S3 readies 6600 SLI killer
S3 FINALLY CAME OUT with their ChromeS20 series of chips today. We have told you some of it earlier, here and here, but there are some interesting bits so far unsaid. The best one is that S3 has the highest clocking GPU out there, period. The ChromeS27 chip runs at a blistering 700MHz core, 700MHz memory.
There is a problem though, this chip is not a 7800GTx crusher, it is fast but narrow. S27 has 4 vertex shaders and 8 pixel shaders, so for those paying attention, it is aimed solidly at the mid-range. It's target market is the 6600s and X700 range of chips, and it has a decent shot at being a contender in that market. The worst downside is that it is only PS and VS 2.0+, not 3.0.
The chip is less about raw performance than it is low power. The GPU itself in the ChromeS27 takes 10-12W, 17-30 for the entire card. For this, you get 2800-3600 in 3DMark05. Not all that bad, and it can even run fanless if necessary, the ones I saw though had a commendably small fan.
One other nifty thing they do is run in a dongle-free SLI-type two card mode called MultiChrome. The nice thing about it is S3 has no proprietary turf to defend, so you can use it on just about anything that supports two PCIe slots. In fact, you can use it in as many slots as you have, but I am told somewhat off the record that after three cards, the performance doesn't increase enough to be worth it.
Last week, at the secret S3 fortress in the glaciated peaks outside of San Jose, I got to see it in action. I can say that it runs 3DMark05 just fine in dual card mode, and gets a bit less than 2x the single card speed. The performance is not stunning, but with a single card, you can play most cutting edge games at 1024*768. With two cards, 1280*1024 should be quite doable and fast.
There is also a lower end version called the ChromeS25, and it clocks at 600/400, does not support DDR-3, and does not do MultiChrome. Instead, you get AcceleRAM technology, a fancy term for using main memory instead of card memory. This leads to cheap cards that don't perform all that badly, certainly better than not having that memory available.
Both cards, the S25 and S27 have a ton of video features available. Per pixel Gamma correction, a ton of blending modes, depth of field and color fog start things out. Add on Chromotion 3.0, the latest S3 high def video engine, and you have something. On the slides I got, S3 claims they can do WMV-HD decoding at a much lower CPU usage than the GeForce 6600 series chips, and if the things I hear about the X1300 series are true, that one should be a walk over.
So, you have fast video, low power, and decent gaming performance. While it may not be my first choice for a dedicated box, it looks very attractive for media center applications. Fanless, low power and HD capable? I like it.
How much will these chips cost? The S27 is going to cost around the $100 mark for a 128MB version, and the 256 will run about $130. For the performance of a mid-range 6600, that is not a bad thing.
Drivers and availability are another thing, something that S3 has not had a stellar track record on of late. For a while, I have been told that this time is really different for the company, both by insiders and partners. I hope so, we need a third player in the GPU business, competition always makes the consumer win. Lets hope this is the start of an S3 comeback, but I will wait for real world benches before I say that for sure.
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