X-bit labs

S3 Graphics: "The Market Is Screaming Out for a Solid Third Supplier of Graphics Products – We Will Be That Company" (page 5)

Category: Video

by Anna Filatova , Anton Shilov

[ 09/19/2005 | 03:11 PM ]

Driver Issues

X-bit labs: Graphics chip designers ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp. have hundreds of engineers working on drivers. How many software developers do you have?

Nadeem Mohammad: We have close to 300 engineers in our software department.

X-bit labs: While S3’s products are capable of producing acceptable performance and quality in a lot of popular games, some games are still unlikely to satisfy end-users, which is a result of the lack, or very reduced collaboration with game developers. Can you name game developers that you constantly work with to ensure smooth operation of your GPUs with their titles?

Nadeem Mohammad: We have been making great process on this regard – particularly in the last 18 months, we have active engagement with over 80 game developers include leading companies and publishers which include, EA, Microsoft, Activision , Relic, Remedy, Crytek and many others.

X-bit labs: S3 Inc. used to have a pretty comprehensive web-site for developers, currently the information for developers seem to be limited with “ISV Corner” at ChromeZone web-site. Do you plan any improvements?

Nadeem Mohammad: There is certainly a lot of room for improvement on the website – our ISV group’s focus has been to establish contact with all leading developers and publishers and ensure we deliver sufficient samples to ensure great out of the box compatibility and performance – as such I think our developer corner had been neglected. Our ChromeZone will however get a boost once we launch Chrome20 to ensure our customers have a quality resource to get the latest game patches and driver updates.

X-bit labs: How many games have been tested for compatibility with the Chrome20-series chips?

Nadeem Mohammad: The number increases daily – I believe the last count was in the order of 200ish.