S3 Graphics

S3 Graphics is a U.S. company headquartered in Fremont, California, and was originally established as a joint venture between Sonic Blue, formerly S3 Inc. and VIA Technologies. The objective was the integration of S3 graphics cores in chipsets from VIA. In the meantime, S3 Graphics was taken over completely by VIA Technologies, is an independent subsidiary to the Group.

Since the takeover by VIA Technologies S3 Graphics with different graphics chips again tried to put in the desktop market. Graphics cores from S3 to be installed in many different IGPs of VIA Technologies.

Desktop chips

2003 has been started with the Delta and Delta Chrome Chrome S8 S4 the first attempt at a comeback in the highly competitive graphics chip market.

In early 2005 the Gamma Chrome S18 was then announced as the successor to the Delta Chrome.

In autumn 2005, the new S3 Graphics Chrome S20- family officially announced.

In March and May 2008, the Chrome 430 GT appeared (a real DX10.1 GPU), as well as the higher clocked and equipped with GDDR3 RAM Chrome 440 GTX. Later this year, the Chrome 530 GT (first 512MB RAM ), and the fastest ever S3 Chrome 540 GTX graphics card appeared.

With Multi Chrome two or more S3 graphics cards generations S25/S27 and Chrome 400/500 for better performance can be run simultaneously (AFR & SFR, compared with techniques such as SLI & Crossfire ).

In October 2009, the Chrome 5400E was introduced in order to assist with OpenCL GPGPU calculations.

IGPs

Known as the first project of S3 Graphics Twister after the takeover by VIA Technologies was the integration of Savage 4 graphics cores in chipsets from VIA.

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 as a Zoetrope ( Alpha Chrome / Savage XP ) has been implicated developed new graphics core for IGPs on the market to replace the obsolete Twister and ProSavage - IGPs.

Since the Aero interface of Windows Vista requires a DirectX 9- capable graphics chip that was started with the integration of Delta Chrome Graphics Chrome9 HC as core. This version should UniChrome completely replace.

Meanwhile, the current DX10.1 compatible GPUs Chrome 400/500 are available as IGPs.