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S3's Chrome 20 chip to feature SLi-style tech

High clock speed, low power consumption too, apparently

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in PC Builder, 8th September 2005 10:55 GMT

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VIA subsidiary S3 Graphics is planning to take the multi-GPU fight to ATI and Nvidia with its own SLi-style solution.

According to an alleged company training-presentation slide made in August and posted this week by Chinese-language site HKEPC, S3's Multi-G system will be part of the company's upcoming Chrome 20.

Separately, the company's Chrome 20 graphics chip development programme is proceeding apace, according to Hexus.net.

The Chrome 20 is a mid-range card, designed to provide solid graphics performance to mainstream users. Fabbed at 90nm, the chip's power consumption is said to be very low. By contrast, the clock speed will be the "highest core clock of any GPU to date" - not that the company would say what that will be, though the HKEPC slide has "700MHz" written on it. It also indicates the power consumption is 5-15W.

The chip features the Chromotion 3.0 Programmable Video Engine, with eight pixel pipelines and four vertex shaders. It supports HD. The slide suggests something called SuperVRAM is part of the design too.

Chrome 20 looks set to appear in Q4. ®

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