borgie83 wrote:

Does anyone know anything about the 2D core of the Diamond S3 Savage 4 graphics card? I know the S3 Virge used the Trio64 for its 2D but not sure about the Savage 4. Tried researching this myself without luck unfortunately.

There are some datasheets at VGA Legacy (http://www.vgamuseum.info) but I haven't looked at them too closely:
http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/doc/ … age4_hw_ref.pdf
http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/doc/ … 4_registers.pdf
http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/stories/doc/ … e_step_info.pdf

Thanks for the links Stiletto but unfortunately everything just points to basic info on the 3D core. I understand that at the time the Savage 4 got released, 3D was all the rage so it's going to be hard finding any info on the 2D aspect of this card. Judging from the compatibility test I've seen, it appears as though it may use an improved version of the Trio64V+ 2D but I can't confirm this.

EDIT: I was wrong, the one link that wouldn't load for me is now working and it does have info on the 2D 😀

borgie83 wrote:

On another note, what would you guys/girls recommended between the S3 Virge GX PCI, S3 Virge GX2 AGP and the Savage 4 Pro/Xtreme AGP when it comes to Dos gaming and compatibility?

I know they're all quite compatible with Dos but I'm just looking for you're opinion. I've only ever used the Trio64V+ PCI in Dos.

I got one of the somewhat scarce Diamond Stealth III S540 PCI cards not long ago. That one was on my best budget model list a long time ago but I never got around to buying one. It's Savage4 Pro (basically factory overclocked Savage4) with 32mb (32mb was a lot for budget model cards back then). I wouldn't expect much from these as all the big tech websites show it lagging seriously behind most everything else in games testing. Whether you use Virge or Savage you're not going to get blistering framerates. In 640 resolution it's not bad and it scales well, but as soon as you step up to 800 or 1024 resolutions it takes a massive hit.

The 2D/GUI/video parts are definitely improved over Virge. It has complete MPEG2 acceleration for one. It is also referred to as a 128-bit GUI engine instead of 64-bit like Virge.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/291/2

Savage3D is very similar.

@Sliderider, I know there are much better cards out there to use for 3D games but this is to accompany a Voodoo 1 in my Pentium II 333mhz rig. The S3 cards are known for their high compatibility for most Dos games and so I thought a Savage 4 might be better overall for 2D Dos games as well as early 3D games. For later 3D games I've got a couple of builds running a Geforce 4 TI4600 and FX5950.

@Swaaye, the Savage 4 also appears to be able to use 32bpp as opposed to the Virge being limited to 16bpp. Not so much of a concern for Dos games but Windows will benefit from it. Shame the Savage 4 Xtreme versions seem quite hard to find. Most of the ones I've seen for sale are the Pro versions.

Further to this, would you recommend the PCI or AGP versions of the Savage 4 for early Dos games? I'm thinking it won't make a difference but I could be wrong.

Virge was not limited to 16 bit.
Consider Trio3Ds, they had 128 bit 2D as well.
Bus should not make a difference.
Xtreme is not so rare.

Regarding the 16bit limit. I haven't used one before but read it on another thread.

Well it looks like this thread has more than enough info regarding S3 cards and Dos:

Recommend a ViRGE video card?