It supported S3D. My old Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 came with several games that "appeared" to be accellerated by the card. One was a roller derby style game and the other was a special version of Descent.
Consumer grapics market?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:1)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:1)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:1)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:2)
Not only that, the trend is swinging back towards integrated video on midrange systems; memory is finally fast enough that it's possible to get decent video performance using sh
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:2)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:2)
Re:Consumer grapics market?? (Score:2)
A year and a half ag
Been there, done that. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Been there, done that. (Score:1)
blah blah : decent open specsheet with it? (Score:2)
excellent.. now my request (Score:3, Funny)
sweet. realistic on the fly lighting that convinces.. advertising can now blend in the background scenery, objects spinning and *wow*ing will seem more realistic to our brains.. fine, dandy..
but will someone use that idea in reverse, code up a program that dynamically darkens the likes of Britney Spears, Monster.com, Penis Enlargement and/or goatse refrences on the fly? That would really help my computing experience in a useful way.
oh.. and highlight natalie portman when she's on screen..
thanks,
sincerely,
pm
Yeah, but does it run LINUX? (Score:1)
Time for rebranding (Score:5, Interesting)
NVIDIA to me means aswome driver installation but be prepared to roll back. Performancewise they are as fast as their agp speed. These guys are the ones who killed 3dfx, yet we dont hold a grudge againts them for it.
S3 to means cheap cheap, not value value, install in machines that will never have a monitor hooked up with the sole purpose of getting past a post test.
I would be much more impressed with a new name comming out of nowhere and whipping the competition like nvidia did to 3dfx. And if they needed some foundation they could point to the fact that they have been making cards for years but are an entirely different company (in mindset at least).
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2, Interesting)
To me, NVIDIA means closed-source kernel binaries and horrible searing stabbing pains when trying to get drivers working in 2.6 test kernels.
In 2.4, I could run glmatrix on root with no effect on the foreground apps (glmatrix nice'd to +20). No luck with 2.6...
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
Maybe they are in testing internall at NVidia. Maybe they don't want to distribute binaries that aren't any good. Maybe NVidia doesn't want to be involved in releases for unstable kernels. There is nothing that says they have to so to expect them to is stupid.
Am I to believe that the day 2.6.0 appears they'll launch a fully-tested and solid driver?
No, you should expect a 2.6 driver the day NVidia says they will have one and not expect one until then
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:1)
Ah, but in fact they did: Losing market share and loss of dominance. :-)
Read the crap going on about Half Life 2 and nVidia's optimisations issues. I've never seen nVidia in such a bad way until after they bought out 3DFX.
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:1)
Speak for yourself. I switched from Voodoo 2 to Radeon, ignored Nvidia completely...
BUT... It was more because ATI cards have always been better bang for the back than Nvidia, and less Nvidia killing one of my favorite technologies....
No....I'm not bitter.....
-B
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
Ever heard of Catalyst drivers?
NVIDIA to me means aswome driver installation but be prepared to roll back. Performancewise they are as fast as their agp speed.
Ever heard of DX9 or ARB2?
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
>>>>>>>>>>>
Ever see how bad they suck on a Linux machine? Even 3.2.5, although those just suck speed-wise, not stability-wise.
Ever heard of DX9 or ARB2?
>>>>>>>>>>
What's an ARB2? You mean Carmack's Doom III ARB2 path?
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
Re:Time for rebranding (Score:2)
3rd party (Score:5, Insightful)
ATI and nVidia with their 6 month product cycles have produced a market where they have to find ways of convincing lots of people they need a new powerful and expensive piece of hardware atleast once a year.
This has produced so much 'mid' and 'low' end harware for bargin bin prices that market is saturated. (a GF4 Ti 4200, that will run any game out there, can be found $80). Unless S3 can pull something that is both affordable (~$150) and brings something new to the table, i don't see them grabbing up a market share with this.
THe only reason i have to buy a Radeon 9600 over the GF4 TI is the DX9/ARB shaders make it look pretty, not because i need the speed.
And unless S3 can provide something to make me want to buy them over the big two (ie better features, faster performance, cheaper price) i'm sticking with a card that has been a solid and proven performer over the product of a company i remember as second tier hardware before they took a 7 year break.
Re:3rd party (Score:1)
Don't know if you mean all of these or just one, but for the price - take a look of the Acer laptops. They're betting 90% of their graphics for the low end models on S3 mobility chips and even if it's far enough from the Ati 320IGP, or the nVidia GeForce 448/420 for the the S3 card does sound good for where ordinary you get nothing more than a all in one mb. PS: This said, for the last 3 months there're several very competitive offers from Toshiba wit
They've gotta work to improve their image (Score:1)
You forgot the 4th major player... (Score:2, Funny)
One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't have to be the latest, fastest, most expensive board out there. The really hard-core gamers are the only ones who need to spend $100+ on a video card, and I suspect that most of them run Windows.
S3 wouldn't even have to write the drivers themselves! I'm sure that if they published the spec's needed to write the drivers, that some Linux geeks would write better drivers than S3 could, and it wouldn't cost S3 a cent. Since we're talking about middle-aged technology here, there shouldn't be any worry about ``intellectual property'' leaking out through the spec's.
I'd ditch my GF2 in a minute, and pay around $80 (that's what I paid for my old Nvidia) to get opensource, no-hassle drivers, and a card that's no worse than the old GF2.
Re:One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:3, Insightful)
It sucks, but that's the way it is. The graphics industry is so competitive that executives are choosing paranoia over making us Linux folks happy.
Re:One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:2)
So, what's wrong with that picture?
Patents require full disclosure. If it's patented, it's NOT secret. There's no possibility that anyone could gain by keeping patented stuff secret; the cat's already out of the bag.
Are there trade secrets in the hardware, which are being sec
Re:One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:2)
Re:One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:1)
It's called a Radeon. Everything older than the 9700 PRO is well supported by open source drivers, and most of them are $100.
Re:One way that S3 could compete with the big boys (Score:3, Informative)
Well, maybe, just maybe this might happen. The DRI guys are starting work on drivers for Savage4 based cores (Prosavage like on the Epia boards, Twister, and some others). IIRC, these driver were apparently written in-house by via/s3 for mesa3, and then opened up and given to Alan Cox. It now needs to be cleaned up and ported to Mesa4 or 5, and integrated with the rest if the DRI drivers. That sure sounds open source friendly to me.
Concerning the older Savage3D/IX/MX, the Utah-GLX guys have som
Reminds me of Matrox (Score:2)
And the award for the most unnecessary sentence... (Score:2, Funny)
Way more than two players (Score:1)
A few others have had credible success recently as well, notably ST Micro which manufactured Videologic's KYRO design for a whi
Re:Way more than two players (Score:2)
Re:Way more than two players (Score:1)
Screw S3 and the donkey they rode in on... (Score:4, Interesting)
Their Linux support is woeful. I've tried to get XFree running on a few of them, and I think one out of eight actually work with the XFree driver - about 4 work with the vesa driver ( very, very, very slowly ) and the rest don't even run in vesa mode. For Christ's sake!
Also, as an owner of a Radeon 64MB DDR, I have been on the receiving end if their S3 Texture Compression patent. The DRI developers have begged S3 to allow them to include support for it in the Radeon driver - apparent the algorithm itself is simple and well-known in the industry. S3 have not responded at all to anyone.
I suppose there are some weirdos out there who use Windows and read Slashdot, but seriously, the majority of us should avoid S3 like the plague. They're not even concerned with 'extra features like OpenGL', so if bought, this card will most likely run just like the rest of the crap they've churned out so far: in vesa mode if you're lucky, otherwise get used to your console.
Re:Screw S3 and the donkey they rode in on... (Score:2)
Re:Screw S3 and the donkey they rode in on... (Score:2)
*yawn* (Score:1, Offtopic)
I've complained about this before, and got the excuse "this just means there's a large readership overlap"
and having thought about that, it just gives MORE reason not to post to both sites. That means more people read the same story in both places. Slashdot even has a Hardocp slashbox.
In my eyes, Hardocp is for the gamer/hardware enthusiast/ over clocking/ water cooling/ etc stuff. slashdot is for the rest.
for realz (Score:1)
mini-itx with DX9 capability? (Score:1)
The only thing that will save them is: (Score:2)
I would certainly buy a card that could be upgraded to Doom III levels (and beyond...) later on.
Ob:Escape from Bankruptcy (Score:1, Funny)
I heard you were dead..."
Re:There are four 'players' now.. (Score:1)
XGI = Xabre Graphics Incorporated (Score:2)
It is still possible, I suppose, that they'll produce a decent graphics chipset and become a contender. ATI managed to do it with the Radeon, after all. However, I'm not holding out much hope.