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

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.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 16th 2009 9:19AM]

So is DisplayPort adequately encysted for the film companies?

[Ordeith Posted Feb 16th 2009 11:55AM]

DisplayPort supports HDCP.

[DWhizzle Posted Feb 16th 2009 2:05PM]

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

[CmdX Posted Feb 16th 2009 4:50PM]

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

[DWhizzle Posted 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.

[Ordeith Posted Feb 17th 2009 12:42AM]

It has HDMI and DisplayPort.

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

[lenrex Posted 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.

[Ordeith Posted Feb 17th 2009 12:44AM]

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

[(Unverified) Posted 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.