S3 DeltaChrome...Is S3 in the game for real this time?

[DogberryOfMessina]

I one strolls over to

www.s3graphics.com

we learn that S3 is, once again, trying to bowl into the fray with DeltaChrome. Of course, like every other hyped product, DeltaChrome promises the moon. It seems to have all the features of a front-runner (Programmable Pixel Shader, DX9 Compliance, V8 Pipeline, etc...). If anyone had a chance to see the demo at one of the trade shows or has an opinion in general on what you know about DeltaChrome please post.

Anyone with any history in the graphics card game knows to approach anything from S3 with a modicum of scepticism. Still, I would love to see something from S3 that could compete with nVidia and ATI at some level. Integrated mobo chipset territory is still ripe for conquering, and perhaps they can score here where they have failed in the past.

 

[DogberryOfMessina]

Also, does anyone know when products based on DeltaChrome are expected to be available? I'm sure VIA will be the first out of the gate with it, but there's nothing official on the website.

 

[Schadenfroh]

if it is like previous s3 releases, you dont want them to release anything taht your friends might buy and you will have to provied technical support for

btw, wth happened to the s3 savage xp?

 

[BoomAM]

I think that the SavageXP is a mobile chip.
The deltacrome is due out in september and we can expect the same performance as a 9700pro. Which isnt saying much considering that by september we could probably get the 9700pro for cheap.

 

[DogberryOfMessina]

If it can indeed keep up with a R9700 Pro, that would be awesome. The mainstream and budget markets are where a lot of money is made, and if S3 can offer that kind of performance at a good price, they may make enough money to eventually compete on a higher level. Hey...it worked for ATI. Then again, ATI doesn't have anything quite like ViRGE in it's pedigree either.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

that's the problem, when will it be able to keep up with a 9700 Pro? 1024x768x32 with no FSAA and AF? If so that's not saying much... cards are sooo radically different these days that you can't really compare one card to another and expect them to closely compare on all fronts.

 

[merlocka]

or has an opinion in general on what you know about DeltaChrome please post.

DeltaChrome will be sub Radeon 9500 Pro in performance, and first samples won't be seen until ~ September.

I'm sure VIA will be the first out of the gate with it, but there's nothing official on the website.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by VIA being out the gate with it first. VIA will be using S3 cores in their future chipsets, but S3 will also be selling the parts to AIB makers for the discreet desktop market.

btw, wth happened to the s3 savage xp?

It failed. It was to little too late, and the AIB makers gave up on it when they found AGP stability problems. S3 decided not to re-spin the IC to fix it, and rather focus on the Columbia core instead.

You can see some results of a pre-release Savage XP in the Digit-Life Retro review

If it can indeed keep up with a R9700 Pro, that would be awesome.

Won't happen. Although DeltaChrome has 8 pixel pipelines, it's augmenting some DX9 functions in software to save in transistor count. It also doesn't have 256 bit memory path.


That being said, I'm looking forward to S3's return. I believe the Columbia will be a viable solution compared to Radeon 9600 or Geforce 5600, if S3's new driver team is all that their marketing guys say it is.

Also ... DogberryOfMessina, you used modicum and pedigree in the same thread, you need to put down the thesaurus...

 

[Wag]

It appears to have very good full motiion video support- the best on the market so far. Seems ideal for a HTPC setup.

This is S3 though, so I'm not expecting much- if it even arrives this year.

 

[BoomAM]

Why is it that practically everyone writes off S3/Sonic Blue everytime that they make an announcement of a new product? Is not like any of they`re previous cards have been mega crap is it? I used to own a Savage4 and thought it was amazing. The Savage2000 was a phenominal product, able to compete with the gf256 very well with half the cost. But its downfall was the lack of the T&L unit not being enabled.

 

[Wag]

Savage2000 was OK- I had one for a while- but the PQ was very poor, which probably accounted for the good performance.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
Why is it that practically everyone writes off S3/Sonic Blue everytime that they make an announcement of a new product? Is not like any of they`re previous cards have been mega crap is it? I used to own a Savage4 and thought it was amazing. The Savage2000 was a phenominal product, able to compete with the gf256 very well with half the cost. But its downfall was the lack of the T&L unit not being enabled.

I used to own a Savage4 as well, it served me very well for a couple of years. I hope S3 do return to the video card market, more competition to help drive down prices is always a good thing for us consumers!

I tried out a Inno3D Savage2000 for a few months but didn't think much of it's performance so bought a Videologic Kyro2 instead.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
Why is it that practically everyone writes off S3/Sonic Blue everytime that they make an announcement of a new product? Is not like any of they`re previous cards have been mega crap is it? I used to own a Savage4 and thought it was amazing. The Savage2000 was a phenominal product, able to compete with the gf256 very well with half the cost. But its downfall was the lack of the T&L unit not being enabled.

Head over to B3D for some insight on the Columbia chipset. I believe it to be a promising chipset, but I think that S3's PR department needs to chill a bit... the think was paper launched ~ 9 months ahead of time!!!

Savage3D and Savage4 were viable solutions, but the Savage2000 hardware was too broken to be considered phenominal at anything. Quake3 arena and Unreal Tournament were the only two games which ran OK. There were many driver bugs and IQ issues. Many people criticized the drivers for the S2k, but I believe that the hardware was to blame. S3 chose not to fix several HW bugs so they could get the part out in time for Xmas (to compete with G256) and in the end there were just too many HW bugs to work around in the driver.

Lack of any real T&L (whether turned ON or not) was just the straw that broke the camels back.

So, S3 tried to get back in the game again with the Savage XP and what happened? This time, when they found out that the part (and reference designs) had stability issues they decided not to pull another S2K, but rather ditch the design and focus on Columbia.

So... at least with Savage XP they learned not to sell it if it's broken. Now we will see if Columbia comes out broken or not. My bet is that they have built an extra chip spin into their release schedule.

 

[DogberryOfMessina]

I, like many of you, am rooting for S3 here, if only for competition as nemesismk2 pointed out.

BoomAM, I don't think anyone is really dumping on S3 per se, but they do seem to have that dark cloud over every product they release. To put it another way, problems seem to go looking for S3. The curse began, as I said, with their first venture into 3D acceleration, ViRGE. To say that it didn't compete is a gross understatement. (In case you can't tell, I own one of these gems). Eventhough it did well in the OEM market, 3dfx was killing all competition on the high-end. Savage3D was okay, nowhere near as bad as ViRGE, but by then nVidia's RIVA line was taking over. After that, I think people just started looking the other way anytime S3 did anything, as they always seemed to be a little behind everyone else.

Now the market is a little different, back in the Savage3D days, you either had a good card or you didn't, now there are many price/performance trade-offs to pick from. Which means for S3, that even if they don't take out nVidia and ATI with a single punch, they can still compete, they just have to target the right market and have a solid product.

Wow, this is fun. I think I'll start a Matrox thread now...

 

[xNoodles]

Having owned a Savage 2000 card... i can safely say it was terrible.

 

[EdipisReks]

a friend of mine had a Viper II, and i must say that UT was fantastic when run with Metal.

 

[BoomAM]

The viper2 is a savage2000 baced card.

 

[DogberryOfMessina]

merlocka, what I meant by VIA being the first out of the gate is that VIA mainboards (not chipsets) will probably be the first, full-blown DeltaChrome implementations. Since I started this thread I have learned that VIA owns S3...and I mean in a legal sense. So to thicken the plot even further, it must now be taken into consideration that when we look at S3, we're seeing VIA. :Q

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: DogberryOfMessina
merlocka, what I meant by VIA being the first out of the gate is that VIA mainboards (not chipsets) will probably be the first, full-blown DeltaChrome implementations. Since I started this thread I have learned that VIA owns S3...and I mean in a legal sense. So to thicken the plot even further, it must now be taken into consideration that when we look at S3, we're seeing VIA. :Q

Ahh. I assumed you knew that VIA purchased S3Graphics. I thought you meant that VIA was going to sell it's own discreet graphics AIB's, similar to ATI or Matrox. That most likely will never happen.

Yes, S3 has stated that they will be rolling out the mobile versions first.

The desktop chipsets will be available about the same time assuming all goes well.

I have no clue as to when VIA will incorporate the IP into their chipsets, but I have to believe that VIA will drive that pretty hard.... meaning if we don't see VIA announce a chipset with S3 DeltaChrome soon...

 

[merlocka]

Wow. I'm getting close to becoming an S3 fanboy and they don't even have a product.

That's pretty pathetic.

Then again, without a product I don't have to worry about them cheating on benchmarks

 

[MercenaryForHire]

S3 Savage2000.
SiS Xabre 600.
Trident Cyberblade.

All were touted as "Performs at level of (insert real 3D card here)!"

All tanked.

My opinion is that S3 is just blowing smoke. Their standalone card isn't going to live up to half the hype they're pushing, and trying to bump Intel/nVidia from the IGP crown is suicide. Sure, S3 can make a great "crappy integrated 8MB chip" - but do the stockholders a favour and be happy with your mediocrity.

- M4H

 

[BoomAM]

Actually the Savage2000 performed at the same level as a GeForce256, and in multi-textured games, faster. As ive said, the downfall of the Savage2000 was not enabling the T&L engine from the start in the drivers, and not many companys had confidence in the Savage2000. The fact remains that the Savage2000 was a good product.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
S3 Savage2000.
SiS Xabre 600.
Trident Cyberblade.

Cyberblade XP4 that is.

The difference being that SiS actually does deliver a usable product with decent performance and solid drivers. Trident XP4 hasn't been seen so far, except for a couple of Compaq notebooks where it excels with extremely low power consumption for a DX8 part. SiS also usually migrate their graphics cores into their integrated-VGA chipsets. Xabre-inside will happen in their next generation.

Savage2000 had made it onto a Diamond card only; VIA/S3 didn't even migrate it to their integrated-VGA chipsets. They still use Savage-4, just migrating to UniChrome there. Let's see what discrete DeltaChrome can do.

 

[nRollo]

BoomAm

The Savage2000 was a phenominal product, able to compete with the gf256 very well with half the cost

Did you ever HAVE a Diamond Viper/Savage 2000 card? I did. It left empty black hole on my desktop about every 3rd time I booted. Was not good, the GF1 SDR that replaced it had no such issues.

 

[merlocka]

Originally posted by: BoomAM
Actually the Savage2000 performed at the same level as a GeForce256, and in multi-textured games, faster. As ive said, the downfall of the Savage2000 was not enabling the T&L engine from the start in the drivers, and not many companys had confidence in the Savage2000. The fact remains that the Savage2000 was a good product.

I agree to disagree.

1) Savage 2000 T&L was BROKEN in hardware. Enabling it wasn't really an option, as S3 proved when they released a driver set which enabled it and it actually reduced performance across the board.

2) The only benchmarks which the savage 2000 was beating the Geforce SDR were 32bit quake 3 benchmarks at 1024x768 or higher. This was simply because S3 was using S3TC... This slight performance lead went away once detonator 5.xx enabled S3TC on the Geforce.

3) RIP Savage 2000, Savage XP... let's see what Columbia can do.

 

[BoomAM]

Rollo.
Performance of the card has nothing to do with what is displayed on your desktop. That was probably a driver error.
The Savage2000, when it worked, was a good card for the time.