S3 Savage
Encyclopedia
Savage was a product-line of PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
graphics chipsets
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
designed by S3
S3 Graphics
S3 Graphics, Ltd is an American company specializing in graphics chipsets. Although they do not have the large market share that they once had, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.-History:...
.
Savage 3D
At the 1998 E3 Expo S3 introduced the first Savage product, Savage3D. Compared to its ViRGEVirge
A virge, from the Latin virga, is a type of rod, made of wood.Originally it was one or more branches used as an instrument for corporal punishment, or as a riding crop.It is presently best known as the ceremonial staff of the Anglican...
-derived predecessor (Trio3D), Savage3D was a technological leap forward. Its innovative feature-set included the following:
- "free" (single-cycle) trilinear-filtering
- hardware motion-compensation and subpicture alpha-blending (MPEG-2MPEG-2MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
video) - integrated NTSC/PAL TV-encoder, (optional) Macrovision
- S3 Texture CompressionS3 Texture CompressionS3 Texture Compression is a group of related lossy texture compression algorithms originally developed by Iourcha et al. of S3 Graphics, Ltd. for use in their Savage 3D computer graphics accelerator...
(S3TC) - multi-tap X/Y interpolating front-end (BITBLT) and back-end (overlay) video-scaler
Unfortunately for S3, deliveries of the Savage3D were hampered by poor manufacturing yields. Only one major board-vendor, Hercules, made any real effort to ship a Savage3D product. S3's yield problems forced Hercules to hand pick usable chips from the silicon wafers. Combined with poor drivers and the chip's lack of multitexturing support, the Savage3D failed in the market.
In early 1999, S3 retired the Savage3D and released the Savage4 family. Many of the Savage3D's limitations were addressed for the Savage 4 chipset.
Savage4
Fillrate
The term fillrate usually refers to the number of pixels a video card can render and write to video memory in a second. In this case, fillrates are given in megapixels per second or in gigapixels per second , and they are obtained by multiplying the number of raster operations by the clock...
in dual-textured games like Savage 3D. Savage4 supported the then-new AGP 4X
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
although at the older 3.3 voltage specification. It was manufactured on a 250 nm process, like Savage 3D. The graphics core was clocked at 125 MHz, with the board's SDRAM
SDRAM
Synchronous dynamic random access memory is dynamic random access memory that is synchronized with the system bus. Classic DRAM has an asynchronous interface, which means that it responds as quickly as possible to changes in control inputs...
clocked at either 125 MHz or 143 MHz (Savage4 Pro). They could be equipped with 8-32 MiB
MIB
MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision...
memory. And while an integrated TV encoder was dropped, the DVD acceleration was commendable, and the chip supported an early version of the DVI
Digital Visual Interface
The Digital Visual Interface is a video interface standard covering the transmission of video between a source device and a display device. The DVI standard has achieved widespread acceptance in the PC industry, both in desktop PCs and monitors...
interface for LCDs.
A "LT" suffixed part featured reduced power consumption and was, like ATI's Rage LT series, intended for laptops. Nevertheless, this ended up in several AGP cards such as Number Nine's S3 Savage4 8MB part (pictured).
The Savage4 gained numerous design-wins with board-vendors, including Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers...
(Stealth III S540) and Creative Labs. The Savage4 series' single cycle trilinear filtering
Trilinear filtering
Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps.Bilinear filtering has several weaknesses that make it an unattractive choice in many cases: using it on a full-detail texture when scaling to a very small size...
and S3TC texture compression created a 3D card with exceptional image quality. However, by continuing with a bandwidth-constraining 64-bit memory bus, S3 guaranteed this graphics card would never be a performance part under 32-bit color. Drivers were again an issue with S3's product; holding back overall performance and causing compatibility issues with software and hardware.
Savage4 was hardly a match for the new 3dfx Voodoo3
Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo 2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in 1999...
, ATI Rage 128
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
, Matrox G400
Matrox G400
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...
, or NVIDIA Riva TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
. In OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
games such as Quake II
Quake II
Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...
, Savage4 performed about as well as G400 did with its slow initial OpenGL support and was far behind TNT2 and Voodoo3. Within Direct3D titles such as Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division is a first person shooter video game released by Monolith Productions in 1998. It was the first game to use Monolith's flagship Lithtech engine. It has heavy influences from Japanese anime, particularly Patlabor, Appleseed, and the various Gundam series...
, Savage 4 scored almost 50% slower than TNT2 and Voodoo3 even at a low resolution
Display resolution
The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube , flat panel or projection...
such as 800x600.http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=982 The chip was very popular for budget machines, with many generic retail products based on it and OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
PC wins.
Only the high-quality texture capability from its S3TC support gave it good mind share
Mind share
Mind share, or the development of consumer awareness or popularity, is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of brand names. For example, a prospective buyer of a college education...
with the gaming community. Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is a futuristic first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive. Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels...
and Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena , is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly...
, two popular games at the time, shipped with built-in support for S3TC. The compressed textures were a vast improvement over the standard textures used on all other cards. Not only that, but S3TC allowed these much higher quality textures to be rendered with negligible performance impact.
Interestingly, this old card can do "Direct Rendering" in Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
operating systems using the "savage" driver. This opens the possibility of composite rendering using AIGLX
AIGLX
Accelerated Indirect GLX is an open source project founded by Red Hat and the Fedora community, led by Kristian Høgsberg, to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to the X.Org Server and DRI drivers...
or Xgl
Xgl
Xgl was an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL via glitz. It supported hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects by a compositing window manager such as Compiz or...
with Compiz
Compiz
Compiz is one of the first compositing window managers for the X Window System that uses 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. The effects, such as a minimization effect and a cube workspace are implemented as loadable plugins...
or Beryl
Beryl (window manager)
Beryl was a compositing window manager for the X Window System which forked from Compiz in September 2006 and was re-merged in 2007, under the name of Compiz Fusion.-Origin:...
, or other composite managers.
Savage 2000
Diamond Multimedia
Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers...
.
The GPU consisted of roughly 12 million transistors, approximately half the number of transistors of the NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GeForce 256
GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
. Despite this low level of complexity, it was marketed as being similar to NVIDIA's GeForce 256 series. Savage 2000 supported S3's S3TC
S3 Texture Compression
S3 Texture Compression is a group of related lossy texture compression algorithms originally developed by Iourcha et al. of S3 Graphics, Ltd. for use in their Savage 3D computer graphics accelerator...
texture compression, a hardware transform and lighting engine named "S3TL", and was equipped with a "QuadTexture Engine" capable of a single quad-textured pixel per clock or 2 dual-textured pixels per clock. The 3D engine had texture fill-rate potentially equivalent to GeForce 256 at the same clock speed. At the end of 1999, the Savage 2000 and the GeForce 256 were the only gaming-oriented cards with hardware T&L. S3 engineers claimed that the S3TL engine had feature parity with GeForce 256, and that it could render 2.5 million lit and clipped triangles/second. However, S3TL shipped completely non-functional, primarily because initial drivers were Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
6-based (Direct3D 7 was the first release with HW T&L support). Savage 2000 was an AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
2X/4X card and had an internal 350 MHz RAMDAC
RAMDAC
Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter is a combination of three fast DACs with a small SRAM used in computer graphics display adapters to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor...
. The Diamond Viper II Z200 had 32 MB SDR SDRAM.
The initial pre-release specifications had called for a 175 MHz core clock rate, with a resulting 700 million texels/second fillrate. The final card shipped 50 MHz slower, at 125 MHz, resulting in a fill-rate of 500 MTexels/second (only slightly ahead of GeForce 256). With respect to RAM, the card shipped with 166 MHz SDRAM clocked at 155 MHz. The end result in benchmarks showed the card performing ahead of the prior generation of cards (Matrox G400
Matrox G400
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...
, ATI Rage Fury MAXX
ATI Rage
The ATI Rage is a series of graphics chipsets offering GUI 2D acceleration, video acceleration, and 3D acceleration. It is the successor to the Mach series of 2D accelerators.-3D RAGE :...
, NVIDIA RIVA TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
, 3dfx Voodoo3
Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo 2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in 1999...
) but it did not always keep up with the GeForce 256. The drivers were discovered to be buggy as well, with issues with numerous game titles.
Diamond eventually released drivers with S3TL support in OpenGL and Direct3D. Unfortunately S3TL does not function properly. It causes missing textures, errors in geometry and models, and minimal performance benefits. Whether the issues are a result of poor drivers or defective hardware is unknown.
Seemingly unwilling to invest the time and effort required to set up a structured internal driver development team, S3's graphics division was sold to VIA
VIA Technologies
VIA Technologies is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. It is the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets...
for $321 million. S3 would regroup in later years and create the Chrome series
S3 Chrome
S3 Graphics' Chrome series of graphics accelerators arrived in 2004 with the DeltaChrome line of chips. They are designed to be used as discrete, mobile, and integrated graphics solutions.-Overview:...
.
Motherboard integrated chipsets
As a result of being sold to VIAVIA Technologies
VIA Technologies is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. It is the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets...
for $321m, Savage hardware became an integrated motherboard solution, initially as part of the Twister chipset, where Savage 2000 2D silicon was merged with Savage 4 3D hardware. In this respect at least, S3's economical use of transistors proved highly advantageous. Development of Savage as a discrete card was discontinued. The dominant GPU
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
market share once held by S3, now fell primarily to NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
with its GeForce
GeForce
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Nvidia. , there have been eleven iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for use on add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market...
line, and ATI
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
's Radeon
Radeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
series.
The hybrid Savage4/Savage2000 ProSavage IGP was part of chipsets such as KM133, KM266, and KM333, and PL133T, PM133T, PL133T and P4M266. Variants called SuperSavage MX & IX were used in notebooks as well.
The Savage IGP range was superseded by the CastleRock, which later was christened UniChrome.
| Chip | Pipeline Pixel/TMU | Memory clock | Memory interface | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ProSavage(4/8/DDR) | 1 x 2 | System RAM | 64-bit | aka Twister. Memory clock corresponds to chosen system DDR speed. |
| SuperSavage MX & IX | 1 x 2 | Varies | 64/128-bit | Notebook chips |
Models
Chronological order| Chip | Release | Die process | Core clock | Pipeline Pixel/TMU | Fillrate max (MT/s) | Memory clock | Memory interface | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Savage 3D | 6/1998 | 0.25 | 100-120 MHz | 1 x 1 | 100-120 | 120 MHz | 64-bit | AGP Accelerated Graphics Port The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express... 2X or PCI Peripheral Component Interconnect Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer... . Versions: 390, 391 with Macrovision Macrovision Rovi Corporation is a globally operating, US-based company that provides guidance technology, entertainment data, copy protection, industry standard networking and media management technology for digital entertainment devices and services... . |
| Savage 4 Pro | 2/1999 | 0.25 | 110-143 MHz | 1 x 2 | 220-286 | 125-143 MHz | 64-bit | AGP 4X or PCI. Sav4 added single-pass multitexturing. |
| Savage 4 GT | 2/1999 | 0.25 | 110 MHz | 1 x 2 | 220 | 125 MHz | 64-bit | AGP 4X. |
| Savage 4 MX | 2/1999 | 0.25 | 1 x 2 | 64-bit | Notebooks. AGP 4X. | |||
| Savage 4 Xtreme | 8/1999 | 0.25 | 166 MHz | 1 x 2 | 322 | 166 MHz | 64-bit | Diamond Stealth III Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production of the TrackStar, a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers... . AGP 4X. |
| Savage 2000 | 11/1999 | 0.18/0.22 | 125 MHz | 2 x 2 | 500 | 155 MHz | 128-bit | aka GX4. Hybrid process. AGP 4X. Non-functional T&L. |