Savage was a product-line of PC graphics chipsets designed by S3. Image File history File links Savage4logo. ... GeForce 6600GT (NV43) GPU Radeon 9800 Pro (R350) GPU A Graphics Processing Unit or GPU (also occasionally called Visual Processing Unit or VPU) is a dedicated graphics rendering device for a personal computer or game console. ... S3 Graphics, Ltd design graphics chipsets for PCs. ...

Chipsets

Chronological order

• S3 Savage 3D (1998) - 8MB, AGP 1.0, two versions (390, 391 with Macrovision)
• S3 Savage 4 (1999) - 32MB, AGP 2.0, several family members (LT, GT, Pro, Pro+)
• S3 Savage 2000 "Diamond Viper II" (2000) - ?32MB, AGP 2.0, non-functional T&L hardware

1998 (MCMXCVIII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... Macrovision is a company that creates electronic copy prevention schemes. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. ... This article is about the year 2000. ...

Savage 3D

At the 1998 E3 Expo S3 introduced the first Savage product, Savage3D. Compared to its ViRGE-derived predecessor (Trio3D), Savage3D was a technological leap forward. Its innovative feature-set included the following: The Virtual Reality Graphics Engine (ViRGE) graphics chipset was one of the first 2D/3D accelerators designed for the mass market. ...

• "free" (single-pass) trilinear-filtering
• hardware motion-compensation and subpicture alpha-blending (MPEG-2 video)
• integrated NTSC/PAL TV-encoder, (optional) Macrovision
• S3TC texture-compression
• multi-tap X/Y interpolating front-end (BITBLT) and back-end (overlay) video-scaler

Unfortunately for S3, deliveries of the Savage3D were hampered by poor manufacturing yields. Only one major board-vendor, Hercules, made any real effort to ship a Savage3D product. S3's yield problems forced Hercules to hand pick usable chips from the silicon wafers. Combined with poor drivers, the Savage3D failed in the market. MPEG-2 (1994) is the designation for a group of coding standards for digital audio and video, agreed upon by MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group), and published as the ISO/IEC 13818 international standard. ... S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn or DXTC) is a group of related image compression algorithms originally developed by S3 Graphics, Ltd. ... Bit blit (bitblt, blitting etc. ...

In early 1999, S3 retired the Savage3D and released the Savage4 family. Many of the Savage3D's limitations were addressed for the Savage 4 chipset. An extra texture-map unit enabled single-pass multi-texturing. A larger (32MB) frame buffer was supported, as well as AGP 4X. In terms of 3D-performance, the newly released 3DFX Voodoo3 and NVIDIA TNT2 could render more quickly, but the Savage4 did offer the unique combination of true-color (32bpp) rendering and S3TC. 3dfx Interactive was a company which specialized in the manufacturing of cutting-edge 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. ... NVIDIA Corporation NASDAQ: NVDA is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles such as the original Xbox and the new upcoming next generation Playstation 3. ...

Savage 4

Comparative screenshots of special edition of Unreal Tournament game with high resolution S3TC compressed textures on Savage 4

The Savage4 gained numerous design-wins with board-vendors, including Diamond Multimedia and Creative Labs. 32 bit color mode was impressive for a mere 10% performance drop. With the best quality of trilinear filtering, fast 32bit color, and S3TC technology Savage4 provided rendered picture of the highest quality for that time. Its DVD acceleration was second only to the ATI Rage128, although for manufacturing cost reasons, the integrated TV-encoder was removed from the Savage4. But overall, for all the clear and significant improvements, the Savage 4 was really only what the Savage 3D should have been at launch, and 1 year late to the market. Image File history File links UT_s3tc. ... Image File history File links UT_s3tc. ... Unreal Tournament or UT is a popular first-person shooter video game. ... S3 Texture Compression (S3TC) (sometimes also called DXTn or DXTC) is a group of related image compression algorithms originally developed by S3 Graphics, Ltd. ... Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. ... Creative Technology Ltd. ... Trilinear filtering is an extension of the bilinear texture filtering method, which also performs linear interpolation between mipmaps. ... ATI Technologies Inc. ...

Savage 2000

In late 1999, S3 announced the Savage 2000 Diamond Viper II. Notable, for having about half of the amount of transistors of the NVIDIA's GeForce 256 (12 million vs 23 million), S3 claimed this did not excessively impact performance. But the Savage 2000's real weakness was (once again) poor quality drivers. The DirectX 6 drivers that shipped with the Savage 2000 prevented its DirectX 7 T&L hardware from functioning properly, negating one of the Savage2000's key selling points. The improved drivers that would have enabled T&L were never released. Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. ... NVIDIA Corporation NASDAQ: NVDA is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles such as the original Xbox and the new upcoming next generation Playstation 3. ... The GeForce 256 (codenamed NV10), often known simply as the GeForce, was the first of NVIDIAs GeForce product-line. ... DirectX is a collection of APIs for easily handling tasks related to game programming on Microsoft Windows. ... Transform and Lighting is a computing term used in computer graphics, generally used in the context of hardware acceleration (Hardware T&L). Transform refers to the task of converting coordinates in space, which in this case involves moving 3D objects in a virtual world and converting 3D coordinates to a...

Seemingly unwilling to invest the time and effort required to setup a structured internal driver development team, Savage technology was sold to VIA for $321m, where it become an integrated motherboard solution initially as part of the Twister chipset, where Savage 2000 2D silicon was merged with Savage 4 3D hardware. Development of Savage as a discrete card was discontinued. The dominant GPU market share once held by S3, now fell primarily to NVIDIA with its GeForce line, and ATI's Radeon series. GeForce 6600GT (NV43) GPU Radeon 9800 Pro (R350) GPU A Graphics Processing Unit or GPU (also occasionally called Visual Processing Unit or VPU) is a dedicated graphics rendering device for a personal computer or game console. ... NVIDIA Corporation NASDAQ: NVDA is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles such as the original Xbox and the new upcoming next generation Playstation 3. ... GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by NVIDIA. The first GeForce products were designed and marketed for the high-margin gamer community of computer users, but later product releases expanded the line to cover all tiers of the graphics market, from low-end to high-end. ... ATI Technologies Inc. ... Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000. ...

Many members of internal management at S3 considered the company gave up too easily. Improved drivers were only a fraction of the R&D expenditure on the hardware of the Savage 2000, and would have made the Savage 2000 a competitive product. ATI had experienced similar problems with drivers, but prioritised development internally, and turned the company around.

Unlike 3dfx, S3 had large cash reserves from past profits and successful investments with which to ride out storms, and knew how to design cheap to manufacture integrated cores, with high quality 2D acceleration. To this extent, had S3 shown the kind of corporate determination AMD has made famous, it is likely they could have remained a major player in the discrete graphics card market. 3dfx Interactive was a company which specialized in the manufacturing of cutting-edge 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. ... Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ...

Motherboard integrated chipsets

As a result of being sold to VIA for $321m, Savage hardware became an integrated motherboard solution, initially as part of the Twister chipset, where Savage 2000 2D silicon was merged with Savage 4 3D hardware. In this respect at least, S3's economical use of transistors proved highly advantageous. Development of Savage as a discrete card was discontinued. The dominant GPU market share once held by S3, now fell primarily to NVIDIA with its GeForce line, and ATI's Radeon series. VIA Technologies is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. ... GeForce 6600GT (NV43) GPU Radeon 9800 Pro (R350) GPU A Graphics Processing Unit or GPU (also occasionally called Visual Processing Unit or VPU) is a dedicated graphics rendering device for a personal computer or game console. ... NVIDIA Corporation NASDAQ: NVDA is a major supplier of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs), graphics cards, and media and communications devices for PCs and game consoles such as the original Xbox and the new upcoming next generation Playstation 3. ... GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by NVIDIA. The first GeForce products were designed and marketed for the high-margin gamer community of computer users, but later product releases expanded the line to cover all tiers of the graphics market, from low-end to high-end. ... ATI Technologies Inc. ... Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000. ...

Chrome range

In 2004 VIA attempted to re-launch the S3 name with updated discrete hardware, but performance was still far adrift from NVIDIA and ATI, who had moved forward again. However, the low power requirements and high definition output of the Chrome range, are attractive for small form factor scenarios.

External links

• Anandtech: S3 Savage4
• Anandtech: S3 Savage 2000 (Diamond Viper II)
• Savage News Information Site