S3 claims first 0.13µ 8-pipeline graphics engine

S3 GRAPHICS today announced a family of DirectX 9.0-compatible 3D graphics cards for the desktop market. S3 is a Via joint venture company. And the company claims its DeltaChromeF1 high-end card is the world's first DirectX 9.0, 0.13 micron 8-pipeline graphics engine, pitting itself directly against the top offerings from Nvidia and ATI.

DirectX 9.0 demands a high number of transistors and S3 claims the DeltaChrome's use of 0.13 micron wafer technology ensures low power consumption while using up to half the silicon of other DirectX 9.0 implementations.

The flagship DeltaChromeF1 series card will sport up to up to 256MB of video memory and 8-pixel pipelines, while the mid-table DeltaChromeS8 offers an 8-pipe architecture with up to 128MB of memory. The low-end DeltaChromeS4 offers DirectX 9.0 performance at lower - as yet unspecified - cost.

All DeltaChrome desktop products will have on-chip Hi-Def HDTV-out and the company's Chromotion Programmable Video Engine to ensure output quality.

Dr. Gerry Liu, Vice President of Marketing at S3 Graphics, claimed to be "adding value to every segment of the desktop market with DeltaChrome. For the high end," he said, "we make the superior 8-pipe 256MB DirectX 9.0 class graphics affordable; for the mainstream, we are packing incredible graphics computing power with our 8-pipe architecture; and for the value segment, we offer true DirectX 9.0 for all users."

Pricing and availability for the products is as yet unconfirmed. µ