Looks like S3 is just like G400?!?!?!?

[Ken D]

I believe that this new board called the S3 Savage 4 will give Matrox G400 a run for its money. Why do people want the G400 over TNT2? Mostly because of Bump Mapping and Dual Head. But the cost of the G400 Max is way out of most peoples ranges. Now hear comes along the Savage 4 with its Texture compression, 32 bit graphics, 32 megs, Hardware Bump Mapping, 4x AGP... well, I could go on, so here is the link to the specs.....
http://www.s3.com/products/overview/po47ms1.htm

Does anyone have this card, and can we compare it to the G400? This card is only 125.00!!! Can it match up with the G400's horsepower? Maybe someone can come up with a comparison on the two, cause I for one would like to know. I also heard that the G400 was the ONLY 3d Graphic card out there that did Hardware Bump Mapping. Is someone lying out there or what? Maybe the Savage might be an alternitive for those of you who can't dish out the 225.00 for the G400 Max which would be the only way to go if you were going to purchase one. Or an alternitive of Savage at 125.00 with most everything that the G400 has to offer (minus the dual head, and give and take a few rendering effects). Lets hear the views on anyone who has some experience with the Savage 4, to let us in on the stats......

[rickT]

G400 is way faster than Savage4. Savage4 does not do true bump mapping either. The savage4 croaks on resolutions above 800x600

[Haig]

Hi Ken,

TC is nothing to brag about. It's basically an algorithm that is pretty easy to implement in hardware and is used for texture compression where the game would provide textures in a compressed format. If the board supports S3TC, then the textures can be stored in offscreen compressed and the compression algorithm enables the retrieval of an individual texel within the compressed texture.

Advantage is that the adapter moves a smaller amount of data per texture therefore allowing the storage of a greater number of textures in local memory.

The G400 does not support this since we have 32MB frame buffers.

S3 developped this many years ago for their 2MB Virge products and Microsoft decided to implement it in DX6.

Their term of "Hardware bump mapping" is too vague.

Haig

[This message has been edited by Haig (edited 07-23-99).]

[The PIT]

Good Ken D still laugthing Ha Ha Ha.
The reason why the Savage is so cheap is that it can't compete with the TNT2 and G400 and only just manages to hold it with the TNT and earlier cards.

[merchant2]

ken while i was waiting for my g400 to show up. i had tryed a cl savage 4. , the card slowed way down the longer i played avp. the frame rate was dismal in 32bit color even at 800 x 600. oh i tryed over clocking it to improve things and i cooked it it dead in 2 sec, (took the card to 110 clock) fried it good. took it back to compusa got another one it lasted 4 hours at 110 clock even with extra cooling then it fried too. those chip's suck. finaly got a voodoo3 2000 agp and at defualt un overclocked settings it smoked the s3 savage 4 (no i don't have the numbers any more as my g400 showed up 2 weeks ago.) i first wanted the s3 card as a upgrade to end up in a amd k6-2 350 once my 400 showed up as it was rated as the best card for 3dnow but i was so disapointed in the preformace that i don't think i will ever try another s3 product unless every hardware site out thire says its the god of the industry(i would also have to see alot of favorable posts on what ever thire next chip set may be.)

wow did i say all that. ?

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i don't know what im going to bitch about now that the avp patch is out.
p2 350 at 450, 196 meg pc100,10gig hard drive,5xdvd cl drive, xitel p. storm sound, 32meg g400 dualhead, acs altec lansing speakers+yamaha rear, ch throttle, ch force fx, ch pedeals, hp laserjet 4, epson 400 color, ctx vl950 main mag dx17t secondary monitors ? what else can i brag about ? oh two other systems k6-2 350 and k6 200.