Chrome S20 series
Encyclopedia
Overview
Chrome 20 series was launched on 2005-11-3, with Chrome S25 and Chrome S27 as the initial products. Both cores use Fujitsu's 90 nm process. Similar to the GammaChrome S18, it is designed for PCI ExpressPCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
, and marketed to low to mid end of the graphics card market, with Chromotion 3 Video Engine and low power consumption as main selling points.
Memory interface supports 32, 64, or 128-bit of GDDR1, GDDR2 or GDDR3 memory. Chrome 20 series can use 32-256MiB GDDR1 or GDDR3 memory at maximum 700 MHz, or 64-512MiB GDDR2 memory at maximum 500 MHz.
Similar to Radeon X1000 series, texturing units and raster operators are separated from pixel shaders. Chrome 20 has 4 vertex shaders, 8 pixel shaders, 4 texturing units, 4 raster operators.
Display output now integrates a single-link TMDS transmitter, with support of dual-link using external transmitters.
Other new features include MultiChrome and AcceleRAM.
Chromotion 3.0
This revision of Chromotion Engine adds support of nonlinear video scaling, commonly used by wide screen television sets. TV encoder now supports 18 DTV ATSC formats:| Vertical Lines | Pxels | Aspect Ratio | Picture Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1080 | 1920 | 16:9 | 60i, 30p, 24p |
| 720 | 1280 | 16:9 | 60i, 30p, 24p |
| 480 | 704 | 16:9 and 4:3 | 60p, 60i, 30p, 24p |
| 480 | 640 | 4:3 | 60p, 60i, 30p, 24p |
MultiChrome
MultiChrome feature, debuted in Chrome S20 series, allows 2 or more cards to be used together to increase performance, even though configurations of more than 2 cards have not been tested. The methods used by MultiChome are Alternate Frame RenderingAlternate Frame Rendering
Alternate Frame Rendering is a technique of graphics rendering in personal computers which combines the work output of two or more graphics processing units for a single monitor, in order to improve image quality, or to accelerate the rendering performance...
and Split Frame Rendering.
AcceleRAM
AcceleRAM feature allows the graphics card to cache data to the system memory if more is needed, similar to HyperMemoryHyperMemory
HyperMemory is ATI Technologies' method of using the motherboard's main system RAM as part of or all of the video card's framebuffer memory on their line of Radeon video cards and motherboard chipsets...
.
Chrome S27
Chrome S27 is currently the flagship series for Chrome S20. It is targeted at the low to mid end of the graphics card market. Another main selling point is its very low power consumption and thus heat output even with comparison to similarly targeted graphics cards from NVIDIANVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and ATI
Ati
As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
making it suitable for HTPC setups. Its memory uses either DDR1, DDR2 or GDDR3 with 128mb or 256mb flavours. The core runs at 700 MHz.
Chrome S25
Chrome XMS20 Series
Chrome 20 Series mobile, or Chrome XMS20 Series, is the mobile variant of Chrome S20 series, which has integrated 64 or 128MiB 64bit GDDR3 SDRAM as multi-package module, integrated 2 channel LVDS transmitter. Power manangement features include dynamic clock gating, panel lighting control. Products include Chrome XMS25, Chrome XMS27, with ultra low power versions of the processor available.Retail products
As of May 2006, most of the Chrome S27s available in retail are made by S3 Graphics itself. The Chrome S27 is sold at the company's own GStore where it is sold alongside a 128MiB version and a Gammachrome S18 pro and certain online retailers like NeweggNewegg
Newegg.com Inc. is an online retailer of computer hardware and software. It is based in City of Industry, California. The company was founded by Fred Chang, a Taiwanese immigrant, in 2001.- History :...
. However, they can be bought as a 256mb DDR2 (clocked at 800 MHz) version in China under the Axper brand and a 256MiB DDR3(clocked at 1200 MHz version in Japan under the brand XIAi.
Although S3 graphics does not sell Chrome S25 video cards, they can be found under the Xiai brand in Japan and the Axper brand in China. Both these cards have their GPU clockspeed and memory clocked 100 mHz higher than the default specification giving a 700 MHz memory and 500 MHz GPU clock speeds.