Price:
$100 - $150 esp (Through 3rd Party Manufacturers)
Ship Date:
March/April 99
S3 burst back onto the video accelerator scene last year with the announcement of the Savage3D accelerator chipset in May of 1998.
The Savage3D part promised to usher in several new technologies when it debuted according to S3's lengthy press release. The chip's unprecedented (at that time) .25 micron die-size and its proprietary S3TC texture compression routines were only two of several unique features that made the Savage3D a part to watch.
Unfortunately as often happens when new technology is introduced, the Savage3D became somewhat of a victim of it's own newness to the market place.
The texture compression format that the Savage3D was compatible with was amazing, literally transforming the bland and somewhat dull basic graphics of Quake2 into a majestically deep world of live textures and feeling. The problem with the texture compression enhancements lay in the fact that they only appeared in applications like the specially S3-prepared Quake2 demo, and not in actual games on the shelves.
Compounding the Savage3D's teething problems were drivers that needed constant updates, over 30 and counting as of the writing of this article, and no less than three BIOS flashes for the cards that were based on the early Savage3D chips at that time.
The final nail in the Savage3D's coffin came in the form of its very limited on board frame buffer support. 2, 4, or a maximum of 8 total megabytes of on card ram were all the Savage3D could handle, which
made cards based on the S3 chip look pale to buyers when compared to the many 16MB offerings from the competition.
Sharky Extreme recently reviewed a very capable video card based on the most recent batch of Savage3D chips, and found it to be a great performance bargain for its meager cost of $89. That card was the Hercules Beast Supercharged, and it served to remind our whole staff that even with some problems the Savage3D was a part that still offered a high degree of performance satisfaction.
