I've dug up a lost video card civilization!

spynoodle

spynoodle

Active Member
Lately I've been researching the remains of Via's S3 video cards. They don't actually seem that bad for basic performance cards. The only problem: YOU CAN'T BUY THEM ANYWHERE!!! I would just use their "Gstore" Online store, but I'm too paranoid by their out-of-date security certificate. Does anyone know anywhere else where you could buy one, or if the Gstore is secure? Here's a link to their main site: http://www.s3graphics.com/en/index.aspx
 
Legacy PCI or AGP. They aren't bad cards for their time and are still effective through XP SP3 for basic graphics.

NVidia RIVA TNT
Voodoo
S3 Virge/DX

All of these cards can be had used for $5 or so used. All good cards, very rugged and supported @1024x768 by just about any operating system these days including most flavors of Linux. Most are in the 32mb range and make excellent test cards for the workbench.

I have several of them I still use when bench testing.
 
The 540GTX looks like an interesting card for home theater PCs. It'll be quite handy to have a sound card and graphics card built into a single unit, and thus will fit in a mITX box.
 
The thing that I like about them is the Multichrome function, which is like SLI or Crossfire but without the need for a supported motherboard. That's the only reason that I think they'd be worth anything. If anyone finds SOMEONE who's selling it, please tell, just so we know what the prices are.
 
diduknowthat said:
I thought those card did HDMI audio pass through, which means that you still need to connect a sound card to the graphics card internally.
Click to expand...

Not true. That was the nVidia cards. If you have a post 2 series it certainly has it (the 2900 didn't if I recall, but the lower end ones you'd put into a htpc would have it).

ATI Avivo™ HD Video & Media

Combine advanced HD video processing with cool, quiet, and energy efficient operation that will delight a home theater enthusiast. ATI Avivo™ HD technology provides hardware based H.264/VC-1 decoding of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies and built-in 5.1 surround audio designed for an easy HDMI connection to big-screen TVs.
Click to expand...
HDMI output support

* All display resolutions up to 1920x10802
* Integrated HD audio controller with support for stereo and multi-channel (up to 7.1) audio formats, including AC-3, AAC, DTS, DTS-HD & Dolby True-HD4, enabling a plug-and-play audio solution over HDMI
Click to expand...
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk.../hd-2400/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-2400-series.aspx
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk.../Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4870-specifications.aspx
 
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