S3 has announced plans to introduce a new series of DX10-compatible video cards by the end of the year. It's not yet known whether the new Chrome 4 designs will be a continuing evolution of S3's aging DeltaChrome technology, (currently represented by the Chrome S27) or will represent an entirely new architecture, but there should be two flavors of the card available by Christmas. The Chrome 460 will be a DX10-compatible part manufactured on a 90nm process, while the Chrome 430 will supposedly be built on 65nm technology and be DX10.1 compliant. Both cards should feature support for HDMI and HDCP, and will rely on PCIe 1.0 for connectivity.

Although it has been years since S3 was a serious contender in the video card industry, the company's offerings have improved in recent years when compared against low-end cards from ATI and NVIDIA. That's not to say S3 has ever demonstrated a decisive advantage over either company, but the Chrome series has managed to improve its overall performance relative to the competition.

Perhaps more importantly (and as XBit Labs reports), the new Chrome series gives VIA a low-power integrated option to pair with next-generation mini-ITX boards. It's hard to imagine anyone seriously planning to run Vista on a mini-ITX system today, but as VIA's own offerings in that segment and Vista itself continue to mature, its quite possible the combination could become commonplace. When that occurs, VIA's obviously going to want an integrated video solution capable of taking advantage of Vista's eye-candy, and the company looks set to rely on the Chrome 4 series to provide it.