S3 Builds a Better Savage4

When S3 rolled out its Savage4 chipset last February, many gamers had hoped they would finally be able to experience S3TC-enhanced (S3 Texture Compression) games at a frame rate higher than that of S3's previous chip, the somewhat substandard Savage3D. Unfortunately, Savage4 cards failed to compete in terms of sheer performance in the face of Nvidia's TNT2 and 3dfx's Voodoo3.

Earlier this morning, S3 took steps to remedy that situation by unveiling its Savage4 Xtreme chipset. Essentially a Savage4 Pro, the Xtreme is bin-sorted and tested to run at 166MHz, significantly higher than earlier Savage4 production units, which were clocked at 125MHz and 143MHz. The increase in speed brings some much-needed 3D performance to an already value-minded product.

"Initial testing of a sample Xtreme 166 accelerator shows at least a 21 percent performance increase over existing Savage4 accelerators in every D3D and OpenGL-based benchmark we've tested," says Mercury Research analyst Dean McCarron.

And of course, the Savage4 Xtreme is very capable of taking advantage of S3TC, S3's texture-compression technology. In fact, one of the first games to fully support S3TC, Epic's Unreal Tournament, is only a few months away from shipping. Unreal Tournament's CD will contain two versions of the game: one with standard 256x256-sized textures and another designed to take advantage of S3TC, with the more graphically pleasing 2048x2048 texture sizes.

Naturally, Diamond will be one of the first companies to implement the new chipset onto its boards. To make room for the Xtreme, Diamond will drop the price of its older Savage4 Pro-powered Stealth III S540 down to US$99, after a $30 mail-in rebate. Diamond's new Stealth III card, logically called the S540 Xtreme, will retail for around $129 sometime this September. Other Xtreme vendors will include Elsa and Number Nine, with more vendors to be announced at a later date.

The new Xtreme is definitely an improvement for S3 and serves as a jumping point for the company's true 3D powerhouse, the GX4. Don't hold your breath though - S3 is still months away from releasing that chipset. We'll have a full review of Diamond's Stealth III S540 Xtreme in the coming days, so keep your eyes peeled.