S3 to make Dx10, Dx10.1 chipsets

[Modelworks]

I really didn't expect S3 to do this.

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20070829PD208.html

The Chrome 460 will support DirectX 10 and adopts a 90nm process, while the Chrome 430 will support DirectX 10.1 and adopts a 65nm process. Both chips will be manufactured by Fujitsu and have already entered the design verification test stage. Volume production is expected to start before the end of the year, noted the sources.

 

[nonameo]

I wonder what the performance will be like. IIRC the last chrome card did well in some benchies, but totally bombed others.

 

[Keysplayr]

The Volari V8 was their last attempt correct? Yeah, it surprised in some benches, but it was totally all over the map across a wide spectrum of games. So, if it supports DX10, should that mean that it has unified shaders? Is that a DX10 requirement? Unsure.

 

[nonameo]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
The Volari V8 was their last attempt correct? Yeah, it surprised in some benches, but it was totally all over the map across a wide spectrum of games. So, if it supports DX10, should that mean that it has unified shaders? Is that a DX10 requirement? Unsure.

hmmm???

no, the last s3 piece was the chrome s27 I do believe.

volari is a different company. I think s3 is owned by via now.

 

[Keysplayr]

Oh that's right. My memory is fading bro.

 

[PhlashFoto]

XGI Volari info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volari

 

[Sylvanas]

Good on S3 for giving it a crack, competition is good for us

 

[DrMrLordX]

It is good if it is a competitive company that can support products developed to run on Nvidia and AMD/ATI hardware.

 

[evolucion8]

I remembered that the last S3 card was the very first GPU hitting the 700MHz mark, and was competitive with the 9600XT in many scenarios, but it's buggy drivers didn't allowed to show a nice image quality, performance and feature usability.

 

[DrMrLordX]

S3 has suffered from buggy hardware and drivers for years.

 

[dug777]

I still want a Volari V8 Duo

I wonder if my FS/FT/WTB/Whatever it is now thread is still active?

 

[nemesismk2]

I have always been an S3 fan and I will be more than willing to try out their latest video cards!

Here is my S3 video card history:-

16mb Hercules Terminator Beast Savage3D
32mb Foxconn Savage4 GT
32mb Diamond Stealth III S540 Savage4 Pro
64mb Inno3d Savage 2000
128mb Club3D Deltachrome S8

Even better news would be for PowerVR to release a DX10 video card because I loved my Videologic Kyro 2 64mb!

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
S3 has suffered from buggy hardware and drivers for years.

I found the drivers for the S3 Savage4 Pro to be reliable unlike the drivers for the S3 Savage 2000.
S3 relaunched and I found their drivers to be very good with my Deltachrome S8!

I don't know what your talking about when you say buggy hardware?

 

[Peter]

Rose tinted spectacles, that's why. All chips have bugs, graphics chips are no exception. So do drivers. Looking at the features that NVidia and ATi keep promising and fail to deliver on, one might even be tempted to say that S3's drivers are consistantly the best.

At least they've had a lot of time to mature without having to add half-baked support for a new chip every five days.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

I found the drivers for the S3 Savage4 Pro to be reliable unlike the drivers for the S3 Savage 2000.
S3 relaunched and I found their drivers to be very good with my Deltachrome S8!

Well, I'm glad you like the product at least. Everyone I knew with S3 video cards or integrated graphics chips hated them. Granted, that wasn't many people, but I'm glad I wasn't one of them.

I don't know what your talking about when you say buggy hardware?

The last chip of theirs I heard any news about was the Deltachrome S8 Nitro, which was reviewed here (among other places):

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl.../display/s3-nitro.html

It took me awhile to find a full-blow S8 Nitro review that wasn't a preview. Anyway, the performance of the S8 Nitro versus its competitors was pretty lousy. Maybe I should criticize the S8 Nitro for having design flaws rather than bugs? So far as I can tell, the S8 Nitro was not able to do the things it was meant to do as quickly as S3 would have liked. FSAA performance was truly awful, and driver support was sslow in coming. When I see a company struggling with driver support, the first thing that comes to my mind is that the hardware has glitches for which the company must compensate with driver updates. The second thing that comes to mind is that they are simply awful when it comes to producing anything beyond beta drivers. The third thing that comes to mind is that they just don't care.

Please understand that when I say S3 hardware like the S8 Deltachrome had hardware bugs, I'm sort of giving them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they knew how to write drivers for their own hardware (eventually) and that they cared enough to do so.

Does the S8 have working OpenGL drivers yet? Granted, that's not as much of an issue these days. And, honestly, how long did it take for solid S8 drivers to finally come out?

Originally posted by: Peter
Rose tinted spectacles, that's why. All chips have bugs, graphics chips are no exception. So do drivers. Looking at the features that NVidia and ATi keep promising and fail to deliver on, one might even be tempted to say that S3's drivers are consistantly the best.

At least they've had a lot of time to mature without having to add half-baked support for a new chip every five days.

Come now, never did I say that S3's problems forgive ATI/AMD and Nvidia of their indiscretions. S3 is simply worse in the driver development department, scary as that might seem.

 

[nemesismk2]

Does the S8 have working OpenGL drivers yet? Granted, that's not as much of an issue these days. And, honestly, how long did it take for solid S8 drivers to finally come out?

The Deltachrome S8 I used had fully working OpenGL drivers because I ran Quake3, UT2004, Doom 3 etc without any problems. However the performance of the Deltachrome S8 was a little disappointing because it was beaten badly by my Geforce4 Ti4200 lol

 

[mruffin75]

I wouldn't have minded giving the s28 (I believe that's what it is called) a go (in a low end PC), but I could only find Newegg who sold them, and it doesn't look like they do anymore..

plus with the prices of the ATI 2400 being so low, I don't now see a reason to even try...?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

The Deltachrome S8 I used had fully working OpenGL drivers because I ran Quake3, UT2004, Doom 3 etc without any problems. However the performance of the Deltachrome S8 was a little disappointing because it was beaten badly by my Geforce4 Ti4200 lol

Hey, at least the drivers work now. A pity about the performance though, bleh.

Honestly I'd like S3/VIA to compete somewhere in the video card market to challenge Nvidia and AMD to bring prices down, particularly in the mid-range segment. But I ain't holdin my breath waitin for it.

 

[evolucion8]

Also S3 chips has a very decent video playback quality and acceleration, there's a review of it somewhere here in Anandtech, it was even able to rival solutions from ATi and nVidia.

 

[ViRGE]

Such playback can be really picky. S3 needs to do a better job working with Intervideo and Cyberlink.

 

[nemesismk2]

Found an interesting review of a Club3D Deltachrome S8, even compares it to a Savage 2000 and Savage 4 lol It doesn't make pretty reading for the Deltachrome though

However the Deltachrome beat up the Geforce FX 5200 and MX 4000

Ultimate Hardware review of the Deltachrome S8

 

[Peter]

Deltachrome S8 is two or three generations older than what we're discussing here.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: nemesismk2

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
S3 has suffered from buggy hardware and drivers for years.

I found the drivers for the S3 Savage4 Pro to be reliable unlike the drivers for the S3 Savage 2000.
S3 relaunched and I found their drivers to be very good with my Deltachrome S8!

I don't know what your talking about when you say buggy hardware?

Haha, yup. Worked great for Q3 and UT, but every single other game had some kind of glitch. It was quite sad, luckily for me I mostly played UT then, so I could live with it.