Chrome S20 series

Chrome 20 Series is the successor of S3 Graphics GammaChrome S18.

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 Express, 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 Rendering and Split Frame Rendering.

AcceleRAM

AcceleRAM feature allows the graphics card to cache data to the system memory if more is needed, similar to HyperMemory.

Chrome S27

S3 Chrome S27JE

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 NVIDIA and ATI 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 S25 is a lower speed version, running at 600 MHz core and 400 MHz memory. It is targeted at the low end of the graphics card desktop market. The processor consumes at low as 9W of power^{[citation needed]}. Chrome S25 is advertised to support AcceleRAM, but not MultiChrome.

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 Newegg. 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.

Clock Speed Record

The Chrome S27 on May 2006, held the record for the highest GPU clockspeed of 700 MHz. However, performance does not depend on clock speed alone allowing it to be beaten by lower clocked cards.

External links

• Chrome S20 series page
• S3 Graphics Unveils Chrome S20 Series PCI Express Graphics Processors
• S3 Graphic's Gstore (online store)
• XIAi's Chrome S27 page
• Xbit labs review
• ExtremeTech review
• Tech Report MultiChrome review
• TechSpot Chrome S25 and Chrome S27 overview
• Chrome-Center