[Davros]

S3 has launched a brand new graphics card: the Chrome 530 GT. At first glance, this card looks very similar to the Chrome 430 GT that came out back in March. Both apparently have 65nm graphics chips clocked at 625MHz, 500MHz DDR2 memory on a 64-bit bus, DirectX 10.1 support, and the ability to speed up the decoding of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2-HD video. The 530 GT stands out by packing 512MB of memory (instead of 256MB) and featuring a built-in 7.1-channel HD audio controller, which allows it to pipe audio through the HDMI port. S3 lists the Chrome 530 GT on its own online store for $44.95 right now.

Linkage :
http://www.s3graphics.com/en/product...30gt/index.jsp

[Nappe1]

Originally Posted by Davros

S3 has launched a brand new graphics card: the Chrome 530 GT. At first glance, this card looks very similar to the Chrome 430 GT that came out back in March. Both apparently have 65nm graphics chips clocked at 625MHz, 500MHz DDR2 memory on a 64-bit bus, DirectX 10.1 support, and the ability to speed up the decoding of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2-HD video. The 530 GT stands out by packing 512MB of memory (instead of 256MB) and featuring a built-in 7.1-channel HD audio controller, which allows it to pipe audio through the HDMI port. S3 lists the Chrome 530 GT on its own online store for $44.95 right now.

Linkage :
http://www.s3graphics.com/en/product...30gt/index.jsp

Is it first 3D card with sound core since Diamond Edge 3D?

too bad that it seems to be a bit slow against competition in 3D. Nevertheless, it still is relatively cheap upgrade to get "Complete BluRay Sound and Video Acceleration"

[bowman]

Originally Posted by Nappe1

Is it first 3D card with sound core since Diamond Edge 3D?

I thought current Radeons had onboard audio support as well?

[Davros]

dont the radeons just have some sort of passthrough though not a true soundcard, you cant plug in a set of speakers to your radeon

edit: as far as i can tell the s3 card has no audio processing either, its hard to tell..

found this quote :

"S3’s Chrome 530 GT has an integrated AES engine that’s capable of re-encrypting losslessly compressed audio after it’s pulled off a Blu-ray disc and sent over the PCI Express bus and then out of the PC via HDMI. The chip also features a built-in 7.1-channel Dolby digital surround-sound processor. ATI’s latest GPUs have the integrated audio processor, but they can’t send Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD over HDMI because they don’t have an AES engine; Nvidia’s newest GPUs have neither an integrated audio processor nor an AES engine. "

[Dave Baumann]

Originally Posted by Davros

dont the radeons just have some sort of passthrough though not a true soundcard, you cant plug in a set of speakers to your radeon

You can't with the S3 either, but thats a Codec and connectivity issue because its specifically targetted to HDMI. In essence we have similar audio processing capabilities as chipsets do.

[Davros]

by chipset(aka actual hardware), as opposed to just a codec
so do the radeons have fm synthesis + midi and support ds3d, a3d + eax ?
do they have dacs ?
with a radeon if you dont have a hdmi tv/amp do you have no sound ?