A look at S3's DeltaChrome

[Shagga]

YOU'RE NOT GONNA believe this. I mean, really, you're not, because I wouldn't have either, had I not seen it with my own eyes. 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. I've seen the A0 silicon, first spin of the chip, running games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and the Chrome demo well enough to convince me the thing has potential. Real potential.

Check out TechReport for the full story...

 

[Schadenfroh]

s3 should merge with XGI!

 

[Lonyo]

Could be interesting if 2 "competitors" manage to come out with some competetive products to ATi (and vaguely nVidia too of course )

Link to XBitlabs story on the DeltaChrome

* Produced using 0.13 micron technology at TSMC;
* 8 rendering pipelines with one TMU per each;
* Advanced Pixel and Vertex Shaders. Features the DeltaChrome can provide are beyond the RADEON 9700 and DirectX 9.0 specifications, according to the company?s initial claim.
* DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL 1.4 support;
* Memory bandwidth saving technologies;
* Multisample antialiasing for OpenGL and Direct3D;
* Fonts antialiasing;
* Multi-display capabilities;
* 400MHz RAMDAC integrated;
* Integrated TV-Out controller, TMDS transmitter and so on;
* 480p / 720p / 1080i / 1080p HDTV resolutions via component (YPbPr) output, 480i standard TV output via S-video and composite output;
* Programmable video engine;
* AGP 8x.

There are rumours that the DeltaChrome chip runs at 300 ? 400MHz, not too high frequencies, but definitely not low as well.

 

[rbV5]

It has some great sounding HTPC features, interesting stuff.

 

[Richdog]

About time the other graphics cards makers started getting their acts tohether, can only be a good thing for future prices and performance! :beer:

 

[FearoftheNight]

4 company market > 2

 

[merlocka]

wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: merlocka
wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

Yes all two of them.... of course they will quickly be beaten and killed by those of us that bought a Savage 2K for HW TnL that never worked.

 

[touchmyichi]

I dunno....Remember the 'amazing' trident they said they would release (which i believe they did). That didn't make much of a splash at all. I hope this is different.

 

[nemesismk2]

Great news, reminds me of many happy hours of gaming with my Diamond Stealth III S540 Savage4 32MB!

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: merlocka
wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

Yes all two of them.... of course they will quickly be beaten and killed by those of us that bought a Savage 2K for HW TnL that never worked.

All three of us you mean!

 

[McArra]

hehehehe. These forums are getting funnier every day

 

[vss1980]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: merlocka
wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

Yes all two of them.... of course they will quickly be beaten and killed by those of us that bought a Savage 2K for HW TnL that never worked.

All three of us you mean!

I still got a Savage2000. Yep the T&L didn't work, and when it did it wasn't pretty. However, I still use the card in a spare machine which is hooked up to my widescreen telly to play back divx films, etc.
It still has one of the best quality TV-out compared to many Geforce cards.
Oh, and its highest texture filtering (tri-linear) still looks better than some of the lower Anisotropic filtering on Geforce cards.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: merlocka
wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

Yes all two of them.... of course they will quickly be beaten and killed by those of us that bought a Savage 2K for HW TnL that never worked.

Agree, I had one of those for 28 days. Returned it on the 29th

I'm the last one who will hype any paper products (especially from S3), but it looks like they have functioning A0 hardware which is a good sign. S3's downfall in the past (Savage 2K, Savage XP) has been that they took excessive chip revs to get production level HW and ended up either releasing broken HW (Savage 2k) or canning the project (Savage XP).

Let's hope they execute better this time around. It's better for everyone if there are more IHV's producing standards compliant hardware.

But I'll sign up for the S3 Fanboi newsletter just for the heck of it aww heck, throw XGI in there while you are at it!

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: merlocka

Originally posted by: jasonja

Originally posted by: merlocka
wOOt!!!

S3 Fanboi's unite!!!

Yes all two of them.... of course they will quickly be beaten and killed by those of us that bought a Savage 2K for HW TnL that never worked.

Agree, I had one of those for 28 days. Returned it on the 29th

I'm the last one who will hype any paper products (especially from S3), but it looks like they have functioning A0 hardware which is a good sign. S3's downfall in the past (Savage 2K, Savage XP) has been that they took excessive chip revs to get production level HW and ended up either releasing broken HW (Savage 2k) or canning the project (Savage XP).

Let's hope they execute better this time around. It's better for everyone if there are more IHV's producing standards compliant hardware.

But I'll sign up for the S3 Fanboi newsletter just for the heck of it aww heck, throw XGI in there while you are at it!

Remember S3 now have all of the resources of VIA to use so they have the financial backing to make their new products a success.