S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX
By Darren Murph 
posted February 16th 2009 3:31AM
posted February 16th 2009 3:31AM
posted February 16th 2009 3:31AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
but can it run crysis?
with everything on low...
... possibly...
... at 10fps.
Why the extra large PCB, there's nothing on it.
What Nvidia or ATI can this be compared to performance-wise? I need a new GFX card (My 8500 GT Fried Itself) that's under $100.
Geforce 8400/Radeon 3450
Performance-wise, this card competes against the low-end of the last generation.
Get an 8800GT. It's probably at least twice as fast as the 8500GT.
Thanks.
The 8800 gt is out of production, though the 9800 gt is pretty much the same thing. Even the lowest end 9800 gt with GDDR2 memory will run you $100. A 4850 would be a much better choice. It is as fast as if not faster than a 9800 gtx in almost all benchmarks, and it's only $15 more: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121272.
When a small oem is building basic internet machines for a client these cards would be ideal and the builder could tout future compatibilty and with $15-30 per machine price difference, it can really add up to costing a whole lot. I can see a market for them, but it will be niche and low end PC's hocked on HSN at 2am. Or people who get a new display port monitor and just want a basic hook up.
Oh, I forgot, for $50-60 or so it will do blu-ray. Not bad.
Sounds great except S3 reminds me of all the trouble i had in the 90s with SIS video and S3, also Diamond multimedia so i stay far far away in modern times
Why do they always put outdated software in the bundle? WinDVD is version 9 already.
Because it's cheap or free for them to license it
just look at all that empty pcb
yeah. seems like unnecessary waste.
yeah it should have been made low profile, they would be hitting on a wider audience, and making it look better
Low profile would mean a lack of room for the ports.
Many low-profile cards come with extra brackets so you can move the extra ports to an empty slot when going low-profile.
It looks soooooo underpowered . ..
thats what she said
it can run Doom!, 2
ATI HD 4650 and 4670's can be had for the same price +/- $10. Who are they trying to kid?
lol 64bit memory....that right there shows that the card performs like a low to mid range laptop card.
Video's great and all, but what about audio? Will it pass uncompressed 8 channel PCM, or better yet, bitstream for Dolby +/True HD and the DTS variants?
From the press release: "all while enjoying 8 channels of high fidelity audio with the S3 Graphics built-in Dolby® 7.1 digital surround sound processor."
That doesn't sound like it. When did HD become Video only?
its sounds exactly like it will pass dolby 7.1 surround. It is obviously not Video only.
Right, but Dolby Digital 7.1 isn't HD, is the same sound we've been getting for years on DVD. The new HD-audio formats don't seem to be supported, but only another press release or official product information can tell for sure.
If you pinned it against the wall and threw a (very spiky) dart at it, I'd wager to say that you wouldn't hit anything important.
Other than that, it seems to be a solid product.
This is a pretty interesting piece of hardware...... Would be nice for making some small cheapo boxes.....
awww, look at its little fan, bless lol
Open Source drivers?
No. S3 claims to have Linux support in the Chrome series, but never released a driver. In other words, they've been lying about it. So if you're a Linux user, avoid S3 at all costs.
Why do I want DisplayPort again?