Price, Availability and Warranty
S3 Chrome S27, in either 128MiB or tested 256MiB flavours, aren't quite available in the UK yet, but S3 are working on it. They're quoting an initial price for the of £44.50 plus dreaded VAT, bringing it to just over £52 all in. They only gave us one online store that'll be selling it over here -- EConline.co.uk -- for that price, and presently they don't have any stock levels. Shipping seems to be just shy of £9 from EConline.That puts the S3 Chrome S27 MiB squarely in between current pricing for GeForce 6600 DDR2 and lesser 6200 models, TurboCache or otherwise, and a few pounds short of Radeon X1300 PRO boards with 256MiB.
Paired with a cheap dual PEG16X boards like the Asrock 939SLI32-eSATA2, dual graphics with Chrome S27s is doable for under £170, although MultiChrome's performance counts against it in the desirability stakes.
For our readers in the US, Newegg carry both models with the tested 256MiB boards in stock and fully available at $99.99, here.
GeForce 6600 DDR2 and 6600 GT are the same price or just than $15 more expensive (6600 GT), and Radeon X1300 PROs are plentifully available between $83 and the S27 256MiB's price of $99.99 on Newegg, too.
S3's website at s3graphics.com makes no mention as to the warranty period for their hardware, and Newegg's product page for the hardware says nothing about it either. More data as we get it.
