After been quiet for some years working on R&D, S3 seems to be ready for a comeback with its new Chrome20 series of graphics cards, aiming at the mid-range market. The Californian company used to have a role in the market of graphics hardware a few years ago, competing legendary 3DFX and Maxtor. Currently, the market consists primary of NVidia and ATI, but S3 believes that it is able to regain a position in the lower-end of the gaming market, where the standard versions of the ATI X700 and GeForce 6600s play.

The Chrome20 series of products use 90nm process technology. S3G have gone for low voltage and cool operating temperatures with Chrome20. They're also claiming the 'highest core clock of any GPU to date'.

Chrome20 products will be available as both mainstream desktop and mobile products, so if Chrome20 really does offer good performance with minimal power consumption, it could have good chances amongst laptop vendors.

The performance of the card when running some gane titles are adequate, at least at the 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolutions most users tend to run games at currently.

"Users should demand that all available games run in full resolution at smooth frame rates at their standard settings, Chrome20 Series will fulfill that requirement," a statement by S3 Graphics describes performance of the new product family.

S3 Graphics also offers high definition wide-screen with enhanced HDTV connectivity, although it is not clear whether the monitors will be equipped with an HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), or not.

Public availability of the Chrome20 products would be before Christmas, S3 Graphics indicated. The Chrome20 family of visual processing units will also include some other chips, designed for entry-level, mainstream and performance-mainstream.