The Inquirer is reporting that S3's own senior manager has hinted that their recently announced DeltaChrome graphics processor "could put his firm in the hall of fame", as they expect its performance to be on par or above that of the Radeon 9700 Pro but in the $100 price range... now, that's a bold statement considering retail cards are expected in this second quarter:
Even more impressive is the pricing. S3 thinks these cards, which it is positioning as a high end mainstream system, at slightly less than $100.
S3 believes that the Columbia "will perform in the 20K+ range for 3DMark2001SE" and outscore even the Radeon 9700 Pro from ATI, and close to the NV30 from Nvidia.