S3 Graphics
| S3 Graphics
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Limited |
| founding | 1989 |
| Seat |
Fremont , California , United States
|
| Branch | Microelectronics , information technology |
| Website | www.s3graphics.com |
S3 Graphics is a US company headquartered in Fremont , California , and was originally founded as a joint venture between SonicBlue , formerly S3 Inc. , and VIA Technologies . The aim was to integrate S3 graphic cores into VIA chipsets. In the meantime, S3 Graphics has been completely taken over by VIA Technologies and belongs to the group as an independent subsidiary.
Since the takeover by VIA Technologies, S3 Graphics has tried to regain a foothold in the desktop market with various graphics chips. Graphics cores from S3 are built into the many different IGPs from VIA Technologies.
Desktop chips
In 2003 , the DeltaChrome S8 and DeltaChrome S4 were the first attempt at a comeback in the competitive graphics chip market.
At the beginning of 2005 , the GammaChrome S18 was announced as the successor to the DeltaChrome.
In the fall of 2005, S3 Graphics officially announced the new Chrome S20 family .
In March and May 2008, the Chrome 430 GT (a real DX10.1 GPU) and the higher clocked Chrome 440 GTX equipped with GDDR3 RAM were released. Later that year, the Chrome 530 GT (512MB RAM for the first time) and the fastest S3 graphics card to date, the Chrome 540 GTX, were released.
With MultiChrome , two or more S3 graphics cards of the S25 / S27 and Chrome 400/500 generations can be operated at the same time to increase performance (AFR & SFR, comparable to technologies such as SLI or Crossfire ).
In October 2009, the Chrome 5400E was presented, which should support GPGPU calculations with OpenCL .
IGPs
S3 Graphics' first project, known as Twister, after it was acquired by VIA Technologies, was to integrate Savage 4 graphics cores into VIA chipsets.
ProSavage and ProSavageDDR are improved versions of these IGPs and are based on a mixture between Savage 4 and Savage 2000 graphics cores.
Under the name UniChrome , a new graphics core for IGPs developed as Zoetrope ( AlphaChrome / Savage XP ) was brought onto the market to replace the outdated Twister and ProSavage IGPs.
Since the Aero surface of Windows Vista requires a DirectX 9 capable graphics chip, the integration of the DeltaChrome graphics core as Chrome9 HC was started. This version should completely replace UniChrome.
The current DX10.1-compatible GPUs Chrome 400/500 are now also available as IGPs.
See also
- S3 Savage family
- S3 Chrome family
- MultiChrome