Ship Date: Q4 1999

Hot on the heels of S3's Savage 4 Pro Xtreme chip announcement earlier this month comes another announcement, which we touched upon briefly in our preview of the Xtreme. A few weeks ago, S3 formally unveiled plans for their next generation part (the dust has settled and we've been given the go ahead now to print), the Savage 2000, formerly known as the GX4. The GX4 project has been under development for quite sometime but after S3's success at OEM level and with the acquisition of Diamond Multimedia, the general consensus we got from S3 reps was that this will be the first time they can push the boat out in terms of technology.

Initially there will be two SKUs for the new chip but S3 has said that more may follow. The Savage 2000 will be targeted at OEMs and the Savage 2000+ will be a retail add-in card solution. The word from S3 is that Savage 2000+ is targeted to scuffle it out at the 'high-end' of the 3D card wild west arena with the likes of NVIDIA & 3dfx's next generation part. If this is the case, then it'll be a welcome 'first' for S3. From the S3 roadmap below it's clear that S3 is trying to stamp their own authority on the graphics market and don't ask us about ProjectX.