S3 Savage3D Preview

As mentioned earlier, the alpha Savage3D board received would not work on any motherboard (including Super7 motherboards) other than the Intel SE440BX Pentium II BX Motherboard.  The only tests that were run were performed on a Pentium II - 400 test system, more benchmarks will follow when AnandTech receives a supposedly more stable Rev. B board in the coming weeks however until then these benchmarks should suffice for a high-end comparison at least.  Hopefully the Rev. B board will boast Super7 compatibility which will allow us to get a better picture of the slowly unfolding 2D/3D combo scene.

AnandTech's test system was composed of an Intel SE440BX Motherboard, running a Pentium II at 400MHz (100 x 4.0), outfitted with 64MB of PC100 SDRAM, a Western Digital Caviar 5.1GB UltraATA HDD, and an 8MB alpha Savage3D reference board using the drivers (version 4.10.01.4000-6.00.10) supplied by S3 as well as their own OpenGL ICD. 

NOTE: The crusher.dm2 tests would not complete on the alpha Savage3D board due to stability issues neither would 1024 x 768 tests.

Here we are cutting things a bit close.  The Savage3D has already illustrated performance above that of a Voodoo2 and we know that the performance of the final revision of the board won't offer too great of an improvement, however the Riva TNT on the other hand still has some room to grow and expand so it looks like the Direct3D king has yet to be crowned.