First DX10 Card by S3?

[Roadhog]

This is interesting...

Rumour has swirled for a while now about S3 Graphics not creating any D3D9 Shader Model 3.0 part, instead going straight to building a D3D10 Shader Model 4.0 GPU, given the proximity of their dev schedule to the release of Microsoft Windows Vista.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6155

[Aphot]

I still wont buy a S3 Gfx card even if its better than a nvidia or a ati.

[shabby]

I still wont buy a S3 Gfx card even if its better than a nvidia or a ati.

Spoken like a true fanboy.

[|MaguS|]

I wouldn't buy an S3 card because they barely make drivers for it (taht actually work) and most of the time the high end models couldn't match Nvidia's low end stuff...

[egyteam]

my first graphic card was S3 Trio 4MB, I think S3 is not a bad company

[|MaguS|]

my first graphic card was S3 Trio 4MB, I think S3 is not a bad company

Then you haven't used them in the last 5+ years... My parents had a compaq with an S3 videocard and it couldn't even play movies without the color going crazy on the display.

I threw that POS out and built them a good PC with a 6600 and even they were able to see the difference...

[Zelda_fan]

if S3 get's it together and puts out an awsome DX10 card, I'll give it a chance, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen.

[nekrosoft13]

i wish them luck, but i really don't expect much

[johnkeel105]

Well I hope S3 gets some attention through this. It is about time for another Video Card company on the block besides Nvidia and ATI. All I know is that from the PC's I have had S3 supported their integrated cards a hell of a lot better then ATI did. ATI did fix that up though when they got busy with more standardized drivers.

[tweaked]

s3 always has some bull**** marketing about their new uber part.

but it always crap.

on paper = teh uber.
on silicon = teh crap.

[retsam]

well we really need to hope that S3 steps up to to the plate now that ATI is gobbled up by AMD. without real compitition in the market place its going to get stale really really fast. do i hear new releases every four years!

[Absolution]

s3 always has some bull**** marketing about their new uber part.

but it always crap.

on paper = teh uber.
on silicon = teh crap.
agreed

wasn't it s3 that had a working version of their version of sli? but never made it to market...

[a12ctic]

there version of sli finaly did make it to the market, unfortunatly they arent the best gpu makers in the world, and there multicrome s27's (i think thats the name) cant even take on a 6600GT

[Peoples-Agent]

Hell no! ...Matrox FTW!

[jAkUp]

I would like to see a 3rd player :) It would give more competition to Nvidia and ATI to churn out fast GPU's for cheap :D

[moorfang]

I as well don't expect anything amazing from S3. :D

[Redeemed]

Well, I don't expect S3 to put out top-end graphics cards that can rival the best from ATi and nVidia, though I do see it possible for them to become very competitive in the mainstream and low end market before too long. Who knows, with Vista, DX10, and USA maybe they will be able to tip the hat in their favor some and produce some awesome low-end and mainstream parts.

I for one would not complain.

[johnkeel105]

That would be good!

[msxyz]

S3 10 years ago was a force in the graphic industry

-They brought to the market a cheap video chip designed for GUI acceleration (Vision series). Under Windows or OS/2 the difference between S3 chips and any other good VGA of the time (Tseng Et4000, Cirrus 56**, etc) was dramatic!
-They introduced the first low cost "all-in-one" chip with hardware video acceleration and built in Ramdac (Trio 64V+).
In 1995 they introduced a full 3D capable chip, the Virge. A shame it is rememberd only for its sub-par gaming performance but at the time it was the most complete 3D solution on the consumer market with Z buffer, 32 bit render support, true depth based prespective correction and bilinear filtering.
It lacked of a triangle setup unit and it was chocked by a slow bus but it really wasn't designed for the gaming market because the most advanced 3d engines of the time were still "2.5D"
-Dual monitor support and integrated high quality TV output since 1997. (It became a standard only since late 2000, although the G400 sported similar features in 1999)

S3 introduced also some innovative solutions; S3 texture compression algorithm was and still is one of the best and easy to implement compression scheme for plain RGB textures. It survives up to this day in DirectX under the name of DXT-1 texture format. It's used universally on all graphic chips and on consoles like the Gamecube, the Xbox, the Xbox 360 and probably the PS3 too. They introduced and patented a single cycle trilinear filtering method which built the next mip map "on the fly" on a dedicated downsampling unit which ran in parallel to the the TMU. S3 pioneered the use of eDRAM daughter dies for mobile chips. Back in 1999 you could purchase a laptop with a S3 Savage Mobile chip with 8 or 16MB of eDram.

Today S3 chips are aimed at the low cost/mainstream or for media PC. Their hardware HD decoder is on par with Nvidia and Ati solutions and CPu utilization is lower. A shame they aren't widely available.

[a12ctic]

i have a virge ;)

[Stoneyguy]

S3 Virge 4TW!! It allowed me to play Mechwarrior 2 back in the day.

[johnkeel105]

My experiences with S3 integrated were never bad. I was able to run Medal of Honor Allied Assault and Max Payne effectively. About a year ago I bought a friends old pc from him for $20. I got it mostly to fiddle around with, but somehow pne of the Hard drive pins broke and the pc was done for good on that. Long story short I salvaged a Cd-rom drive and a S3 Trio 64 from that pc. I guess that S3 was able to play Homeworld. Thats all I know about it.:D

[Redeemed]

Yeah, generally S3 cards have been pretty good for me as well. All the S3 cards I had (most of which were Diamond video cards) worked great. I really loved the Diamond Stealth S520 3 w/32 mb of ram. Was the first card I ever owned that required a heatsink.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/video/savage4/unreal3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/savage4.html&h=600&w=800&sz=84&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=XQa5bt3wWGBi-M:&tbnh=107&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDiamond%2BStealth%2BS540%2B3%26svnum% 3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG

Heh- real beast of a card eh? Think it'd be enough to play Crysis? ;)