Anyone else see a under-dog in the graphics market apearing?

Not just like someone who also makes graphics but from the past products S3 has released to what they're releasing now it looks like they're slowly but surely catching up to ATi and Nvidia.

I would never have even considered buying one of S3s high end products over a bargin bin Radeon or Geforce, but now they're at the point where they deliver spec wise comparable cards to current ATi/Nvidia low end cards. If the drivers deliver (which they never have in the past) and they perform well (again which they haven't in the past) they might end up grabbing a share of the bargin bin.

I still wouldn't consider buying one and probably won't for awhile but next year or the year after they might be competeing in the mid-grade graphics card market if things keep persisting.

Wonder if one of the three will catch on and figure out everyones system isn't brimming with PCI-E x16 slots and build lower end 'modules' that you can plug into a spare PCI-E x1 slot that will assist the main GPU.

Everyone is all about half and half but no one considers assigning certain tasks to GPU helpers...

So much bandwidth... so little utilized...

When is the last time that S3 truly got a GPU out the door on a part you could easily buy, that was on a card (not an embedded solution)?

And when that last happened, how long did it take S3 to introduce reasonable drivers? And by the time those came out, wasn't the price of the cards above the cards the GPU was actually meant to compete with, yet the performance was less?

I will consider an S3-based card when the following happens:

a) S3 actually partners with a vendor who actually releases cards
b) The cards are actually released to the public on time, not six months after the planned release date
c) The cards have mature enough drivers that they can be reviewed successfully by multiple tech. sites so we know end-users won't be taking the shaft. These drivers must be available at product launch, not 6-10 months later; they don't have to be perfect, but they can't be the horrible bug-fest that previous S3 (remember Savage?) products have suffered.
d) The product must perform, at time of release, within 5-10% of the products S3 claims to be competing with.
e) The price needs to be competetive (read: lower) than the competition, because S3 has done such a shoddy job over the past several years, that nobody would choose an S3 card over an equivalent Geforce or Radeon, even if the performance was 5-10% better.

Would I like to see S3 manage to pull this off? Darn tootin' I would; it's about time there was a serious third player in the graphices market. I'm not holding my breath though; if I did every time S3 had a press release on the Chrome family of GPU's, I'd be six feet under by now.

Scott, did they really decouple the texture units from the pixel pipes, or did you mean to say ROPs? Or do the cards have four actual pixel pipes (one quad) with two ALUs per pipe?

Good. The last generation of s3 was crap at first, but drivers improved. If they finally designed a crossbar memory controller, and good texture compression algarythm it should be compelling product for an entry level system. That is if they can deliver @ a killer price point. The drivers for this arcitecture are vaslty improved since the chrome vpu was first released. Still not perfect, but very useable.

I don't trust S3...used to be a pain in the ass to find drivers for their shite. didn't they change their name to Sonic Blue or some crap once to dodge people looking for support on their cards?

I really like the platform independent SLI thing. I wish ati and nvidia would adopt such a policy, but it's unlikely given their desire to conquer the mobo chipset market.

Is there any significant technological limitation stopping them from doing so? Couldn't they get comparable performance to their specialized solutions by just throwing more pci-e lanes at the problem?

Sites are reporting 10-12w, so it has the same wattage as a 9600 (plain) and the performance of a 6600. Doesnt sound like anything special.

It's hard not to root for this little guy, especially they do keep trying. Let's hope this time it works.

S3 is slowly rising. We may be on the virge of a savage takeover :P

FP!

Heh, I thought I was reading a preview of it on the front page. I think that's definetly one of the longer front page posts in a while.

But good read never-the-less.

Correction: "the graphics core supports DirectX 9's Shader Model 3.0" should be Shader Model 2.0 I think.

Supported by: "S3 has big plans for future GPU generations. Rather than aim for Shader Model 3.0, where the S20's primary competitors are now, S3 is planning a jump to Shader Model 4.0"