S3 releases High-Performance cards

[Aberforth]

For years S3 has been trying hard to gain entry into mainstream GPU market, their new card Chrome 440GTX priced at 69 bucks beats Radeon 3470, I know the performance isn't that phenomenal but they are certainly not keeping quiet. I hope they beat NV and ATi/AMD one day.

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?61600

 

[IlllI]

i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

 

[angry hampster]

If the drivers are good, it may be a viable option for HTPC use.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: clandren
i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

What was their first card with Hardware T&L that never quite worked correctly and they eventually had to disable it and have only "software" support for it, the savage 2k?

Anyways, I believe VIA owns them now, so hopefully the situation has improved.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

LOL nvm read until the end and its an entry level card... Bleh, thats what you call high performance? :thumbsdown:

 

[nonameo]

OP edited.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: clandren
i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

What was their first card with Hardware T&L that never quite worked correctly and they eventually had to disable it and have only "software" support for it, the savage 2k?

Anyways, I believe VIA owns them now, so hopefully the situation has improved.

Yup. That card worked flawlessly and very well for Q3 and UT. I swear that every other game had some kind of issue with the card though. Not major glitches, just graphical corruptions here and there. Enough to be noticeable.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: clandren
i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

What was their first card with Hardware T&L that never quite worked correctly and they eventually had to disable it and have only "software" support for it, the savage 2k?

Anyways, I believe VIA owns them now, so hopefully the situation has improved.

The S3 Virge was the first 3D Decelerator, the Savage 2000 topped that achievement with the title of world's first hardware T&L decelerator.

 

[Sylvanas]

I would rather see a real review of the card before proclaiming it better than a 3470 using a press release from S3 as evidence. It all comes down the drivers.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: clandren
i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

What was their first card with Hardware T&L that never quite worked correctly and they eventually had to disable it and have only "software" support for it, the savage 2k?

Anyways, I believe VIA owns them now, so hopefully the situation has improved.

Kyro II anyone?

Edit: My God! Was that really 2001?!

 

[n7]

Heh, all the posts about drivers sum it up.

That'd be my first concern, one that no doubt will be why these cards fail in the semi-enthusiast+ market again.

If they can convince an OEM these cards r0x0r though, they might have something, since as long as the drivers sorta work, most OEMs don't care for anything more (at least from what i've seen).

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: clandren
i remember a few years back when s3 tried to enter the market... drivers were terrible. hopefully they will have improved upon that since then

What was their first card with Hardware T&L that never quite worked correctly and they eventually had to disable it and have only "software" support for it, the savage 2k?

Anyways, I believe VIA owns them now, so hopefully the situation has improved.

The S3 Virge was the first 3D Decelerator, the Savage 2000 topped that achievement with the title of world's first hardware T&L decelerator.

Blasphemer! Blasphemy!

The ViRGE was an excellent card well ahead of its time, the geeks of 1996 just weren't able to cope with its power and pooh-poohed it because they couldn't bear to witness its awesomeness. You should not say such poor things about such an excellent card.

 

[postmortemIA]

THe only way they can have good drivers is if they have expensive products that can finance good driver team. As long as they are making cheapo cards, they'll have to cut too many corners.

 

[Rubycon]

S3...a friend of mine pronounced it like an expression - ess cubed. I told him he almost got it right as he really means escargot. He was not impressed. Fanboi 0, snail 1. :laugh:

 

[VirtualLarry]

I played UT on an S3 Virge. Software rendering mode was faster. (Although it ran interlaced.)

 

[ChaosDivine]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Blasphemer! Blasphemy!

The ViRGE was an excellent card well ahead of its time, the geeks of 1996 just weren't able to cope with its power and pooh-poohed it because they couldn't bear to witness its awesomeness. You should not say such poor things about such an excellent card.

Oy! I still have a few in my tech toss bin here. Don't make me stab you with 'em

 

[ROEHUNTER]

"S3 Graphics has once again brought to market another high performance product to complement our growing portfolio of segment leading graphics and video technologies," said Dr. Ken Weng, General Manager of S3 Graphics."

Hmmm...

 

[Rusin]

High performance with 64-bit mem bus? They had cards with 128-bit bus few years ago.

 

[skyofavalon]

Crysis benchmarks ?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: skyofavalon
Crysis benchmarks ?

They're still waiting for the first frame to be rendered...

 

[ChaosDivine]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
They're still waiting for the first frame to be rendered...

T3h winnar! :laugh:

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: skyofavalon
Crysis benchmarks ?

They're still waiting for the first frame to be rendered...

ROFLMAO!

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Hey, that's not fair. I bet it runs fine at 320x240!

 

[themisfit610]

IIRC, there were some very impressive textures (for the time) available in Unreal Tournament that were only usable on S3 cards.. some exotic texture compression or something..

Anyone care to fill me in?

~MiSfit

 

[Klinky1984]

S3, 3Dfx, nVidia, ATi, Matrox... *sigh* the days when there was more competition in the gfx market...