S3 Tries to Get Back Into PC Graphics 171
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of S3's attempt to get some traction in the lower-end graphics card market, the Chrome S27. Though its specs look great--256MB memory, 700MHz core clock rate, 1.4GHz memory clock, and 22.4 GB/sec memory throughput, it still manages to underperform similarly priced video cards from the red and green graphics companies."
Good (Score:2, Informative)
My Averatec has a unichrome and am having difficulty getting it to
work *well* with anything other than the X vesa driver. No DRI, etc.
Help out S3!
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
Yugo was very protective of their drivetrain design... they would never say what particular Russian car it fell off from.
Re:Good (Score:2)
You go to Europe, you'll see plenty of Ford Focuses and similar size cars. But you'd *never* see a Crown Victoria or a Ford Taurus. For starters, they look horrible to European eyes - too damn big and too damn ugly. Then there's fuel consumption. And then there's the fact that they're all automatic (most, like 90+% of, Europeans drive manual and prefer it; the exceptions are those who either prefer t
Re:Good (Score:2)
Two things.
1. Even though many American cars are CRAP, they are comfortable. Plush interior, lots of leg room, real beauties. Even a Ford Focus is nice to sit in. The Yugo in conrast was rathe
Re:Good (Score:2)
Unichrome (Score:2)
Drivers are (Score:2, Informative)
Another company to ignore.
Why is this modded insightful? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is this modded insightful? (Score:2)
I assume they have documatation for this hardware, if not how else could their own developers write drivers? Simply post this doc to the web.
They could be different and attract a loyal folloing if they suported Open Source. But it is is I'll ignore them.
Re:Why is this modded insightful? (Score:2)
IMHO, S3 has a unique position in which they have little to lose by open sourcing their drivers and much to gain by becoming the de facto Linux graphics card.
Because it's helpful to me. (Score:2)
If there were another company that offered cards that were faster and just worked, I would buy those exclusively. The same would be true, I'm sure, of Linux vendors.
But as the poster said, look elsewhere.
Re:Drivers are (Score:2)
With the advent of Intel Macs, they don't even need anyone to write Open Firmware declaration ROMs for their hardware anymore - supporting the Mac is now the same as supporting any other OS - just write the drivers. Support should be relatively easy, too. Just hand the phone agents a Mac or Linux-based script for troubleshooting and spend some money on t
Re:Drivers are (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Drivers are (Score:2)
Their card does seem to lag behind a Nvidia and ATI's similar offerings, but not by much. Linux (and the BSDs) are primarily concerned with OpenGL support anyways, and the card does have reasonably good support for OpenGL according to the review.
I woul
Re:Drivers are (Score:2)
I'd be far more concerned about the performance gap. But then, I've alway leaned towards the Linus end of the Torvalds/Stallman axis.
Free advice to S3... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, I don't really see a downside, because who, besides free software lovers, would be motivated to buy something non-nvidia and non-ati at this point?
Cheers
Simon
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mac drivers are pointless... (Score:2)
Cheap Skates? (Score:2, Insightful)
People who do not play high-performance games might not want to pay $100-$600 for a graphics card. Joe User is far more interested in multimedia playback than 3D graphics. Intel's sells their embedded graphics cards for $7, and they are the biggest seller of graphics cards. Plus, they have open source drivers. There is plenty of room in the low-end
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:5, Informative)
They're not going to do that. If for no other reason than their own texture compression technology (S3TC) which they license to other video card makers (namely ATI and Nvidia, as well as MS for DirectX drivers).
Even if they were to release the souce you probably couldn't use it unless they granted some kind of license to use the patented algorithms [freedesktop.org] freely. And they haven't done that to date despite lobbying by various people (including Alan Cox).
Of course, people who actually know this have been saying it everytime someone says "open up the source!" to video card makers, and most people still don't get it. Sigh.
Re: you probably couldn't use it (Score:2)
Re: you probably couldn't use it (Score:2)
Yea that will scare them.
Re: Or else in the GPL 2 (Score:2)
Or else in this case is that the what 1000 people that might buy this card because it has open source drivers?
Yea that will scare them.
No, the "or else" is a legal threat put forth in the GPL 2 when someone breaks the GPL by enforcing his patents in the attempt to circumvent it.
And the reason that I just call it "or else" rather than telling you what the GPL 2 says is that you'll need to work it out yourself by reading the license, because it is really hard to tell how such a situation would work out
Re: Or else in the GPL 2 (Score:2)
Linux really has got to develop a stable binary driver interface so that closed source drivers are not such a pain.
The current state of affairs has not forced a single vendor to open source a driver but it has caused many users a lot of pain when upgrading their system.
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't this be an excellent candidate for dual licensing? You know, one GPL'd and one commercial license. Either that, or nVidia/ATI would have to GPL *their* drivers as well, which doesn't seem very likely at this point.
Even if they were to release the souce you probably couldn't use it unless they granted some kind of license to use the patented algorithms freely. And they haven't done that to date despite lobbying by various people (including Alan Cox).
Again, could be limited to GPL/GPL-compatible licensed code. I mean, since nVidia/ATI already have the code under license, how many trade secrets could there possibly be left to protect?
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
There are no other trade secrets; or any at all in all likelihood. Patents are not trade secrets, nor is copyrighted information a trade secret. Sigh.
Anyway, could they? Yes. Will they? Pretty obviously not. People (again, including Alan Cox, who is pretty well respected both inside and outside of the OSS community) have bee
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Sigh.
When does the patent expire?
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Here in the US, effectively never.
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:4, Informative)
No, you're thinking copyrights, which keep getting extended. Patents do not. Patent term has not substantially changed in the US in over 100 years, with only a minor (and very good) change in 1994. And while there is some international controversy on what should be patentable, there's not really any on term.
Worst case, patents expire 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date (design patents are different, as are patents issued prior to June 8, 1995, but neither is relevant here).
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely possible to grant licenses for patents to some people and not others, for whatever reasons you like. It's not like copyrights or trademarks. IBM and CA are two companies that have granted licenses for open-source programs to use their patented technologies. S3 could hand out GPL code for it and grant a patentl license for use in open-source programs. Nvidia and ATI would still have to pay money to use it with their products and drivers.
Of course, people who actually know this have been saying it everytime someone says "open up the source!" to video card makers, and most people still don't get it. Sigh.
Maybe the people who keep bringing it up hope that S3 might have learned their lesson. Not yet, apparently, but it would be nice if they did. Good driver code really helps the hardware shine, and it's nontrivial to develop - as Nvidia and ATI have learned. But there are lots of clever students and other developers who would love to play with, grok, and improve such code.
Nvidia currently dominates the Linux 3d landscape because they have good drivers. If S3 came out with open ones, and even halfway-competitive hardware, they'd take that market, and get a significant number of people working on their drivers. Some of the improvements therefrom could benefit the Windows side, too. As others have noted, there's the Mac contigent, too, though I'm not sure how much they'd grab there - they don't tend to muck with their hardware so much.
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
That will trigger a lot of positive support in the Slashdot community. A good portion of the gaming community could give two shits, since the hardest core gamers own Windows boxes, and the general public has no idea what GPL/BSD is.
Honestly, "a lot of positive support" is not actually really "a lot" save from people like you and me.
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Re:Free advice to S3... (Score:2)
Anyone else nostalgic for the S3/Virge? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go S3!
Me too, but I had a 968 chipset. VESA, SDD, etc.! (Score:2)
Re:Me too, but I had a 968 chipset. VESA, SDD, etc (Score:2)
Boy, do I remember both of those... ah, the days of DOS gaming...
Re:Me too, but I had a 968 chipset. VESA, SDD, etc (Score:2)
Re:Me too, but I had a 968 chipset. VESA, SDD, etc (Score:2)
Re:Me too, but I had a 968 chipset. VESA, SDD, etc (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else nostalgic for the S3/Virge? (Score:2)
My first-ever stand-alone video accelerator was an S3 ViRGE (I even remember the acronym expansion -- "Video Rendering Graphics Engine"). For some games, software emulation was faster than the ViRGE. It did look sweet, though...
Incorrect (Score:2)
Re:Anyone else nostalgic for the S3/Virge? (Score:2)
Gimme open drivers!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gimme open drivers!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously this would differentiate their product, and carve out a niche where that "big boys" seem to be ignoring. More importantly, if this product is new, then presumably they are currently in a position where they *can* conceivably open-source their driver. During any debate on open-sourcing video drivers, it is usually pointed out that doing so would be difficult, because sufficient documentation might not exist, or because of licensing issues, etc. However this new product line is at a stage where open-sourcing will yield the maximum return-on-investment. If they do it now, they will start getting 'free' software upgrades, bug fixes, documentation, and so on. This means their product will mature faster and they can close the gap with their competitors more quickly.
Frankly I think that would be an excellent move on their part. Without such an admittedly drastic move, their product has nothing new to offer and this product line will die off.
They should be thinking to themselves "imagine if our video card was the *default choice* for anyone selling or building a Linux or BSD system?" That's market differentiation right there.
No what we need (Score:4, Insightful)
So this is a situation where Linux needs to make a concession, if they want better support. This attitude of "open source always!" needs to give way to an attitude of choice. One where you provide all the tools necessary to do open distribution, and open distribution of your own tools, but the option to use closed source for those that want to.
If you don't want that, fair enough, but then you can't be too angry when the graphics companies won't accomadate you and your rather small marketshare. If you won't be accomadating to them, don't look at them to be accomidating to you.
Re:No what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your idea is that the end desire is not to have more closed proprietary crap. The goal is to have everything be open. Everything. As you may have noticed, lately there have even been open hardware platforms, they're not the latest and greatest but it is possible for the highly motivated and funded individual to use open cores and open source (though "sores" rhymes better) and build a 100% open computer. It'd take a lot of hardware design and software port work, but the basic elements are there. This represents a dramatic shift from the way things have traditionally been, and it can be the beginning of something beautiful, if we don't fall on our ass and stop demanding what we actually want.
People in general are willing to settle for less than what they want, and as a result, they get it. If we continue to demand what we actually desire, eventually someone will step up to the plate and sell it to us.
Ok, good luck with that (Score:2)
Re:Ok, good luck with that (Score:2)
I don't even believe that everything will or should eventually be open. I believe in privacy in some cases, and protection for innovators. I even believe that innovators deserve to benefit from their innovations for a while.
That said, there's nothing wrong with having hopes and some vision and I think the right thing to do is to have software algorithms licensed such that individuals can afford to use th
Re:Ok, good luck with that (Score:2)
Re:Ok, good luck with that (Score:2)
Well, I Wasn't planning to throw a fit, or even be surprised... But there is
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
Having X die on you unexpectedly is a lot less bad than having a full-blown kernel panic thrown your way
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
As for X dying I don't see the difference. Data loss is wh
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
The problem is that graphics drivers contain proprietayr, licensed code. There's no real way around it if they want to support all the features.
What proprietary, licensed code are you talking about? Publish their names so pressure can be bought to bear on them as well.
With the "stable binary interface" you're talking about the graphics card vendors have no incentive to live their game. Binary blobs are already a problem in open source software and stable interfaces will only make it worse.
If you're
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
As for your OSS point, well if you think like that, you'll end up with
Maybe (Score:2)
- flexibility for the kernel team
- non-x86 users' choices
I'd be all for it, except that accepting that option now would lock everyone into it almost indefinitely - and I *don't* want to be stuck with that situation down the track. Of course, the current option sucks even more, so I'll
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
That's what I think Linux nee
Re:No what we need (Score:2)
Re:Gimme open drivers!! (Score:2)
New name, same old story. (Score:5, Interesting)
Predictions for new S3-super-thinamagig:
1. Early previews from hardware review sites- "Shows promise!" "Should compete at entry level" "Good for casual gamers." Drivers will be buggy.
2. Card released many months after initial previews. What was mid grade is now low end, and card doesn't look so hot against current competitors. Drivers still buggy. S3 promises bug fixes and performance improvements.
3. Several off brand Taiwanese manufactures will make cards featureing new S3 chip. Cards will quickly be relegated to bargain basement prices in retail and online shops. Mobile versions of chips will be found in cheap low-end laptops and versions of the core will be seen integrated in to via chipsets for cheap onboard video. Drivers still buggy.
4. S3 continues product line and no longer updates drivers. (Drivers still buggy.)
With any luck S3 will do better than their previous attempts, but they've got a lot to prove. In all likelihood, this will go the way of the S3 savage, S3 chrome, trident cyberblade, XGI volari, powervr2, and powervr KYRO.
See the fanboys review! (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks like S3 is trying something interesting, throw high speed but dumb hardware at the problem of 3D instead of trying to put more compute power than a P4 on a board. But they are going to discover that the drivers are a big part of the equation, it was clear that their drivers probably what was holding their scores down on several of the tests. Since they obviously don't have a lot invested in them yet perhaps they are the ones we should be pushing to support open source. Despite what that PR moron at Nvidia said I suspect the Open Source crowd could whip those drivers into shape in short order, Use the right license (MPL or BSD) and they could roll those improvements back to Windows and carry the fight to ATI and Nvidia.
I know I'd certainly switch from ATI Radeon 9250 (most current 3D with Open drivers) to this new S3 tech if it had an open driver.
Who is the fanboy? (Score:2)
"trying to put more compute power than a P4 on a board"
What? If they are high speed, how do they _not_ have more computing power than a p4? And how is having that much power a bad thing?
And about the price issue:cry
Re:Who is the fanboy? (Score:2)
The only difference is that s3s implementation sucks as usual. like the deltacrome, or the savage , savage 4, savage 2000, deltacrome or whatever the "current s3 attempt to get a foothold" is called.
Re:Who is the fanboy? (Score:2)
I used to work for Silicon Engineering, Inc. (formerly Sequoia Semiconductor, presently Creative Silicon, a division of Creative Labs, Inc.) and while I was working there as a systems admin, they were working on two out of four chips that were supposed to go into Talisman on behalf of a certain incompetent company that lacked the talent internally.
I'm not an expert in any of the pertinent fields but it didn't seem t
Re:See the fanboys review! (Score:2)
The Linux market is chicken and egg. I don't think there are enough Linux folk that are willing to pay a decent enough of a premium for the development of totally open drivers.
Re:See the fanboys review! (Score:3, Insightful)
The ATI Radeon 1600Pro can be had for $99. The GF6600GT is $115.
they didn't pan it for performance, but for basic flaws?
Where'd you get that. In their conclusion they very clearly pan it for performance. It's not even the 2nd best card in its price range -- it's third best. By a large margin.
Ok, AA doesn't appear to work for GL, that is bad but will almost certainly get fixed in the drivers pretty soon.
Well that'd be new and different -- S3 actual
Re:See the fanboys review! (Score:2)
Ok, just went looking and see that. So they can't even get the prices right.
> In their conclusion they very clearly pan it for performance.
Read the last line in the article (in the update):
"Though this price may have affected which competing products we chose to benchmark against, we're not going to backpedal on our score, which is primarily the result of bugs and feature deficiencies."
Would you care to revise and extend your remarks?
Re:See the fanboys review! (Score:2)
But the 9250 WILL be dying soon, at any rate it will die as AGP becomes obsolete. We need a replacement in the catagory of 3D hardware with Open drivers.
The r300 project [sourceforge.net] is currently making great strides in getting open source direct rendering with the newer radeon chipsets. There is a thread [gentoo.org] in the Gentoo forums dedicated to testing their drivers out.
Re:See the fanboys review! (Score:2)
Pretty much. Have some Xeon servers here and they are nice, but I love the price/performance of AMD. But if Intel can offer Open Source 3D and AMD can't...... Right now all Intel has is some very low end shared memory rubbish, but it keeps improving and the Radeon 9250 gets older and older. The r300 guys could finally hit stability or VIA could finally see reason, but otherwise Intel is going to win back my business.
older video cards (Score:4, Informative)
**best price/performance**
nVid 7600 GT ($210)
ATI X1600 XT ($170)
nVid 6600 GT ($140)
**best price/performance**
the faster at top:
ATI X800 Pro ~$250 ($150 refurb)
ATI 9950 ultra (N/A)
nVid 6800 LE/XT (LE=slower)($150,$300)
ATI 9800 XT(~$185)
ATI X700 PRO($125,135)
nVid 5900U/5950 Ultra($250)
ATI 9800 PRO(~$130)
=ATI 9700 pro
=ATI 9800 ($90??)
=nVid 5900/5950
ATI 9700 ($110)
nVid 6600 ($100)???
nVid 5800 ultra
(3GHz)
nVid 5700 Ultra (N/A)
ATI X1300 PRO($105)
ATI X700 (not pro)
ATI 9500 Pro ($95 used)
(yes it beats 9600pro!)
=nVid 5600 Ultra
=ATI 9600 pro/XT ($100)
=ATI X600 PRO/XT ($100)
nVid 5800
ATI 9800 SE(128 bit)
nVid 5700/5750
nVid 6200 non-tc (under $100!)
=nVid 5600
=ATI 9500/9550/9600
ATI X300 non-Hypmem???
nVid 5700 LE (MINE)
nVid GF4 Ti 4600
nVid 5200 ULTRA
nVid 5600 XT (XT=lower)
ATI 9600 SE
this last group of expansion cards is equal to the current generation of integrated onboard graphics
***very slow***
nVid 5200/5500
nVid PCX 5300
nVid 6200 Turbocache
ATI 9200 SE
ATI X300 SE Hypermemory
current generation of integrated graphics chipsets:
-- Intel GMA950
-- nVidia 6100/6150
-- ATI xpress 200
Re:older video cards (Score:2)
would a 128-bit ATI 9800SE with 256mb of RAM be faster than a 9600XT with 128mb?
Re:older video cards (Score:2)
I bought a 9800SE to softmod, but I get checkerboard artifacts. I used to be a 3dfx guy then an nVidia guy, I switched to ATI for image quality. If I wanted to sacrifice quality for speed I'd go back to nVidia. It does absolutely scream with the softmod on.
If I don't use the card, though, I'm just wasting money, so if it'll still be faster than my old 9600XT I'll put it in and run it native. I haven't had the time to swap them out and compare 3dmark scores yet.
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
When the merger was announced, it was basically the #1 and #2 performance graphics card makers and looked like we were destined for high priced pe
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
As I've both a 3dfx Voodoo 2 and a GeForce 256, I am not sure what you try to say about the open/closed thing. 3dfx and nVidia both sold chips and reference designs to other OEMs. ATI, on the other hand, has had a rather bumpy ride between ATI-branded retail ca
Here's the thing with open-source drivers... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I do sympathize with linux users who want quality drivers for all types of graphics hardware. I doubt, though, that NVIDIA or ATI will ever release open-source drivers for linux. I think they can and should take the desktop linux market seriously and release high-quality, closed drivers, even if it affects the OSS purity of the linux operating system.
For decent article reviewing some of these issues, see this [zdnetasia.com].
Re:Here's the thing with open-source drivers... (Score:3)
Absolutely not!!! We need Free drivers for numerous reasons. LWN writes a good summary of the reasons here [lwn.net] and here [lwn.net].
S3 and others, please understand this! We might put up with closed source drivers under some circumstances, but you cannot really call this "Linux support" and we will be underwhelmed by your offerings.
But whicheve
Re:Here's the thing with open-source drivers... (Score:2)
Re:Here's the thing with open-source drivers... (Score:2)
So... you are able to get the same functionality that you could get from a $5 used video card off eBay. Since your nVidia card probably cost more than $5, that's not the best deal ever.
Re:Here's the thing with open-source drivers... (Score:2)
Maybe you don't NEED 3D, sure you can live without it, but if you don't think it's useful, then you're being silly. We live in a 3D world, it's silly to restrict our computers to 2 dimensional graphics. 3D is useful in everything from CAD to mapping to gaming, or simply displaying fancy graphics (give up on t
Low end possible? (Score:2)
This assumes that the cheapness of older models is subsidized by the profits from the newer. Is this the case?
-matthew
Re:Low end possible? (Score:2)
And the cheap cards aren't subsidized by the more expensive cards. In fact, the "high-end" cards aren't what keep ATI and Nvidia in business. The real money is in "integrated" video in cheap systems. That's especially true for ATI, who until fairly recently was the king of integrated graphics chips. Intel has stolen a lot
nVidia and ATi aren't the problem (Score:2)
Re:nVidia and ATi aren't the problem (Score:2)
Well, I was thinking terms of expansion cards that someone might buy as an upgrade.
-matthew
This is why graphics drivers are closed-source (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at S3's product, you see a device that has great hardware specs (looks great on paper) but fails to deliver because of buggy/incomplete drivers. S3 isn't alone in this - XGI faces similar problems.
The truth is that a lot of the performance of modern GPUs comes not from the hardware but from the drivers which supply it with data. NVIDIA and ATI keep their drivers closed-source because they don't want a company like S3 to benefit from their software - NV and ATI love the fact that everyone else has buggy, slow, incomplete 3D drivers, and that's the way they want to keep it.
Open source: good for some things, not for others (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, yes, it's probably not a bad idea, but I read an article from some guy at Precision Insight about this.
The argument was that video card drivers are among the most complex of drivers. It's kind of like Mozilla -- there is a significant barrier to just dropping in and hacking away -- so you don't accrue programmers left and right.
Granted, I'd still buy any card that has good open-source driver support and is mor
Open Graphics is in the works (Score:3, Informative)
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open- Graphics [duskglow.com]
IIRC they are shipping FPGA PCI cards and you can download the chipset image. The plan of course is to sell PCI ASIC's for $150 or so. They have a pledge page where you can give them an idea of how many cards they can sell for a first run.
Somehow... (Score:2)
Have they ever worked well for gaming (and no, solitaire doesn't count)?
Yes SIS Has been good. (Score:2)
The OSS community can help S3 write drivers. (Score:2)
The above can be achieved by S3 offering mock-up environments of their hardware that do not reveal the algorithms. This is a practice followed quite often in the military where 3rd parties are called to supply software for 'secret' hardwar
It's S3, and it sucks. What else did you expect? (Score:2)
ATI and Nvidia learned the hard way: appeal to the entire market, low to high-end. Use the innovations gained in the latest high-end designs on the next-generation mid-range. Thus, your designs are constantly fresh, and games are constantly using new features, which means customers actually have a reason to buy your new pro
Re:How come this always happend to S3? ... (Score:2)
It looked stellar in UT, and others FPS's I had at the time but I couldn't get more than 20minutes of gameplay out of it. Actually sent it back to creative, Used S3's Drivers, used Creative Drivers, Used new MB used New Windows install. Finally ended up shelving it. $300 down the crapper. Shame too it really did look better than the competition at the time (Remember Experimen
What do you mean? (Score:2)
* EPIA small/home theatre CPUs and mini-ITX boards
* AMD and Intel chipsets (K8Tx00, PT8x0, CX700, etc.)
* basically any southbridge not made by NVidia or Intel
* Envy24 audio chips (lots of cards, from Hercules to Terratec to M-Audio)
* VIA Velocity GBE and Rhine 10/100E ethernet chips (used in many, many desktop cards)
* A metric fuckton of small desktop switch integrated platforms... and a bevy of wireless MACs
Plus the S3 video chipsets are used in a whole lot of video-on-board motherb