I'm not familiar with the S3 Savage Pro, but S3 typically has above average compatibility and performance in DOS. But there's been a lot of discussion and testing done on best DOS card on these boards lately, and it seems that the best options are:
-TNT2 M64 PCI
-3dfx Voodoo Banshee PCI
-Cirrus Logic GD5446

Here's a couple of threads:
DOS PCI Video Card Compatibility and Benchmark tests
More DOS PCI Benchmarks

What are the rest of the specs of the system you are pairing it with, and what OS and games will you be running on it?

Ozzuneoj wrote:

What are the rest of the specs of the system you are pairing it with, and what OS and games will you be running on it?

Pentium MMX 200MHz
Tseng 2Mb PCI (no idea what model, but I can find out if you really want to know 😀 )
48Mb RAM
Sound Blaster AWE64 (this is a bigger pain to set up than I remember sound ever being in DOS)
DOS 6.22

Games will range from late 80's games like Street Rod II and Sierra titles all the way up to whatever I have from the mid 90's games like Wing Command IV, Duke3D, Doom, Tomb Raider. Basically a broad range of games from really old to more modern 3D DOS games so I'd like a card capable of doing it all. Don't want hardware Glide acceleration though just software.

I've been reading about a lot of cards that have issues with games like Jazz Jackrabbit and Command Keen stuttering and I can at least say for certain that my Tseng card doesn't do that so I don't really want to downgrade by upgrading.

I could be wrong (I'm sure I'll be corrected) but I believe later TSeng cards aren't as competitive as the older ISA ones (like the ET4000 that people seem to like). So you may run into some performance limitations that are actually video card related.

I don't know where the Savage 4 Pro's 2D performance falls among the cards that clueless1 mentioned, but I think compatibility should be decent, if this chart is any indicator:
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

In fact, according to that, the Tseng cards have lots of serious problems with some games, so you'll likely have better compatibility and I would almost guarantee better performance.

Also, if you're the type that likes to have old retail boxed hardware, that's a pretty sweet looking package. I believe that card would be from ~1999-2000, so a 16+ year old card, brand new in box is a nice bonus. I think its one of the last good cards S3 put out as well. This makes it much newer than the rest of your system, but you know it won't be a bottleneck at least.

... just realized it is PCI as well. PCI cards of similar capabilities are getting more expensive and much harder to find, so that adds to the value as well.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I don't know where the Savage 4 Pro's 2D performance falls among the cards that clueless1 mentioned, but I think compatibility should be decent, if this chart is any indicator:
http://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

That's where I found out about the Savage4. The TNT2 seems identical to it, but for me purchasing off Ebay the Savage4 is the cheaper option at the moment. Here's hoping I can get it because someone else is watching it. I don't like last second bidding wars. 😒

My current video card is the Tseng ET4000/W32P. The list mentions serious display problems with the Command Keen games but I don't recall any, although I only tested for about five minutes.

Just make sure if you can to check the card is keyed correctly. The first TNT2 M64 I bought was keyed universal, but would not work in my 5v PCI slot. I made sure the next one I bought was keyed specifically 5v.

If you're happy with the price on that Savage4, go for it. At the very least, it can go in your collection with that nice box and completeness it'll look good on the shelf. 😀

I know this seller. They are offering these cards twice as cheap locally, in Russia:
http://www.pc-1.ru/i_shop/video/pci

I have bought a few boxed Stealth III S530s directly from them when I was in Moscow for my 486 setups. They worked very well, especially given the price of $4 per boxed card.

Unfortunately I have no idea when I would have a chance to go to Moscow again, otherwise I could buy them cheaper and ship to you. They still have plenty of nice and cheap stuff there, but they used to have more. I managed to pick up some low profile OEM 8MB Rage 128s from them at $8 per card, but those didn't run on 486s, probably needed a 3.3V, I still need to play more with them. They also had some OEM STB Voodoo IIs for sale for $10 per card, but these are gone too.

The S3 Savage4 can have different VESA BIOSes. Some support 8/16/32 bpp generic modes and some 8/15/16/32 incl. low res modes.
I haven't seen a Savage4 BIOS supporting 24 bpp modes.

elianda wrote:

I haven't seen a Savage4 BIOS supporting 24 bpp modes.

Is that good or bad?

Bad for some late Dos Demoscene-Stuff.

But V3-AGP is also "PCI" because no AGP-Transfer is supported. So why has the Banshee PCI an advice?

I guess it was just a suggestion because the OP stated that he is looking for a card for his earlier system compared to his 98 Pentium II. So it could be assumed his earlier system is PCI only.
Since the 2D core in Banshee and V3/V4/V5 is identical you can extend this recommendation to V3 AGP as well.

elianda wrote:

I guess it was just a suggestion because the OP stated that he is looking for a card for his earlier system compared to his 98 Pentium II. So it could be assumed his earlier system is PCI only.
Since the 2D core in Banshee and V3/V4/V5 is identical you can extend this recommendation to V3 AGP as well.

kanecvr said that his Banshee does not have to use the alternate video mode in Wing Commander 3. My V3 2K PCI does require the alternate video mode for the in-game movies to work. I think that's where there was some differentiation between the Banshee and Voodoo3.

As I've said in a number of posts, the S540 is my goto DOS card. I've yet to find a game that has any issues with it. Scrolling has been smooth in games like Jazz Jack Rabbit and Commander Keen. You won't regret it for DOS.

It doesn't fair that well in 9x using D3D or OpenGL. It works fine, but you can find better cards for the price when it comes to 3D performance. My only concern is that it run VERY hot when running things like Quake. As in to hot to touch. You should make sure to have good air flow if you're gonna run 3D games.

All in all, it's my favorite primary DOS card and work well with a VooDoo 1.

Sadly the person on Ebay that sold me the card had to give me a refund today because the Russian post office lost the package 😒 They'd had the thing for two days and it hadn't even gone anywhere. After all that I don't think I'll bother purchasing items from Russia again unfortunately.

So now I'm left to hunt for another S3 Savage4 😠

Just a year ago, you could find dozens of listings for 32MB S540's on ebay on any given day. Both in PCI and AGP. All from the U.S., and for about $15.00. What happened? I bought a few of them a couple years ago, because the were so cheap and worked so well. I mean there were tons of them on ebay. How did they all vanish in a year? I would offer one to you, but the only one I'm not using is my only backup. Now that I know they are getting harder to find, I don't want to be without it. In my previous post I mentioned how hot they run, so I don't expect them to last forever.

I really didn't to deal with removing the heatsink on these cards as its bonded to it with that industrial strength thermal epoxy. I'm not talking that weak stuff Voodoo uses on their 4's and 5's. I'm talking that epoxy that holds broken concrete blocks together when a building or structure is damaged and needs a repair. I'd love to slap some sort of copper fansink on the GPU, but I don't think it can be done without breaking the GPU package.

Maybe its best to just forget the S540 and move on to any other good DOS card. There are very few games in DOS that take advantage of the smooth scrolling it offers, and the rest of the Savage 4 cards are rare and pricey. If you continue to looke for one, I hope you find a good deal and if you do get one, then provide lots of good airflow to extend its life.

I did manage to find another S540 shortly after making that post. A seller from Germany had one and shipped it out the next day.

The funny thing is after I purchased the second card Russian post found the package and are apparently continuing to deliver it to me.

Does anyone have the BIOS flash downloads for these boards? I've just ordered a PCI variant of the S540 32mb but archive.org does not have diamonds files uploaded. There definately were BIOS updates.

I run S3 Savage (3D Blaster Savage) with 16Mb in my AMD K6 and its even Faster then the TNT2 Pro from ELSA with 32Mb. (On K6-2)

Its very combatible in DOS, for sure.
For the 3D Blaster is also a BIOS Update avaible which increases VBE Combatiblity.

Its a Dream AGP Card for DOS, no scrolling issues 😀

I think S3 Trio3D/2X is even better for DOS: ftp://retronn.de/vesainfo/S3_Trio3D2x_86C362/ … 3D2x_86C362.txt
The Savage Chips seem to lack 24 bit VBE support: ftp://retronn.de/vesainfo/S3_86C397R3_Savage4 … eedstarA200.txt

However BIOS implementation may vary.