I have to revise my opinion of Savage 2000 downward. 😁

I played around with UT99 again today because I wanted to check if detail textures were enabled. They were not. Enabling them causes a major performance dive and occasional pauses. Not nice, and not something that Voodoo3 has problems with. Oh, and when you exit the game, the 2D driver is ultra slow until you reboot.

Thumbs down!!! S3 and their shoddy drivers that never cease to disappoint.

swaaye wrote:

Has anyone used one of their Chrome cards? The only S3 related graphics product I've used since the company was resurrected is the occasional VIA/S3 IGP.

I would give them a chance if I could find one for sale someplace. ANYPLACE. They don't seem to have a single retailer selling them.

hmmm on second thought, maybe not. Even their best card is not competitive with either the HD4670 or 9600GT if this video is any indication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGnrBu3N2QE

You have to at least acknowledge, however, that the S3 card is at least working for a change. 😀

swaaye wrote:

You have to at least acknowledge, however, that the S3 card is at least working for a change. 😀

Working badly (like all other S3 products) doesn't count as working. 😜

sliderider wrote:

swaaye wrote:

You have to at least acknowledge, however, that the S3 card is at least working for a change. 😀

Working badly (like all other S3 products) doesn't count as working. 😜

I upgraded to a Virge once, and yes, it was actually better then the Cirrus Logic it replaced. Got it for a bargain price of just $25 dollars too! Actually used that card for 2D with my Voodoo 1 and V2, and wasn't replaced until the V3 was released.

Well actually S3 cards are usually capable of doing 2D just fine. But when it comes to 3D...... 😁

I found one review of the Chrome 540 GTX (GTX! Hah! Are they kidding or what?) and according to that it runs at the speed of a HD4350 which means dead slow. I think maybe they should just stick to onboard video if they can't build a dedicated card that runs faster than IGP. What would you be upgrading from that a HD4350 class card looks like an attractive option?

So, bit of a necro but I just tested finally an Inno3D Savage 2000 in my p4 board, while I've been trying out other things. Here's what I get on defaults [system: p4 2.8, windows 2000, inno3d savage driver]:

3dmark2000: 1797 [voodoo4 gets 3158]
3dmark2001se a whopping 691 [voodoo4 gets 1598]

You really need to live in a bubble and only play UT99 via S3 Metal to find joy from this chip. It can run Quake based games OK too though.

This card is nothing but a pile of Windoze ME. Even UT99 under MeTal still has some noticeable rendering errors. Not to mention some fluctuating frame rate issues and other hiccups. Has serious issues with many D3D games of its time too. The only other games I recall that worked fine besides UT99 and Q3A (without any noticeable errors) were Jedi Knight (which will run in D3D on almost anything claimed as a "3D accelerator") and GLQuake1 and 2. Even the numerous third-party drivers floating around couldn't save it. S3 just went downhill as soon as 3D graphics acceleration went mainstream.

But on a sidenote, those high-res S3TC texture-enabled Q3A maps looked quite impressive.

Also, Inno3D I believe was the only other manufacturer that made a Savage 2000 card. Diamond was also gonna release a 64 MB version of the Viper II (the Z400 model) but seems like a waste if you ask me.

Does anybody know how to enable AGP 4X on this card?

Viper II has 2 jumpers.

Well, I have got 3 sets of jumpers on my card. Which should be capped then?

I capped all of them but it did not help. My testing machine is Abit ST6 with windows 98SE - I get AGP 1x. In windows XP I get AGP 2x. I enabled AGP 4X in the bios.
Maybe I need the latest drivers?

Sorry I only saw the two jumpers in a photo online. I didn't look at my card. 😉 They do all need to be closed for 4x, I believe. If it's still running below 4x, it could be driver related, yes. Savage 2000 is a touchy, buggy chip so AGP 4x may be disabled by the driver...

I have uploaded my collection of drivers for Savage 2000 and put a link in the first post of this thread. Lots of files in there.

ratfink wrote:

So, bit of a necro but I just tested finally an Inno3D Savage 2000 in my p4 board, while I've been trying out other things. Here's what I get on defaults [system: p4 2.8, windows 2000, inno3d savage driver]:

3dmark2000: 1797 [voodoo4 gets 3158]
3dmark2001se a whopping 691 [voodoo4 gets 1598]

this is indeed awesome... even my savage4 and tnt are faster than that.

Oh, come on... that card is not "that bad" at all. I have to defend it a little bit 😜 Of course is not as fast as it should have been but at least some games are working on it 😁

First of all I do not reccomend running that card on Windows 2000/XP - Works much faster and without so many rendering errors on 98/ME.
All in all it is FASTER then ANY Savage 4 😉 Want some proofs? I have made a comparison.

My testing machine:
- Abit ST6
- Pentium 3 1400 MHz (Tualatin 512)
- 512MB RAM
- Windows ME

Cards being tested:
- Savage 4 EXTREME 32MB AGP (Diamond Stealth III S540 XTRM)
- Savage 2000 32 MB AGP (Diamond Viper II Z200)

Benchmarking software:
-3D Mark 99
-3D Mark 2000
-3D Mark 2001se
-Quake 2 16 bit
-Quake 3 32 bit maximum details

In order to set the cards on AGP 4X I capped all 3 jumpers and used non DIAMOND drivers...

I have to admit that both cards are quite good at overclocking.

Savage 2000 runs at default clocks:
GPU - 125 MHz
RAM - 143 MHz
I have managed to go up to:
- 152 MHz for GPU and
- 172 for RAM
The card was stable and showed no artifacts at those speeds and I still could push it a little bit higher.

MY Savage 4 EXTREME runs at default speeds:
GPU - 160 MHz
RAM - 155 MHz
I know that there are faster versions, so I overclocked it way above the "standard" EXTREME versions:
- 185 MHz GPU
- 180 MHz RAM
Those speeds were at the edge of it's limits, when I gave 2 MHz more I got errors and the card was not stable.

So, let's see what results I got on 3D Marks first:

We can see that Savage 2000 is faster in 3D Mark 99 and 2000 at default speeds. It got a little bit worse in 3D Mark 2001SE but I think it is because of the Processor's speed. I assume that If I used a slower processor then the results would be better for Savage 2000.
The thing does not change when the cards are overclocked. Still Savage 2000 is better in 3D Marks 99 and 2000 but slower in 2001se, but this time the difference is smaller.

Lets go to Quake 2 now:

This time Samvage 2000 is the winner in every case 😉 One can see that even when Savage 4 is overclocked it is still slower than Savage 2000 on default speeds. The test was done in 16 bit mode.

And finally Quake 3 Arena:

Here things are not so simple. At first we see that Savage 4 is faster at default speeds in comparison to default Savage 2000. But when Savage 2000 is overclocked than it is better than overclocked Savage 4 😁 The game is even fully playable at higher resulutions with maximum settings on both Savage 4 and Savage 2000 when overclocked.

Thanks for attention, I hope you have enjoyed it 😉

The biggest problem was the usual poor S3/Diamond driver support. But aside from that and broken T&L, they didn't hit clock speed targets.

Original PR said to expect 143-150MHz core on the plain 2000. There was also supposed to be a 2000 Plus that would clock at 166-200MHz. If only. I don't know if there were any revisions though.

VooDooMan, your setup must have problems as well. Savage 2000 can do twice as much in Quake 3.

Lacking an appropriate thread, I'll post this here:

Thanks to an old post of leileilol's (Re: PCI emulation (for 3D accelerators)? ) not only did I rediscover the old SGL.h header mentioned but also that the Deux Ex SDK includes a header file (metal.h) and libraries (metal.lib, s3tc.lib I think also) for S3 MeTaL API.
http://www.moddb.com/games/deus-ex/downloads/sdk-v1112fm

I also mentioned it at the S3 MeTaL thread at Beyond3D forums:
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/s3-savage- … etal-api.54670/

This may be old news, but I was unaware of it.

Uploaded the S3 MeTaL collection that SavageNews.com had uploaded back in the day to VOGONSDrivers, extracted from The Internet Archive.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=726

*Still missing: S3 MeTaL Driver 9x/ME 1.0.0.0R2 - s3metal1000R2s2k.exe