The Return of S3

flynn_nrg writes "Just saw this article on ExtremeTech about S3's new graphics card. S3 is back on the scene with its first new GPU architecture in five years. Rather than take aim at the high-end, S3 has set its sights on the midrange price/performance category, which is currently dominated by ATI's Radeon 9600 XT and nVidia's GeForce FX 5700, both of which are under $200. Today S3 unveils the DeltaChrome S8 GPU, which represents the midrange of its upcoming line of DeltaChrome GPUs."

Also on Tech Report

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2003q4/deltachrome- s8/index.x?pg=1

It looks like they have half a product. Good enough hardware, absolutely horrible drivers.

And I'm not talking about drivers that don't run quickly. I'm talking about drivers that render things incorrectly or even crash! Ugh.

At least with Intel's Integrated Graphics (or Nvidia or even ATI these days) even though they may not be the quickest on the block at least their drivers *work*.

The Matrox Parhelia

[wackybrit]

Perhaps someone with some real knowledge could fill me in here.. but does anyone else remember Matrox 'coming back' less than a year ago with the Matrox Parhelia? This S3 return sounds like it could be the same, unless they make good on their promise of lower prices (and considering the price you can get a GeForce 4 MX for now.. it's a hard fight).

It seems the Parhelia was a card that was priced at more than most nVidia cards, yet provided no-where near the performance.. yet people still bought them. Why? I remember seeing the benchmarks and the Parhelia was absolutely shocking. Supposedly the only great thing was the FSAA quality but... you don't buy a card just for that, shurely?

So, what was so great about Matrox coming back with the Parhelia? I must have missed the point.

OpenGL support?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://delphi3d.net/hardware/

Could one of the reviewers give us a report of what version of OpenGL the deltachrome supports? What extensions does it support? How many instructions long can the fragment and vertex programs be?

GLInfo (w32 application) gives a complete list of all this.

5 Years!?

[rsmith-mac]

Someone's math is a little off here on how long it's been since the last S3 video card. The last card they produced(not counting numerous mobile parts) was the Savage2000, a DX7 class card designed to compete with the GeForce256 in late 1999/2000. The S2K of course had its infamous issues(defective T&L unit, S3/Diamond was accepting S2K's in trade for TNT2U's), but the point is that it has barely been 4 years, not 5.

Re:Wow

[kfg]

Well, it depends on the game really. A game is not a game is not a game.

In some games, Myst for instance, there's really no such thing as frame rate at all. In others, like shooters, the cpu requirements to handle the physics are fairly minimal and nice graphics sells games. These are the ones that require the latest hot card. If you're into sims though, like IL-2 or NASCAR 2003 the physics calculations put the hardest load on the system and for these the hottest cpu, particularly the math coprocessor, will give you the best performance overall.

Everything is always tradeoffs and compromise. Many games even have "favorite" video cards, right down to the particular model and driver. The best you can really do is optimize for your favorite game and play the rest as is possible.

KFG

Re:But wait!

[MegaHamsterX]

That's why it should be open, we could fix them ourselves.

We could ditch X if we could write our own drivers from specs.

The price better be low

[doormat]

Because the card is only an "adequate" performer so far. Of course, that review left a lot to be desired, synthetic benchmarks arent a good basis. More real games, less 3DMark2xxx. nVidia showed how easy it is to cheat at synth benches.

Re:Wow

[bonehead]

I can't speak for everybody, but personally I've never owned an S3 card that I was unhappy with. nVida has been hit or miss, and ATI has been a nightmare.

The sad part is that I suspect that ATI's hardware is (and always has been) absolutely top notch. They just don't seem to put much focus on debugging the drivers.

ATI video cards have been banned from my workplace for several years now, and I've not seen a reason to change my mind on that. (Yes, I get to make decisions like that)

Re:But wait!

[puddpunk]

Do we really have to go over this again? The reason NVIDIA can _not_ open source their driver is that parts of their hardware (and possibly software) that is driven by it is licenced from other companies, and that licence states that the source code, and even the specifications of that engine may _not_ be released.

Re:Wow

[arivanov]

A not very well known piece of knowledge is that ATI is extremely picky on thermals. I have found it out the hard way and have been extremely careful not to put an ATI card into a case which does not have good cooling. Especially small factor cases and using it on risers (so it is chip down) are a definite no-no. Once you follow on this it is usually more or less OK (depends what you do with it of course).

Re:Been there done That.

[drgnvale]

Simply looking online you see that the Mobility line is completely worthless in any 3D under linux so far.

I don't know. My lab has several IBM laptops with ATI cards, and they all run UT (which we use for AI and robotics work) fairly well, that is, ~30 fps. Now, running the AcidUnreal renderer drops it to 2-4 fps.