This card was made by Diamond. I've used a Viper 550 (TNT) for years and a friend of mine used a Viper 770 (TNT2) for years also […]
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This card was made by Diamond. I've used a Viper 550 (TNT) for years and a friend of mine used a Viper 770 (TNT2) for years also. Both were passively cooled and seemed to at least not have too much serious thermal issues.

But about your worry about frying your Viper 2: If you rig a fan to the heatsink like in the link I provided (you could also opt to use better case ventilation if you prefer that over rigging active cooling on your old graphics cards) then you should be home free, so to say 😜

And the way Brostenen rigged his Voodoo 3 is actually quite popular here on Vogons, for several for good reasons:
-It's cheap
-It doesn't damage the card (no damaging the original heatsink...if you care about that 😜 but lots of people prefer to not ruin the original heatsink, including me)
-It's very fast and very easy to do, only need some wires and at least some common sense
-Most important is...it works! 😁 I modded my GF6800 (Vanilla Edition) the same way, only had to remove it's original fan assembly

So I can highly recommend it 😉 Only thing that could go wrong I think is if you have some accident while rigging the fan, like ESD damage for instance.

Running this Athlon Tbird 1000 with Viper II Z200 right now and posting with latest S3 drivers. It doesn't have the controls of the original brand drivers but seems to be lighter and simpler to install.
Running with the jumpers opened until I understand if actually all of them must be closed for AGP 4X. I got ~2200 in 3dmark2000, is it right?

Edit: result next post

Edit: next post

Interesting, with the branded older drivers on 3dmark2000 I get higher values:
Athlon option: ~ 3400
D3D software T&L: ~3300
D3D hardware t&L: ~2100
It seems that the T&L option in the driver is in facts using the internal seems slower hw unit, but with Opengl t&l things are different:
Treemark t&l off: 15 fps
Treemark t&l on: 25 fps

Edit: I reinstalled the original S3 latest drivers and testing.

Do you get flashing geometry in Quake 3 with the T&L enabled?

^ In addition to that, /r_primitives 1, 2 and 3 should all be separately tested (default is 0; and 2 is usually fastest)

Hello, folks. I've recently read somewhere that viper2 is very sensitive to the AGP frequency, it's 66MHz or nothing. Is that correct ?

Hello, im lookig for Inno3d Savage 2000 64 mb version bios image, if anyone had, could you send me or upload here?

Thanks

Hello,

I have a Savage 2000 Viper II Z200 videocard and I tried to run unreal engine games using S3Metal. My system configuration is: Windows 98SE, Via Apollo Pro 133, PIII 900, 128 Mb RAM, ESS Solo-1, 32 GB Sandisk CF card instead of an HDD.
The only game that works on that system is Unreal Tournament 99. Even the Unreal Gold doesn't work with S3 Metal on Savage 2000. When I choose S3Metal it renders in Software mode regardless of the version of metal.dll. Other games, like Citizen Kabuto, Clive Barker's Undying don't allow to choose s3metal renderer in options. But the performance of Savage 2000 UT99 is pretty descent, around 50 FPS at 1024x768X16. It is even better, than that of GF6800GT 256Mb in Unreal Tournament in Direct 3D on another system with P4 (poor optimzation of the Unreal Engine for Direct 3D). It's a pity that Savage 2000 and S3metal work only in one game.
Has anyone managed to launch other than UT99 Unreal Engine titles using S3Metal Api on Savage 2000?

Fenyo wrote on 2021-04-26, 09:32:

Hello, im lookig for Inno3d Savage 2000 64 mb version bios image, if anyone had, could you send me or upload here?

Thanks

Hi! Did you find this bios? I added 4 vram chips to my Savage 2000 32mb and now I want to try to see 64mb.

FYI. We can extend memory for Inno3d Savage 2000 32mb to 64mb without any changes. In my case, I had a problem with lost contact for a few chip's legs. After fixing this, my Savage 2000 saw all 64mb of memory.

leileilol wrote on 2015-07-01, 21:26:

I have them. They all start with "dmmq3" and run with a special S3 Quake3 build also dating from around Jan/Feb 2000 (note: thi […]
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I have them. They all start with "dmmq3" and run with a special S3 Quake3 build also dating from around Jan/Feb 2000 (note: this version predates the network protocol breakage so incompatibility is guaranteed)

What it really does is add a DXT loader to Q3A and load DDS textures directly, and the maps ship only with DDS textures (no fallbacks, so normla q3 will just see a null texture). Sadly it's plagued by vendor lock-in so it doesn't work on newer non-S3 cards that support S3TC extensions.

There's repacked versions of the same maps with the textures converted to a lower res TGA, which can bring pure checksum incompatibilities, so watch out for that too.

While most of the maps were indeed 'techdemo' quality, there is one surviving map that's well recirculated for its playability - Blood Run 😀

ALSO FYI no Q3 source port can load these maps natively yet. I did try to start work of this on OA though, but haven't brought it into the Git tree yet nor did I implement mipmaps.

If somebody wants to try the maps, or needs the Q3 version:

S3 Savage MeTal API 3D Accelerated Games List

Everything from 1.17 down should work.

I have fond memories of this card! I spent countless hours tinkering with all the broken T&L drivers and benchmarking as a kid home sick from school.