VOGONS


Reply 20 of 59, by Nemo1985

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Ydee wrote on 2021-09-16, 12:38:

I think the card is just fitted with an Extreme chip, but sold out as a Savage4 GT considering the memory used (7.5ns). I have a similar one from Manli with VT memory with access time of 7ns, clocked as your - 110/125. The chip is fitted with a small passiv and is heated strongly.
Savage4 PRO had higher clock - 125 MHz core, 143 MHz memory. Savage4 XTREME was the highest model with frequencies of 143/166 MHz (with SGRAM?).

You write that there are problems with the second card - can't the cause be in this contact?

Yes the problem is indeed the burnt pin, the card worked erratically for some time and now it appears completely dead, I swapped the bios chip and it had the same frequencies of the new one.

According to wiki the frequencies for the various chips are the following:

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So a proper Xtreme should have 166/166 I think.

Reply 21 of 59, by 386SX

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aaronkatrini wrote on 2021-09-16, 13:21:

@386SX
If you can, please check the Core/Memory frequencies on your card 😀
S3 cards were OK, nothing wrong with them apart from poor drivers at the beginning. Performance wise I would consider the S3 Savage4 to be in the range of a Voodoo Banshee, definitely not in the realm of the V3.

I'll check later, I've to search it inside different old video card boxes.. 😁
But meanwhile I did write on a paper the old benchmark results of the Savage4 Extreme, probably with some early Pentium III 500/600Mhz I think and Win 9x/ME:
3DMark99: 4629
3DMark2000: 1890
3DMark2001 SE: 783

It's interesting that the Radeon 7000 (RV100) results in lower numbers:

3DMark2000: 1629
3DMark2001 SE: 780

And the Matrox G450:
3DMark2000: 2097

(I don't have the others tests number on these cards, need to buy a IDE-SD adapter to test them again)

Imho while it's true the Voodoo3 was in fact faster and usually the others cards depends on the other brands manufacturer using the S3 chips (like with the previous models and the many low quality built Virge) it sure had a better 2D analog quality signal, the frame rate boost compared to the feature list of the Savage4 chip was not enough. Glide API was already at its end and something like the Motion Compensation of the Savage4 DVD acceleration wasn't something the Avenger chip had in a time most K6-2 for example couldn't do much for it. Latest drivers I think to remember was quite good and stable and I think the choice should have been more on the price than on the brand name. The Voodoo3 was obviously a powerful brand but at the end like discussed other times just a very powerful Banshee. Considering the resolution people usually played I wish I went for the Savage4 or the Banshee itself or even a Voodoo1/2 with the OEM S3 Trio3D card. 😉

Last edited by 386SX on 2021-09-16, 16:02. Edited 4 times in total.

Reply 22 of 59, by Ydee

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Thank you for the correction, I was based on another source where there seems to be an inaccurate table.

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Reply 23 of 59, by Joseph_Joestar

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-16, 15:00:

I have a TNT2 card built by Compaq and it's has better build quality than the average ones, I ran it at 1024x768 without any kind of issues.

If memory serves, Diamond, STB and Elsa branded Nvidia cards had the best image quality back in the day. With other manufacturers, you never really knew what you would get.

My MX440 is made by MSI and its image quality is mediocre compared to my Voodoo3. Way back in early 2000, I had an Innovision branded TNT2 and its image quality was pretty bad as well. With the Voodoo3, there is no variation in 2D image quality since all cards were made directly by 3DFX.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 24 of 59, by 386SX

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It might have been just a feeling but I remember having a Voodoo3 2000 video card with an old video bios version and after the update to latest bios I remember having the feeling video output quality improved. I can't say if just a feeling as said but I always wondered if that might have been a real improvement.

Reply 25 of 59, by Nemo1985

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Ydee wrote on 2021-09-16, 15:52:

Thank you for the correction, I was based on another source where there seems to be an inaccurate table.

That's interesting , yours may be correct too and wikipedia can be wrong.
If people is willing to post the clocks taken with everest or powerstrip may clarify the situation.

Reply 26 of 59, by darry

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386SX wrote on 2021-09-16, 16:33:

It might have been just a feeling but I remember having a Voodoo3 2000 video card with an old video bios version and after the update to latest bios I remember having the feeling video output quality improved. I can't say if just a feeling as said but I always wondered if that might have been a real improvement.

I had this experience with a Voodoo 3 3000 BIOS upgrade . Voodoo 3 snow/glitches and AGP vs PCI BIOS questions
There may have other improvements that I did not notice .

Reply 27 of 59, by 386SX

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As soon as I get the IDE-SD adapter I'll try my card that sure is an Extreme one but from old discussion/memories it should be 166/166. Anyway my Number Nine AGP SR9 has 6ns SGRAM memories and PCB built late 1999. The benchmark numbers are the above posted. Also I've a Diamond Stealth III with 16MB SDRAM but 7ns. Four modules on both, two for each PCB side and two empty without TV Out only VGA output.

Reply 29 of 59, by retardware

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Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-09-16, 15:16:

Yes the problem is indeed the burnt pin, the card worked erratically for some time and now it appears completely dead

This heat does no good.
It makes me not wonder why 3dfx and some S3 cards literally "die like flies", as we Germans say.
This is why I just take off fans of old graphics cards and reuse them on cards I actually use.
Here two NVS 280 cards that got fans from some AGPx1/x2 cards.

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Reply 30 of 59, by BitWrangler

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Yah I don't understand the ppl who are like "OMG no, run your GPU fan as low as possible, you'll wear it out!!!!111 Having it run full speed is over-stressing it!!" (and if it's a stock type on the cooler you'll probably find manufacturer spec is something around 9-15V range and you're not even really close to the edge on 12V) Dude, my fan is the wear part not my GPU kthx, I'll run it at 80% minimum just to take the edge off the loud pedal and stop my GPU getting hot in the first place, if it hits 100% it's doing it's job under load, not trying to kill itself imminently, calm down.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 31 of 59, by 386SX

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It might be also possible that fan lifetime specs were/are not exactly great many times.. I understand that heat is worse but I'd expect manufacturer to actually choose good quality fan and instead even in the past it wasn't that difficult to see fan to begin to fail soon. Maybe they can be fixed for a while but I'm not sure how much.

Reply 32 of 59, by Ydee

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Nemo1985 wrote on 2021-09-16, 16:40:

That's interesting , yours may be correct too and wikipedia can be wrong.
If people is willing to post the clocks taken with everest or powerstrip may clarify the situation.

All the other sources I've been reading give the Xtreme model an identical clock of 166 MHz for both core and memory. So the mistake will be my first table.

Reply 33 of 59, by retardware

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386SX wrote on 2021-09-16, 19:40:

It might be also possible that fan lifetime specs were/are not exactly great many times.. I understand that heat is worse but I'd expect manufacturer to actually choose good quality fan and instead even in the past it wasn't that difficult to see fan to begin to fail soon. Maybe they can be fixed for a while but I'm not sure how much.

Fans have several disadvantages:
Noise - people who don't understand the heat problem are getting annoyed over the noise. So, "loud" cards always have a disadvantage.
Misinformation - people believe the fan is more worth than the graphics chip, and take wrong priorities (eg trying to "extend" fan life at cost of GPU life)
aesthetics - fans are ugly and cover the beautiful chips, making the card look boring and not "special"
cost - fans and coolers are extra costs that can be avoided if a sufficient proportion of cards survives the warranty period, keeping the RMA rate low

If you can manage to keep the chip at 40 celsius instead of fanless 90 celsius, the (remaining) lifetime will be extended 100+ times.

Reply 34 of 59, by 386SX

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retardware wrote on 2021-09-17, 12:01:
Fans have several disadvantages: Noise - people who don't understand the heat problem are getting annoyed over the noise. So, "l […]
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386SX wrote on 2021-09-16, 19:40:

It might be also possible that fan lifetime specs were/are not exactly great many times.. I understand that heat is worse but I'd expect manufacturer to actually choose good quality fan and instead even in the past it wasn't that difficult to see fan to begin to fail soon. Maybe they can be fixed for a while but I'm not sure how much.

Fans have several disadvantages:
Noise - people who don't understand the heat problem are getting annoyed over the noise. So, "loud" cards always have a disadvantage.
Misinformation - people believe the fan is more worth than the graphics chip, and take wrong priorities (eg trying to "extend" fan life at cost of GPU life)
aesthetics - fans are ugly and cover the beautiful chips, making the card look boring and not "special"
cost - fans and coolers are extra costs that can be avoided if a sufficient proportion of cards survives the warranty period, keeping the RMA rate low

If you can manage to keep the chip at 40 celsius instead of fanless 90 celsius, the (remaining) lifetime will be extended 100+ times.

I agree. Back in the late 90's I preferred the heatsink only solution cause it was more than enough often and obviously not a variable into the chip lifetime. When there's instead an active solution like a fan, like it happens with PSU that depends totally on it, if that fail and the same fan cannot be found to replace beside some modding, the card would be useless. Lately I prefer obviously the active solution cause it seems even the lowest end GPUs can't work at decent temperatures even with a double slot heatsink. My passive GT610 without a case fan can easily reach 105°C and not knowing if it would stop increasing on some heavy pixel shader DX11 bench like Unigine Valley. I understand these cards were more like Office/Desktop light gaming oriented cards but still they should work in any enviroments. Changing the thermal paste help a bit but I suspect nowdays there's not much space for passive cooled GPUs if frequencies and voltages are that high to compensate other factory limits to keep the performances lower than they could. For example a concept like some modern low end cards with GDDR5 but 32bit memory bandwidth is really questionable.. at that point let's use some SDRAM and maybe we can buy video cards at better prices.

Anyway I'd like to see fan lifetime durability/quality just as good as other important components. Over the years PSU for example did increase their quality because most people understood often many was depending on some really low end ones like many were in the past like early 2000. Nowdays we see reviews with the internal valutations of the PSU components when decades ago I never read similar reviews for example and many would just buy the first PSU they'd find even if indeed the good brand ones did exist but many people I knew didn't care at all.

Reply 35 of 59, by Con 2 botones

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I upload pictures of the "Extreme"version of the card I´ve got, as well some benchmark I did some time ago.

savage4-back.jpg

savageb.jpg

3DMark99. Official driver, supposedely best stability (S3_Savage4 8.10.33 <4.11.01.8008> Engineering Release Driver):

S3savage4-number-nine-800x600x16.jpg

According to 3DMArk99, the latest unofficial driver ("treiber-savage4-w9x-8.20.38") is a little bit better performer:

S3-Savage4-800x600x16bit-Number-Nine.jpg

Reply 37 of 59, by Nemo1985

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While looking for the drivers mentioned by Con 2 botones, I found this russian faq page:
http://faqs.org.ru/hardw/video/savage4.htm
Translated with google, it had some nice tools, mainly one for the bios, but obviously the links aren't working anymore.

I find this quite interesting:

Savage4Pro rev E chip, overclocked without cooling 136/160
With cooling, you can drive the chip further.

I just need to understand how to get what is the chip revision

Reply 38 of 59, by Ydee

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Isn't that it?

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Reply 39 of 59, by dr.zeissler

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https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de& … htm&prev=search

From: Vlad Balabanov < Vlad.Balabanov@p32.f129.n5010.z2.fidonet.org >
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 19:05:01 +0300

***************************************
******* S3 Savage4 miniFAQ v0.2 ****************
********************************* (c) BVSoft 2000
****************

Content:

Q1) How to configure Savage4 AGP + SuperSocket7 + AMD K6?
Q2) How to configure Savage4 AGP + Intel BX, ZX?
Q3) How to set the correct frequencies during overclocking?
Q4) What is mxk6opt.exe, fastvid.exe and where can I get them?
Q5) What are some useful and working utilities?
Q6) What kind of drivers are there?
Q7) What bios are there?
Q8) What are the best drivers now?
Q9) Savage4 + TV / FM TUNER (BT8xx) =?

QLAST) Where to watch what on the Internet?

Food for thought:

Q1) How to configure Savage4 AGP + SuperSocket7 + AMD K6?

A1) The following has been done on:
Acorp 5ALI61, Creative GB Savage4 8M AGP, AMDK6-2-233 (350), 32M
If ~ such a bundle slows down (buggy) for you, then do the following:

A1.1) remove emm386 from config.sys
A1.2) add mxk6opt (available in Mr. F-drivers) to autoexec.bat
A1.3) In bios: Primary Buffer: ALL
A1.4) We sew (download) creative bios v1.03.1 (v1.02.4) sideband enabled
it's to your liking. Perhaps others are possible, but on the last
referense bios 3D slowed down for me.
A1.5) We put firewood agp169, for the video card which you like best.
I put the latest reference v8.20.30
What did all this give? 😀
+ Increased transfer CPU-> VIDEO, from ~ 28M / s to ~ 96m / s at 8.16bit
and ~ 123M / s at 32, 64bit (via FPU) transfers (measured by DDSpeed).
+ Brakes disappear: when starting console applications, when drawing
menus over 3D / video in the window, 3D works faster
(in particular opengl BoltHenge demo in window ~ 45-> ~ 70fps),
text modes are faster.
+ Fog and the like does not slow down in GLQuake1.13, Final Reality, Drakan & etc
+ Fast switching of video modes.
+ Fog in NFS is more likely, we will check it ...
- Traditionally troubles with a cursor in 64 positions 🙁

A2.1) The following has been done on:
Acorp 5ALI61, Diamond Stealth S540 16M AGP, AMDK6-2-233 (333), 64M
If ~ such a bundle slows down (buggy) for you, then do the following:
Savage4Pro rev E chip, overclocked without cooling 136/160
With cooling, you can drive the chip further.

A2.1.1) Everything is the same as A1)
A2.2.1) Bios flash Diamond 2124xxx (for 64k bios!)

This gives the following:
a) removes delays when _starting_ console applications in a window.
b) removes delays when switching video modes.
c) 8x14 full font
d) in my case, the bug with the 64th column in
text / window mode for console applications.

Q2) How to configure Savage4 AGP + Intel BX, ZX?

A2) Everything is the same as A1), except that instead of mxk6opt.exe
we use fastvid.exe, and the latest gart from Intel.

Q3) How to set the correct frequencies during overclocking.

A3) To avoid unnecessary unnecessary overheating and lag in games,
the chip frequency should be set to 10-15Mhz less than the memory frequency.

Q4) What is mxk6opt.exe, fastvid.exe and where to get them.

A4.1) mxk6opt is available at http://grafi.ii.pw.edu.pl/gbm/matrox
By the way, it is useful for other video cards + AMD K6

A4.2) Read information from primary sources (this is miniFAQ)
You can take _all_ from Tweaked Savage4 drivers by Mr.F v2.3

A4.3) A good replacement for mxk6opt.exe is the utility
k6wa2.com - flew by echo su.hardw.pc.cpu

A4.4) See QLAST).

Q5) What are some useful and working utilities?

A5.1) S3tweak v1.10a - tweaker for Savage3D / 4/2000 (for Win9x / ME)
S3tweak v1.15k beta - tweaker for Savage3D / 4/2000 (for Win9x / ME / 2000)
Take here: see item QLAST)

A5.2) You can use the latest PowerStrip versions,
especially if you register it 😀
Take it here: www.entechtaiwan.com

A5.3) BiosHack utility - a set of utilities for bios russification.
Take it here: http://www.sibpage.ru:8101/~vitaly/savage/BIOSHACK.ZIP

A5.4) S3 chipset ID utility
Get it here: www.s3.com

Q6) What kind of drivers are there?

A6.1) These are:
for Win95:
8.0x.xx - very old (late 98 - early 99),
buggy, half of the S4 features don't work

for Win9x:
8.10.xx - DX6 support best and latest ones 8.10.33
8.20.xx - DX7 support (sometimes worse quality / speed of D3D)

for Win9x / ME:
8.20.29-35 - 8.20.33+ - fixed i815 support

A6.2) Everyone read rels3.doc.
Take: see QLAST)
Archive 80230.zip - stolen archive referense beta driver
v8.20.30 by gainward oversight.
The process of writing / debugging drivers is clearly visible there.

Q7) What bios are there?

A7.1) Referense like this:

S3 Savage4 86C395 / 86C396 / 86C397 Rev C / Rev D / Rev E

32k - only supports CRT
40K - supports CRT / Panel, CRT / TV (old versions)
44k - supports CRT / Panel, CRT / TV
64k - supports CRT / Panel, or CRT / TV, and 8x14 fonts

They also differ in the list of supported CRT / TV modes.

Reference bios version:

2.0D.XX - 32K ROM
2.1D.XX - 44K ROM
2.2D.XX - 64K ROM

A7.2) Read rels3.doc from file 2_1d-32.zip
Take: see QLAST)
Archive 2.1d.32.zip - stolen reference bios archive
v8.20.30 by gainward oversight.
The process of writing / debugging the reference bios is clearly visible there.
and there is other useful information.

Q8) What are the best drivers now?

A8.1) As always and everywhere, an individual approach.

A8.2) IMHO: for Win9x / ME 8.20.29-31 (35) + icd opengl 2.20.10 (13)

A8.3) For fans of Oversample and Anisotropic filtration
look for old drivers. Anisotropic filtration (8.09.02)

Q9) Savage4 + TV TUNER (BT8xx) =?

A9) Since there are errors in Savage4 rev C and lower chips, for
trouble-free operation of TV TUNER requires a chip card
Savage4 rev D (E). Otherwise, problems may arise.
with the stability of the system (especially in overlay mode) and
you will need to select drivers.

QLAST) Where to watch what on the Internet?

ALAST) Right here.

www.s3.com, www.s3graphics.com, www.creative.com, www.gainward.com
www.reactor.ru
www.rizenet.com
www.planetsavage.net
www.s3p.co.uk (not updated for a long time)
www.savagenews.com
www.news3.al.ru (take only files here)
You will find the rest of the links on these sites yourself.

PS Those interested can supplement the FAQ with the following topics:

1) minigl, icdogl, perfogl,
2) path for games, apps
3) TV tuners + S4, mpeg4 + S4, video overlay
4) S4 + W2K, S4 + NT4, S4 + Linux, S4 + OS / 2
5) best bios & etc
6) benchmarks
7) ...

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines