Posted on Thursday, November 20 2008 @ 17:39 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
S3 Graphics has released its first Chrome 500 series graphics card, the Chrome 530 GT. This budget graphics card promises high power efficiency and has DirectX 10.1, although the card is probably not powerful enough to play the latest games at decent quality settings. The S3 Chrome 530 GT is available for $44.95 and is mainly aimed at HTPC systems.
Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1/3.0 Support: Realistic 3D rendering and increased visual sharpness through improved Anti-aliasing (AA), Image/Texture improvements, higher precision formats, and programmable lighting effects allow users to experience life-like rendering and image quality.
GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) Technology: Utilizing an array of S3 stream processors, the Chrome GPU can accelerate parallel data workloads and perform work on thousands of concurrent threads to achieve Gigaflops (GFLOPS) of high-throughput computations. Applications that can utilize S3 GPGPU technologies include high performance computing (HPC) infrastructures, video transcoding/encoding, game physics, and many more.
S3 Graphics PowerWise™ Technology: Sophisticated algorithms and power control mechanisms will allow Chrome 500 Series GPUs to deliver the optimal balance between performance and power on-the-fly, to meet performance and application requirements for power efficient graphics intensive computing on small form factor PCs. Consuming under 25W of power, the Chrome 500 is ideal as the graphics of choice for HTPC (home theatre PCs), DIY enthusiasts, and existing PC users looking for the best bang for the buck upgrade.
PCI Express®2.0: Chrome 500 Series GPUs support the latest high throughput PCI Express® 2.0 bus technology for bandwidth intensive applications and games. The faster connection speed also allows users to take advantage of additional S3 Graphics technologies such as AcceleRAM™ which leverages system memory for image data storage, and MultiChrome™ Multi-GPU technology to unleash higher 3D rendering performance.
Advanced Display Connectivity: Integrated digital display support with HDCP content protection allows users to connect to a multitude of monitors and digital displays for HD content viewing across a secure display path. Built-in HDMI transmitters with Dolby 7.1 digital surround sound and HD Audio controllers allow seamless audio/video HDMI connectivity. Display interfaces include the newly introduced DisplayPort, HDMI, dual-link DVI, and VGA.
