The name's overkill, mate 😁

i recall it's from sometime back in 1999? no, 1998? first come with S3TC... And a great leap from ViRGE i suppose. Ah, that is where the fun is i guess, to compare it with the ViRGEs, hehe

I thought I missed a Bethesda Softworks' Terminator game release when I saw the title of this thread.... till I actually read it. 😁

I've been looking for one of these cards for my collection for some time. All I have is a couple Savage 4 cards.

Is that free ship worldwide? I doubt it. 😢

Apparently, it's actually called the Hercules Terminator BEAST. 😁

Those two Beasts look a bit different. What is the deal between the two, memory?

+ + =
These are all the connections that I can link up to get the graphics card. At least by name. 🤣

@Malik

you forgot the "Savage" part

Oops is that the right pic? 😁

archsan wrote:

@Malik […]
Show full quote

@Malik

you forgot the "Savage" part

Oops is that the right pic? 😁

No, this is the right pic.

Ooooooh Yeeeeeaaaaaah!

ahahahah 🤣 @ killer pose

retro games 100 wrote:

It's a Hercules Terminator Beast Savage 3D card. Here's a review -

http://www.anandtech.com/print/244

If I had some more money and time, I would happily buy this and hundreds of other less popular old video cards on ebay. For this particular card, I'd just buy it because its name made me laugh. Has anyone got this card, and if so, how much fun did you have with it?

I used a S3 Savage 4 card in combination with a Voodoo2 and a 500Mhz P3 as retro rig and it was stable and also didn't show compatibility issues.

Instead - as the Savage chip should basically have the same 2D core as the virge and trio familiy it should work fine with most dos games.

Also the Savage supports S3's own MeTaL API which was only used by a few games, but nevertheless a true retro manic should try out those few:

- Unreal Tournament
- Quake III Arena
- Rune - Halls of Valhalla

I also think that earlier versions (before the final patch) of Unreal had the MeTaL Api in their advanced options menu, but I'm not sure.

Generally the follower of the Savage3D, the Savage4 should have better image quality and be a little bit faster.
Like the model above (Hercules Terminator.... etc,) many Savage4 cards came without active cooling, which is another advantage. Combined with a passive cooled VIA C3 700 my S370 System was almost quiet.

The original savage 3d had NO multitexturing. So for games like unreal and even quake2 it was barely able to produce playable framerates. I had a gainward savage3d card for a few years and it still proved to be quite usefull/stable with most games. As usuall s3's drivers were a piece of crap and a lot of games that were buggy never got fixed. For the games that did run, it ran great for the most part. still a nice card to mess around with once in a while.

Silent Loon wrote:

....Instead - as the Savage chip should basically have the same 2D core as the virge and trio familiy it should work fine with most dos games.

Sigh. And I thought I can "retire" from ebay already. Oh well, guess I just have to hunt for both the Savages. (The quest for vintage pc parts, craps or not craps, continues...again.) As they say, curiosity killed the cat.

Savage 2000 is where it's at for your "S3 strangeness" experience. That's a fairly fascinating, somewhat broken GPU. 😀 They basically targeted Quake 3 and UT99 so the drivers can run those games pretty well.

Savage 4 targeted Unreal and UT99 too actually. With access to the S3 S3TC textures the game sure looks better than the other options of the time. No other card could run those textures until Chris Donhal released his OpenGL renderer with S3TC support.

Savage 3D - games playable at 640x480, some rare older at 800x600 (speed between Voodoo 1 and 2)
Savage 4 - playable at 800x600 most games (Little faster than Voodoo 2, depends on model)
Savage 2000 - ok for 1024x768 (fast as Geforce 2MX, but worse driver support)

All of them problems with drivers, no advanced settings without S3Tweak (W9x only software), most problems solved by disabling AGP texturings and other similar features (had these problems with Savage 3D and Via based mobo with K6-2)
Savage 3D - some problems solved by using diferent bios
Savage 4 - sometimes bad cooling (overheating), depends on manufacturer
Savage 2000 - drivers ok, but some never games wont work because of mising T&L under DirectX.

Had Savage 3D few years, after that Savage 2000 few months

Very interesting. Thanks for everyone's input.

vlask wrote:

Savage 2000 - ok for 1024x768 (fast as Geforce 2MX, but worse driver support)

Understatement of the century. 😳 I wouldn't even call it driver "support". Maybe call it driver dumping. 😉 Another alpha-quality drop for our beloved end users. And they stopped supporting the card entirely after a year and a half or so.

I remember reading that for the VIA IGPs that S3 used the Savage 4 3D hardware instead of Savage 2000's. But apparently they used the Savage 2000 GUI accelerator. That gave me the impression that Savage 2000's 3D was really a mess.