Watch out NV\ATi!! VIA-S3 are playing for keeps.

[silence]

Originally posted by Darth Rancid
It seems like S3G are showing something at CeBit.. says so in an annoying little scrolling text at their website... "latest demos"....
Possibly they were only showing videos fo what they claim Chrome will be able to do... but one could hope that they were in fact showing working Chrome Silicon!...

heh....can't resist saying this,but if their site is reflection of their products, then they suck.
i really imagined that graphics company would have better site up and running.:rolleyes:

[gemini1313]

i dunno what everyone is basing their site opinion on, but the s3graphics site seems pretty standart to me. i guess it could use a few things, but either way i hope that s3 becomes a contender here soon.

[1eppan]

well, S3 is coming, but everything takes time.

it took from Radeon to Radeon 9700 ATi climb up from mainstream to high end leader and stay there.

S3 is now on the point where ATI was a bit over 2 years ago. DeltaChrome has potential, but it is generally speaking late. (in CeBit, S3 suspected to have final shipping chips on late summer.) Still it is step to the right direction, if they are able to gain even small market share. S3 has Roadmap, that is possible to complete as well as it isn't trying to be Best instantly. VIA is doing S3 come back by baby steps and it is right way to do, because this new S3 has not much left from the old one and the whole team is pretty much new. still, IMO, it was good decision to keep S3 trademark, because just mentioning "S3" gets OEMs lift their eye browns.


so, don't wait a quick miracle, but baby steps, baby steps. :)

[StealthHawk]

with a few stark differences between ATI and S3.

1) ATI had been in the game long before hand. on the other hand, S3 has been on hiatus for several years.

2) ATI had good hardware and bad drivers that held back their products. S3 seems to have hardware and software problems to tackle based on their last high end card.

3) ATI is a bigger company than S3. i don't know how things stand with funding from VIA, but does there graphics division(S3) have as much R&D money as ATI?

4) ATI had OEM staples. S3 has.....notebooks maybe? although ATI has been encroaching there for sure.

5) ATI had a reputation of visual quality(2d and 3d) behind Matrox. S3 has a reputation of failure :p

[ragejg]

I wouldn't say that they've "never" been top tier... Maybe nobody's left from the old team, but in late '91 to '93, you were feared and respected if you has an S3 card in your 386/486... Completely... and so ATI released several variations of it's "Graphics Pro" cards, and seemed to match S3's efforts, all the while ganging up on Tseng Labs' extremely successful ETXXXX line. The battle continued into the VL-Bus days, but S3 was all but beaten once PCI was commonplace. They slipped to second tier (as did everyone else... too many gfx card companies)... and I myself think they put a lot of effort into their non-Virge cards... The Savage series had potential. What if the TnL unit worked? We'd have a totally different ballgame on our hands right now. Positively. Yeah, they messed up, but at least they tried, and then smartened up for a while under the mask of Sonic Blue, and then gained further support/knowledge thru VIA's acquisition of them. Methinks they're ready for prime time... I think they'll be successful, but I fear that their hi end product will only offer perf. between Radeon9200 and GFFX5600 nonUltra... it's their generation AFTER this that I think we'll be drooling over, as the .13 process matures... plus they'll have already mastered low-K... something both big dogs are fighting with now...

[StealthHawk]

they've never been top tier with 3d acceleration, and that's all that matters. 3d acceleration has made graphics cards explode with power and complexity.

Savage2000 just was not a good product, with or without the hardware TnL. it was great in UT, and good in Q3. and it basically sucked in everything else compared to what it's potential was.

it was like the r8500 with the preview drivers, only worse, performance-wise. and things didn't get better like they did with the r8500.

we still have not seen anyone come out of nowhere with a very exciting product. Matrox? overshadowed by the r9700. Xabre? poor IQ and speed. Trident? a no show.

the point is that it is hard to re-enter the market. you aren't going to get it done unless you're very dedicated, hard working, talented, and lucky.

and VIA does not exactly inspire confidence. they sit on their asses with motherboard products and never try to increase performance until they have a reason to.

remember the KT266 and how SiS of all people outperformed it? we quickly saw the KT266A rememdy that. then VIA put out chipsets with no extra performance, the KT333, the KT400. now that nvidia creamed the KT400 with the nforce2, VIA finally puts out the KT400A. great work ethic.

i'm just tired of all this misplaced faith. remember back a long time ago we had people defending Bit Boys, saying they would deliver. blah. they didn't.

[Akucaen]

How come all you folks come crashing down on S3's PR like a ton of bricks, but you accept anything that nVidia spoonfeeds ya like gospel?

That's cuz S3 is all talk, lol. At least nVidia can make a product & sell it.

[Darth Rancid]

In my opinion, S3 and nVidia are the two biggest liars in the industry. There is however a big difference, nVidia has always, (at least until recently), been smart when it comes to when to lie, when to exaggerate, and when to stick to the truth... S3 on the other hand, seemed to roll dice to determine when to lie or not.