S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX

by Darren Murph posted Feb 16th 2009 at 3:31AM

While the future seems bright for DisplayPort, it's still tough to find a GPU out there with a DisplayPort socket -- and the search becomes increasingly difficult when hunting one down that's affordable. Enter S3, who is expanding its Chrome 500 series with the Chrome 540 GTX. Hailed as the "world's most connected high-def card," this PCI Express card boasts 256MB of GDDR3 memory, compatibility with DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0, support for Blu-ray playback and a trifecta of interfaces: DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. The best part? It comes bundled with WinDVD 8 for BD playback and can be procured today for the low, low price of $69.95.

Filed under: Blu-ray, Media PCs, Other formats, Other hardware

Tags: bd, blu-ray, Chrome, Chrome 540 gts, Chrome540Gts, displayport, gpu, graphics, HDMI, integrated graphics, IntegratedGraphics, s3, s3 Chrome, s3 Chrome 540 gtx, S3Chrome, S3Chrome540Gtx

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

J.Goodwin @ Feb 16th 2009 9:19AM

So is DisplayPort adequately encysted for the film companies?

Neutral

Ordeith @ Feb 16th 2009 11:55AM

DisplayPort supports HDCP.

Neutral

Derek @ Feb 16th 2009 2:05PM

This card looks like it has about as much power as my phone.... the board looks empty.

Neutral

Nick Catalano @ Feb 16th 2009 4:50PM

It is (obviously) designed to fit in a low-profile HTPC.

Neutral

Derek @ Feb 16th 2009 6:56PM

I don't know why a htpc card would carry display port... most would just have hdmi. The only real benefit is that this card is maybe a little cheaper... but still, there are better alternatives.

Neutral

Ordeith @ Feb 17th 2009 12:42AM

It has HDMI and DisplayPort.

DisplayPort is better than HDMI anyway. Why wouldn't you want it?

Neutral

z-bargain.com @ Feb 16th 2009 7:56PM

They're banking that Display Port becomes the standard over HDMI. As far as HTPC cards are concerned, they still haven't incorporated HDMI's capability to carry digital audio over a single cable yet.

If they could create a cable that has better resolution than HDMI (display port); which also has a better connector than HDMI (HDMI is junk), but also carries digital audio; then they will get the backing of Television and Home Theater companies. Otherwise they're reverting back to running two cables. One for HDTV and one for your surround sound.

Neutral

Ordeith @ Feb 17th 2009 12:44AM

And why wouldn't a more capable, higher resolution, higher bandwidth, royalty free standard replace HDMI?

Neutral

timmy @ Feb 17th 2009 6:29PM

The article states that the card is PCI-express and yet the picture clearly shows an older PCI interface. The actual model probably supports both DisplayPort and ISA. 8^) I don't believe a thing I read in botched press releases, especially when the picture quite obviously doesn't match the description.

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