I've been looking for them for a long time and they are unobtainium in the EU as well. I remember reading some reviews back in the day just after they released where the DelteChrome S8 performed around FX5600 level.

I know PowerColor, Inno3D and Club3D made them, but they were already rare in computer stores when they were new.

Realistically they went in machines with low end duron, celeron, sempron etc, that could barely keep juice in their motherboard caps past warranty and were early ewaste candidates rather than solid systems that just kept on being useful for basic office/web. So basically, 2 year life cycle, new to trash.

Voodoo 5 on the other hand got a fan following from the outset and kept it, would not surprise me if V5s had the highest preservation percentage of any modern era computer part anywhere. I was semi "keeping an eye on them" through the noughts and the prices never bottomed as low as anything else, few outliers maybe, but there wasn't quantities of them going for $5 a pop. There have been cards with MRSP of four times the price that got cheaper in general than V5 did. Maybe if 3Dfx had kept going they'd be just another card.

Anyway, I did used to see them for sale, mostly in places like compgeeks discount outlet, Tiger Direct, etc, but they didn't seem to get cheap enough new to justify the risk of unknown might not be well supported but theoretically good vs good used Geforce or Radeon that they nearly caught up with for a third to half less.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-03-28, 17:33:

I've been looking for them for a long time and they are unobtainium in the EU as well. I remember reading some reviews back in t […]
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I've been looking for them for a long time and they are unobtainium in the EU as well. I remember reading some reviews back in the day just after they released where the DelteChrome S8 performed around FX5600 level.

I know PowerColor, Inno3D and Club3D made them, but they were already rare in computer stores when they were new.

I'm wondering if maybe they were released in Asian markets perhaps? Has an image of a box ever turned up that would indicate that?

The mind boggles.

I try to imagine the design and then the manufacturing process of devices that are sold in such limited quantities that no one even knows they exist. I can picture a limited run of something using mostly off the shelf components (custom retro soundcard, motherboard remake, etc.). But a lot of time and effort has to go into a product as complex as a GPU for it to ever make it to a retail box. There are certainly examples of promising products that barely made it to retail and then flopped for one reason or another (like the Tasmania3D), but after that the manufacturer tends to either leave the market entirely or make a big comeback with a hugely better product. S3 seems to have made decent products for 7 years that no one ever bought. And those of us who are collectors seem to rarely find them, despite being pretty adept at finding such things. And we're talking about products that are between 15 and 20 years old, which is nothing for this hobby.

It defies logic.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-28, 17:48:

Realistically they went in machines with low end duron, celeron, sempron etc, that could barely keep juice in their motherboard caps past warranty and were early ewaste candidates rather than solid systems that just kept on being useful for basic office/web. So basically, 2 year life cycle, new to trash.

Voodoo 5 on the other hand got a fan following from the outset and kept it, would not surprise me if V5s had the highest preservation percentage of any modern era computer part anywhere. I was semi "keeping an eye on them" through the noughts and the prices never bottomed as low as anything else, few outliers maybe, but there wasn't quantities of them going for $5 a pop. There have been cards with MRSP of four times the price that got cheaper in general than V5 did. Maybe if 3Dfx had kept going they'd be just another card.

Anyway, I did used to see them for sale, mostly in places like compgeeks discount outlet, Tiger Direct, etc, but they didn't seem to get cheap enough new to justify the risk of unknown might not be well supported but theoretically good vs good used Geforce or Radeon that they nearly caught up with for a third to half less.

Have you seen them in OEM builds, or do you mean that people built cheap systems and then put cheaper video cards into them? Either way, I've come across a crap ton of e-waste in my life (both whole PCs and deliberately purchased scrap lots) and I have never gotten my hands on a single S3 card made after the Savage 2000, or seen one installed in a system. I have seen several systems with integrated Chrome graphics, but that's a totally separate thing. I did see (and missed of course) a GPU lot sold recently that had an S3 Chrome of some kind in it, but that's the only one I've seen in a while.

Regarding the Voodoo 5, of course, they are famous. I was just using the 6000 as an example because you'd think that none would basically ever be seen because they were never even sold at retail, and yet they have popped up many times over the years. In contrast, there were nearly 8 years worth of S3 cards made and sold after 3dfx closed. How were so few made or sold that they are now nonexistent? It comes back to them being so unpopular from the start that it defies logic that they continued to be iterated upon for several generations.

The numbers of other cards have been held up by the fact that they got second and third chances, last years geforce goes to uncle Bob's surfer when you get the new one, some out of off lease systems are sold as refurbs, they are kept, continue to hold a value of $10 - $20 some years after cessation of manufacture. The S3/SiS/XGI cards went through the market like prunes or exlax, you replaced one with a newer card, nobody wanted it, maybe you only had it for 6 months as a placeholder card. Very few second or third lives for these cards, one and done, not worth enough to be sold refurbished. You might be astonished at how this can happen, go out and try to buy a used tablet that ran an Android prior to 4 that's not Samsung/Acer or other large name. Look for a standalone 4GB MP3 player that wasn't a zune or an ipod. There are 80s and 90s econobox cars that sold 5-10 times more than Mustangs or Camaros of same age, I bet there's 5 or 6 mustangs or camaros for every one of those you can find for sale now.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-28, 19:26:

The numbers of other cards have been held up by the fact that they got second and third chances, last years geforce goes to uncle Bob's surfer when you get the new one, some out of off lease systems are sold as refurbs, they are kept, continue to hold a value of $10 - $20 some years after cessation of manufacture. The S3/SiS/XGI cards went through the market like prunes or exlax, you replaced one with a newer card, nobody wanted it, maybe you only had it for 6 months as a placeholder card. Very few second or third lives for these cards, one and done, not worth enough to be sold refurbished. You might be astonished at how this can happen, go out and try to buy a used tablet that ran an Android prior to 4 that's not Samsung/Acer or other large name. Look for a standalone 4GB MP3 player that wasn't a zune or an ipod. There are 80s and 90s econobox cars that sold 5-10 times more than Mustangs or Camaros of same age, I bet there's 5 or 6 mustangs or camaros for every one of those you can find for sale now.

I mean, I understand that many things become worthless and are thrown away once they are obsolete, but I think you might be overstating how many S3 Chrome cards actually made it to consumers. The other similar last-ditch 3D cards, the SIS Xabre and XGI Volari lines only existed as gaming-focused products for what... less than a year each? One failed release finished off SIS as a graphics brand, and another made XGI abandon gaming cards. XGI kept making 2D only business products for a while. So, why did S3 stick with the discrete cards for 7 years?

I know others DO have S3 cards, but to put it in perspective, I have found multiple Tasmania3Ds, an Alliance AT3D, multiple Artist Graphics 3GAs, and a Real3D Starfighter PCI... all were nearly worthless at release , completely obsolete, destined for the trash within a year, and only actually became collectible somewhat recently after 25-30 years. Yet in 25 years of building and repairing computers for people and around 8 years of "serious" collecting I've never laid my hands on a DeltaChrome, GammaChrome or Chrome S20, despite the fact that they were made fairly recently, for several generations and are generally very clearly labeled with a big S3 on them and should be easy to find. On top of that, those older products existed at a time when devices and software were far far less complex, and low sales of one product could be excused. Developing a DX10.1 level GPU with any gaming chops at all like the Chrome 4xx and 5xx series would have taken a lot of R&D that only huge players (Nvidia, ATI and Intel) bothered to put money into.

Plus, to a complete layman they would look like any other mid range Geforce or Radeon, so I just don't see them being thrown directly in the garbage any more often than, for example, a Radeon X1600 or an Geforce 7300LE when an old PC is parted out or the "parts bin" is emptied. Most OEM cards don't have any Geforce or Radeon branding, and yet many avoid the trash, so I don't think it's a brand recognition thing.

Also, I appreciate the analogies to other types of devices, but there are lots of old Android 2.2 tablets and 4GB MP3 players on ebay. Regarding cars, the Mustangs and Camaros have a much higher chance of being garage kept or being a second car, plus you find more of them in places with better weather. I get what you're saying... that the more desirable things will be more abundant than the "common" stuff later on, but I don't think that's enough to explain what happened with S3 Chrome. I've seen enough cobbled together, cap-rotted PCs from the mid 2000s and piles of computer scrap to safely say that hardly anyone had these at all.

My reason for making the thread is that it seems to me that almost no one bought one, almost no one speaks of ever using one, and almost no one still has them. So how or why did S3\Via continue making them so long? Who was funding the development and manufacture of the discrete cards (which no one wanted, gen after gen) when the integrated chips were the only ones being sold in meaningful numbers? Who kept saying "Yes, scale that IGP tech up to a low end discrete gaming card!" year after year when no one was buying them? When other similar products flopped, the company or product line ended almost immediately. I'd love to know if anyone has any insight on that or has any contacts that may know more about who kept it going and why.

(EDIT: BTW, sorry for all the edits. This is an interesting discussion and I keep having more thoughts on it. 😮 )

I was grinding the thrifts in the noughts, looking more for recent useable stuff at the time and picking up the odd piece of "oh those are kind of cool" older things, and I did see some pass through, then when I hadn't seen one for a while, I grabbed the SiS Xabre I've got now, and I haven't seen one through the thrifts around here in 15+ years since. So I form my opinion on the situation on the basis that these were going through thrifts about 3 years ahead of other cards their age, this was peak voodoo 2 and 3 picking time for me, radeons and geforces didn't show up until later, things seemed to have to get sufficiently worthless to be discarded/donated rather than sold on.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-28, 22:13:

I was grinding the thrifts in the noughts, looking more for recent useable stuff at the time and picking up the odd piece of "oh those are kind of cool" older things, and I did see some pass through, then when I hadn't seen one for a while, I grabbed the SiS Xabre I've got now, and I haven't seen one through the thrifts around here in 15+ years since. So I form my opinion on the situation on the basis that these were going through thrifts about 3 years ahead of other cards their age, this was peak voodoo 2 and 3 picking time for me, radeons and geforces didn't show up until later, things seemed to have to get sufficiently worthless to be discarded/donated rather than sold on.

I can definitely understand how they'd have cycled through a bit faster than their contemporaries since the software support wouldn't have been as versatile as Nvidia or ATI cards. Still, the number of cards that made it to customers must have been incredibly low for nearly all of them to be gone at this point, while cards that were useless 10 years prior are still turning up from time to time. I'm noticing a distinct lack of other Vogons users chiming in that they have S3 Chrome cards, for example. I'm sure there are some here that have them... probably even some with boxes, but those are likely the same people with a room stacked floor to ceiling with sealed Adlib Golds, 8bit Pro Audio Spectrums, IBM Music Features and XGI Volari Duos. 🤣

I also have a Xabre 400 I got a year or two ago. It has a fair bit of damage to surface mount components sadly. I was really excited to finally find one, even though it was in a scrap lot.

I can tell you that until 2009 a local computer store didn't sell a single Chrome card of any model, retail/boxed or inside a pre-built computer. This is not a proof for anything, but I do consider it an indication of its popularity at least for my small country.

Havent seen it in retail in Poland at all in period. Its possible S3 never manufactured discrete chips in any volume to begin with, just made limited runs to keep competency in house for integrated solutions. I have only ever owned UniChrome designs, and word pathetic doesnt begin to describe those.

I remember that on allegro.pl there were DeltaChrome cards in the days when they were new.
But it didn't inspire me to buy one after reading reviews on several sites 😀

Thanks for the input everyone.

zyga64 wrote on 2024-03-29, 09:56:

I remember that on allegro.pl there were DeltaChrome cards in the days when they were new.
But it didn't inspire me to buy one after reading reviews on several sites 😀

So they were also sold in Poland at least for a time, and probably in very limited numbers.

I have found some references to these cards from sites based in Eastern European countries, Poland, Russia, etc.

I suspect that central and south America were larger markets for them also. It's maybe that they are less common in English speaking markets... I have that suspicion about the U5s also, that there might be plenty around, just in Brazil, or Malaysia or somewhere.

I was working in a computer store at the time these were new and don't recall seeing them. We never had any for sale either. At this point, onboard graphics (including S3/Via) were "good enough" for the low end and would have priced these out. These products also had no future due to the whole Vista thing (did these chips ever get WDDM drivers?). It was bad enough that we were selling "late stage" XP crapboxes in 2005-06 that were clearly taking advantage of the fact that XP came out in 2001 and had modest system requirements. Those machines had no hope of running Vista decently and were destined for ewaste in short order. Heck, I remember some of them had video drivers that didn't even properly support 16:9 monitor resolutions.

NJRoadfan wrote on 2024-03-31, 14:09:

I was working in a computer store at the time these were new and don't recall seeing them. We never had any for sale either. At this point, onboard graphics (including S3/Via) were "good enough" for the low end and would have priced these out. These products also had no future due to the whole Vista thing (did these chips ever get WDDM drivers?). It was bad enough that we were selling "late stage" XP crapboxes in 2005-06 that were clearly taking advantage of the fact that XP came out in 2001 and had modest system requirements. Those machines had no hope of running Vista decently and were destined for ewaste in short order. Heck, I remember some of them had video drivers that didn't even properly support 16:9 monitor resolutions.

My wife had a laptop with a VIA Chrome 9 IGP. It was sold with vista so I guess there was a driver.

This laptop was very low budget (less than 500€ in 2007) vista made thecthings worse.
I installed Xubuntu for her instead as she could not even work with this computer on vista. I was my most painful Linux installation ever. Very low compatibility for the Chrome9 IGP. ndiswrapper required for wifi. But it was still better.

acl wrote on 2024-04-04, 18:52:

My wife had a laptop with a VIA Chrome 9 IGP. It was sold with vista so I guess there was a driver. […]
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NJRoadfan wrote on 2024-03-31, 14:09:

I was working in a computer store at the time these were new and don't recall seeing them. We never had any for sale either. At this point, onboard graphics (including S3/Via) were "good enough" for the low end and would have priced these out. These products also had no future due to the whole Vista thing (did these chips ever get WDDM drivers?). It was bad enough that we were selling "late stage" XP crapboxes in 2005-06 that were clearly taking advantage of the fact that XP came out in 2001 and had modest system requirements. Those machines had no hope of running Vista decently and were destined for ewaste in short order. Heck, I remember some of them had video drivers that didn't even properly support 16:9 monitor resolutions.

My wife had a laptop with a VIA Chrome 9 IGP. It was sold with vista so I guess there was a driver.

This laptop was very low budget (less than 500€ in 2007) vista made thecthings worse.
I installed Xubuntu for her instead as she could not even work with this computer on vista. I was my most painful Linux installation ever. Very low compatibility for the Chrome9 IGP. ndiswrapper required for wifi. But it was still better.

Yes, Vista drivers for Chrome9 do really exist. As far as I know, these Vista drivers are unofficially compatible with Windows 7 and even 8.
But frankly, they are terrible: limited in functionality, often flashing with a black screen for a second and the mouse cursor in the center after that. They seem to reload when switching graphics mode. Also I have a lot of problems with setting resolution in games lower than laptops's native. In Internet Explorer 9 you won't see anything when video acceleration is turned on, just white window.
The only good thing I have to note about the Chrome9 is that it has good video acceleration for such a budget chip: it is much better than Intel Express Graphics or even Intel GMA of that time.