JetSetWilly wrote:

After some tinkering I have found a S3 Savage Pro+ 32MB PCI which has surprised me because at first sight I thought it was AGP. Does it worth any value, meaning value as performance, video signal quality or 3D capability under DOS/Windows? There is not much info about this very model over the internet -or I have been unable to find it.

It has value as in it is one of the best PCI cards to have for the period it was released in.

The main value is that it can run in a system without an AGP slot. So if you want to enjoy S3 MeTaL on an older system, or one without AGP due to integrated or onboard stuff, this is your friend.

S3 is generally good in DOS, but I doubt there's much out there in the DOS world that would benefit more from this than say a late model VirgeDX/GX. Win9x is the sweet spot for this card in terms of software. Still, it's S3 Savage. so outside of MeTaL stuff (UT99!), performance or quality is less than stellar.

A bit niche in other words, but within that niche you couldn't do much better.

That card is great in a Pentium 1 /II class machine without AGP.

I tested this in a k6-2 build and it's a nice card. Performance-wise it's around the same or slightly stronger than a 3dfx banshee. The visual quality great - sharp and clear image, top-tier texture filtering and little performance loss for 32-bit color. Unreal Tournament has an s3tc texture pack that this card can use. With the latest drivers I had no issues with the games I tested and everything ran fine.

The PCI interface can become a big bottleneck if you decide to run some s3tc demo maps in Unreal though, since even 32MB is still not enough at times and AGP texturing is required.

Thanks a lot for the info.

It seems a good card for a Pentium rig though a bit limited. I´ll do some test anyway.

In other news, I am very much on the lookout for this exact card for my Socket 7 K6-2 build (because I have given up on finding a Banshee PCI) that is currently Running a Mystique 220 + Voodoo 2 SLI. I am hoping to move the Voodoo 2 SLI to my Dimension XPS D333 tha way. I do have a TNT2 M64 PCI I could use for the job but it's not period correct for a 1997/98 build.

i run Creative 3D Blaster Savage with 8Megs and it even runs Omicron - The Nomad Soul very well.
Its just a bit of pain to find the right driver.
Mine does not work with the latest Savage 4 Driver 😳 so i needed to get a older one.
And its very stable, no freezes at all.

its better then TNT2 M64.
Yeah Banshee speed but with real 32bit support and S3TC 😁
it also supports multi texturing (The Banshee has only one TMU.)

matze79 wrote:

i run Creative 3D Blaster Savage with 8Megs and it even runs Omicron - The Nomad Soul very well. Its just a bit of pain to find […]
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i run Creative 3D Blaster Savage with 8Megs and it even runs Omicron - The Nomad Soul very well.
Its just a bit of pain to find the right driver.
Mine does not work with the latest Savage 4 Driver 😳 so i needed to get a older one.
And its very stable, no freezes at all.

its better then TNT2 M64.
Yeah Banshee speed but with real 32bit support and S3TC 😁
it also supports multi texturing (The Banshee has only one TMU.)

My card is running with the Savage 4 AGP driver, this by the way http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 327&menustate=0. I didn´t expect to work because mine is PCI but it does almost flawlessly. Sega Rally 2, Jazz JazzRabit 2 or 3dMark 2000 run fluid on my P3 500Mhz rig though Unreal Gold plays the intro but the menu shows serious graphical glitches. On the other side, after trying out more than a dozen of DOS games, compatibility looks like high.

On the negative side the chip gets very hot which is not particulary good with the upcoming spanish summer 😵

JetSetWilly wrote:

Unreal Gold plays the intro but the menu shows serious graphical glitches

Are you running it in Metal? I remember DirectX giving me menu glitches, but Metal and OpenGL working fine

Munx wrote:

JetSetWilly wrote:

Unreal Gold plays the intro but the menu shows serious graphical glitches

Are you running it in Metal? I remember DirectX giving me menu glitches, but Metal and OpenGL working fine

No, it´s DirectX or OpenGL, I don´t know for sure now. Is it necessary to install something more than the S3 Savage driver to enable Metal API in those compatible games?

JetSetWilly wrote:

Munx wrote:

JetSetWilly wrote:

Unreal Gold plays the intro but the menu shows serious graphical glitches

Are you running it in Metal? I remember DirectX giving me menu glitches, but Metal and OpenGL working fine

No, it´s DirectX or OpenGL, I don´t know for sure now. Is it necessary to install something more than the S3 Savage driver to enable Metal API in those compatible games?

Unreal needs a .dll file added and then you need to edit a .ini file to get Metal working. Unreal Tournament should have an option for metal out of the box. Phil did a video on this card and it shows hot to get metal running in Unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqYyL3vsjmU&t=780s

Link to .dll and other stuff:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/savage4.html

Munx wrote:

Unreal needs a .dll file added and then you need to edit a .ini file to get Metal working. Unreal Tournament should have an opti […]
Show full quote

Unreal needs a .dll file added and then you need to edit a .ini file to get Metal working. Unreal Tournament should have an option for metal out of the box. Phil did a video on this card and it shows hot to get metal running in Unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqYyL3vsjmU&t=780s

Link to .dll and other stuff:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/savage4.html

Thanks!