Friday 15th February 2008

S3 introduces DirectX 10.1 GPUs

Posted at: 4:47am 15th February 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Chrome 400 series of GPUs feature unified shaders and DirectX 10.1 support

With stiff competition in the motherboard chipset business, it looks as though VIA is now seriously exploring other avenues. Not only has it announced a brand new processor architecture, but it's now also decided to join AMD at the DirectX 10.1 GPU party.

VIA has just announced the S3 Graphics Chrome 400 series of GPUs, which feature a proprietary unified shader architecture and new DirectX 10.1 features such as Global Illumination with support for Shader Model 4.1. S3 has also now moved over to multi-sampling anti-aliasing, which needed doing as S3's previous chips used super-sampling AA, which looks very pretty, but requires much more horsepower than multi-sampling AA. The new GPUs will also be fabricated on a 65nm process, and will support PCI-E 2.0.

As with the Isaiah processor architecture, one of the GPU's main features is its energy-efficiency, and S3 claims that it has a 'remarkably power-efficient, low heat package.' Along with its HD video features, which include H.264 hardware acceleration, S3 reckons the new GPUs could 'provide an ideal platform for silent, fanless solutions in HD multimedia home systems.'

However, nothing has been said about 3D performance yet, which suggests that the Chrome 400 GPUs aren't going to be competing in the high-end GPU arena, particularly as they only have a tight 64-bit memory interface.

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Comments

@Kurobara

I don't think you fully understood the article, which I might add, was a load of crap. None the less the article was talking about whether it's better to have two one Gig DIMMs in dual or single channel. It's not to do with a GPU's memory interface. Let me tell you the difference between a 64bit controller and a 128bit controller is the difference between a 6200 and a 8600GT. @Mycomment@ I would love to see Intel, Amd, Nvidia and VIA all competing in the GPU stakes; I mean it could only mean good things for us right?

Comment by TKSnatch at 3:47am 8th July 2008

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now or a milliooon

now or a million years from today

Comment by j7dunwiddie at 4:28pm 28th February 2008

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single or dual channel doesn't matter

Doesn't matter if its 64bit single channel or 128bit dual channel. Check out the results on this page. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/parallel-processing-RAM,review-29694-11.html The benefits for modern CPU's is small enough to for me to consider not even using matched pairs when i build my new system in a month or so. 3GB is recommended for Assassin's Creed, so I'm thinking of just going for three 1GB and not paying the unnecessary premium for pairs.

Comment by Kurobara at 2:43am 22nd February 2008

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I think VIA are going to replace AMD, and fast... The sooner the better, because these lot know where to compete in niche ends of the market... AMD, as one person said in OCEANS 13, Let him roll over and die, leave him be

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 7:47pm 18th February 2008

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If they're aiming this at media PC's rather than gaming PC's, they'll have to give people a reason to select it over integrated graphics.

Comment by l3v1ck at 5:47pm 17th February 2008

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here come the bad news

I dont think this will be out until Q1 2009 so dont get too hyped up (thats just a guess by the way) but i think that via may have to try a little harder first to release something better than a crappy little 8600 GT and once they have done so i hope via play a big part in this because i think that we need more competition out there so prices will stay down then may AMD wont die out and then via and AMD may work together to find there own physx platform to share 50/50 hey if that happens it'll be a miracle... but i do think VIA and AMD could learn a thing or two off each other