S3 Graphics Chrome 500 series is the successor of S3 Graphics

S3 Graphics

S3 Graphics, Ltd is an American company specializing in graphics chipsets. Although they do not have the large market share that they once had, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.-History:...

 Chrome S20 series, and is produced in parallel to the S3 Graphics Chrome 400

S3 Graphics Chrome 400

-History:VIA planned the production of 2 new graphics chips, Chrome 440 and 430, by the end of 2007. The Chrome 460 will support DirectX 10 and adopts a 90 nm process, while the Chrome 430 will support DirectX 10.1 and adopts a 65nm process. The Chrome 400 series was codenamed 'Destination'...

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Availability

The 530 GT is sold from S3's store for a price of $54.95 USD. No other online stores are known to carry this model and it is out of stock as of November 6, 2009.
The 540GTX is sold from S3's Gstore for $69.95. It is similarly out of stock although a low profile version has been produced by Aopen Japanhttp://aopen.jp/products/vga/CRF540GTX-256XD3.html and is still on sale as of November 6, 2009.

Features

The production model is with a 65 nm process, supports DirectX

DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...

 10.1, OpenGL

OpenGL

OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...

 3.0, and uses the PCI Express

PCI 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...

 2.0 interface. Chromotion engine now supports Variable length decoding, and dual-stream Blu-Ray playback. Display unit includes 2 dual-link DVI transmitters with integrated HDMI (audio passthrough) and HDCP, an integrated dual channel LVDS transmitter, an integrated TV/HDTV encoder, and support for two analog CRTs. 530 GT runs at 625MHz core speed, and has 512MB of 500MHz GDDR2 memory on a 64 bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

 bus. The 540GTX added a Displayport

DisplayPort

DisplayPort is a digital display interface standard produced by the Video Electronics Standards Association . The specification defines a royalty-free digital interconnect for audio and video. The interface is primarily used to connect a video source to a display device such as a computer monitor...

 in the full height version as well as increased clock and memory speeds of 800Mhz and 850Mhz GDDR3

GDDR3

Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory...

 respectively.

From Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 driver version 14.02.10 on, S3 Chrome 500 video cards support VDPAU

VDPAU

VDPAU is an open source library and API originally designed by Nvidia for its GeForce 8 series and later GPU hardware, targeted at the X Window System on Unix-based operating systems...

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Performance

The 500MHz GDDR2 memory clock, combined with the cards 64 bit memory bus, gives it a total memory bandwidth of 8GB/s, on par with budget cards from Nvidia

NVIDIA

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 AMD. Performance information released by S3 indicates the cards performance in 3dMark

3DMark

3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer's 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. Running 3DMark produces a 3DMark score with higher numbers indicating better performance...

2006 is comparable to an AMD HD4350.