S3 Graphics 128-bit Excalibur GPU arrives within three months

German computer site ComputerBase talked to S3 Graphics at Computex and learned a couple of interesting things.

A couple of months ago the graphics firm released the Chrome 430 GT and last month they unleashed the faster Chrome 440 GTX. The performance of these low-end cards isn't too bad but unfortunately they suffer from serious driver issues. The ComputerBase reporter says S3 Graphics assured him that a driver team is working on getting the kinks out of the Chrome 400 software.

S3 is also trying to position its Chrome 400 GPUs in the notebook market, the firm says its Chrome 400 chips use less power than competing chips from ATI and NVIDIA and claims various OEM partners will use it in upcoming notebooks. One of the cards that will be available in some notebooks later this year is the S3 Chrome 440 ULP, this card features a 725MHz core and 256MB GDDR3 memory clocked at 700MHz.

Last but not least, S3 announced their "Excalibur" GPU has been taped-out successfully. This GPU has a 128-bit memory bus instead of a 64-bit memory bus and S3 states the chip will have some additional tweaks. It should be available in the next three months.