Asus
V3100T Savage3d SGRAM Review
- by Louie
April 16, 2000
The first
of the Savage series of graphics cards, the Savage3d paved the way
for S3's entrance into the 3d graphics foray. Having the same features
of a Voodoo 2 (except glide) but at the fraction of the cost, it was
a good choice for buyers who were trying to find the best bang for
the buck. Plauged with buggy drivers, the Savage3d only found its
way into the hands of forgiving individuals who painstakingly experimented
for tweaks. But now the drivers have matured somewhat and with the
emergence of the Savage4 and the Savage2000 series, the Savage3d faces
extinction. New applications and games have cropped up that would
be more than enough to choke this card. Let us see what the Savage3d
can do at the present.
Features that
Slaughter 3dfx's Voodoo 2
- Built-in 128-bit
Savage3d Graphics Engine Accelerator
- 128-bit 2D, GUI, and DirectDraw Acceleration
- 8MB 125Mhz SGRAM frame buffer
- X and Y up and down video scaling
- Software VCD Player (MPEG-1)
- Software DVD Player (MPEG-2) with motion compensation
- 250 Mhz Palette-DAC
- Built-in VIP Bus Connectors for TV Tuner, Video Capture, MPEG-1,
and MPEG-2
- Acceleration for Windows 95 APIs, including Direct3D and DirectDraw
(+VPE)
- User-friendly installation from Windows 95 and Windows 98
- Full AGP2X support (sideband addressing and AGP execute mode)
- Video Texture
- True and Free Trilinear Filtering (trilinear filtering with no performance
hit)
The engine and
memory clocks run syncronously in the Savage3d. At default, this card
runs at 109.8mhz as reported by S3tweak.
*Note: I took
a visit at Asustek's website and found out that they claim that the
V3100T is fully compatible with LX motherboards. So if you do get
problems, blame them for false advertising : ).
Enough
with the crap, let's get to the benchmarks!
The
card uses 8ns EliteMT ram and a small heatsink.