It's hard to say now what DeltaChrome is used herein. As you know, this family will include at least two GPU models — with 8 and 4 pipelines and 1 texture unit per pipeline. According to the Japanese sources, S3 Graphics levels the performance of this card with those based on RADEON 9800 and GeForce FX 5900. So, perhaps, in Japan they showed a íigh-end card on 8-pipeline DeltaChrome F1 or even F1 Pole.
It's known already that S3 prepared two different reference designs of these cards for volume production: a 6-layer PCB for high-end and a 4-layer PCB for mainstream solutions. According to provisional information, high-end GPU clock speeds should start from about 315MHz, mainstream — from 275MHz. We also know that that such card has HDTV video decoder (up to 1080 lines) and is capable of 90° rotations. The sales date hasn't been specified in Japan yet as well as the pricing.
It looks like itll be as good as a 9700 pro if they can get good, stable drivers. They took too long to get that thing out too. I remember a little after the 9700 pros were out, the deltachrome was bragging about 25k marks performance. That was way before any 9800 pro existed and the top score was 23k and a couple hundred. also I wouldnt be supprised by the time the deltachrome comes to america and ready to order, the r420 is around the corner. Sorry but I dont see the deltachrome being worth more than around $150
I do welcome any new/old competition out there though, the more the merrier and generally prices drop when that happens.
