Hardly has a month passed since we posted the reviews of new graphics cards test sampleswhen the first "mass envoy" fell into our hands. It was Creative 3D Blaster Savage4.

Up to this moment we could make up an opinion about S3 Savage4 (Pro) graphics chipsetonly judging by Diamond Stealth III S540 graphics card. However, at that time its massproduction hadn't yet started, and it was unavailable in retail as well. That's why nowwe will do our best to draw you a better and more detailed picture of this chipset basingon the benchmarks results shown by Creative 3D Blaster Savage4. Besides, we would also like tomention that from this day on we start approaching the graphics cards speed testing in a bitdifferent way from we used to do before.

The main specifications of S3 Savage4 are:

Here it is worth noting that most graphics processor manufacturers abide by a certain tradition,namely they produce several modifications of the same chipsets, which differ only by their workingfrequencies. For example, Riva TNT and Riva TNT2, Savage4 and Savage4 Pro, etc. Hence we draw yourattention to the fact that Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is based on S3 Savage4 Pro, which supportsa higher working core frequency - 143MHz compared to 125MHz of Savage4 chip.

So, what is interesting about this graphics card?

As we can see on the pictures above, the graphics card based on the AGP 2x constructivepossesses 32MB of 8ns SDRAM placed in 4 modules (microchips) 64Mbit each. If you are curiousenough, you have probably noticed that some sectors for memory chips soldering are intersecting.It was designed to save time and trouble while making either 16MB or 32MB graphics card with oneand the same PCB (For 16MB version the two free spaces are used, which you can see on the picture).The card also has a BIOS microchip and a special place for TV-out (our model lacks it, unfortunately).Besides, Creative didn't yield to the popular general trend of manufacturing all the new graphics cardson AGP 4x, which adds to the individuality of this company. The thing actually is that the use of AGP 2xis an absolutely justified move: on the one hand, the card is not that expensive, and on the other hand,it's a better solution for such a large local memory. We think it will take a considerable until 32MB oflocal memory and AGP 2x bandwidth turn out insufficient for games. At least it will be only then probablythat S3 Savage4 gets out of date.

A few words about the exterior of S3 Savage4, which is the heart of the considered graphics card.It should be mentioned that it is made with 0.25-micron technology, cased into a small package (similarto that of ATI Rage 128), and "decorated" with a black radiator stuck to the chip.

And now about the supply. The box is typical of Creative - bright, multicolor and very picturesque.And the contents are rather standard: the graphics card itself, a CD-disk and the whole bunch ofvarious documentation (brief product info, registration card, etc.). And all this stuff alternateswith a generous amount of porolon packing.

Well, we have briefly described the graphics card, and since most of you have some idea of anS3 Savage4 Pro chipset, we will concentrate on the features and performance of this 3D-accelerator.This is our primary goal and we'll do our best to satisfy your interest. As is known the lion'sshare of the coming graphics cards is intended for gaming market. And it means that the wholerange of 3D-functions is must for the products appearing there. The only thing that distinguishesthem from each other is the quality provided by these functions and as a result the cards performancelevel.

And we have to admit that new games increase their requirements more and more. Some time ago weused to sigh for Voodoo2 and cast down our eyes at seeing the price of $320-350 for such a luxury.Then we started trembling with awe at the very hearing of a caressing sound of "TNT" (By the way,some witty guys quickly came up with a new decoding of this abbreviation: TriNitro-Toluene, stressingthe magnificent power of this chipset 3D). However, time takes its course, we look forward to somethingnew, though we don't have even the slightest idea of what it is, and in any circumstances we areconstantly lacking fps... Yes, these are the notorious fps, which seem as unachievable as Everestand Elbrus, though a great number of famous companies with 3dfx, nVidia and S3 in the forefrontkeep on persistently storming the impregnable heights.

Most users, who used to care especially about their darling CPU and its megahertz, trying tooverclock it until dead faint, have almost forgotten their favorite occupation and switched overto 3D. The fps (frames per second) pursuit drove everybody crazy. God knows how many reproachesor enthusiastic responses showered the engineers of those companies, who give birth to the tinypieces of silicon. And then the whole army of coolers surrounds these small graphics cards hearts,so that the insatiable user could get more and more fps! Anyway, this is just a lyricism, thoughperfectly suiting the topic of our review. So, let's get down to earth.

As we have already said we have drastically changed the methodology of our testing. Fromnow on we will use two platforms for benchmarking: the one on AMD K6-2 processor, and the otheron Intel Pentium III. This will allow us not just to check the cards top performance, but also tocomment on the expediency (or inexpediency!) of purchasing new accelerators, which can be reallyhelpful for Socket 7 systems owners. Besides, we have every opportunity to take a closer look atall the advantages of 3DNow! and SSE technologies. Well, here is a brief description of our testsystems.

The system based on Intel Pentium III processor was configured as follows:

• ASUS P2B-B (i440BX) mainboard;
• 128MB PC-100 system memory;
• Intel Pentium III 500MHz CPU.

The system based on AMD K6-2 processor was configured as follows:

• Chaintech 5AGM2 (VIA MVP3) mainboard;
• 128MB PC-100 system memory;
• AMD K6-2 450MHz CPU.

Both systems included a Viewsonic P810 (21") monitor and Windows 98.

Now let's pass over to the installation process. Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is provided withthe BIOS version 1.00 and the drivers version 2.05 dated back to 16 April 1999. The installationis as easy as ABC. The Setup program helped to install the drivers without any problems on bothPCs. Having finished the installation, we got an additional Blaster Control page in the displayproperties, which is a standard for all Creative graphics products. It contains the graphics cardinfo, the desktop settings, monitor resolution and other common things.

And as for 3D control page, it turns out pretty interesting:

Here we can operate (i.e. enable or disable according to our needs) the S3TC technology,Vsync and MIP-mapping, as well as set the AGP memory segment size.

Besides, all overclocking fans will be glad to learn that there is also a special page for them,which allows changing the chipset and memory frequency settings. The default values are 110MHzand 125MHz correspondingly.

Since Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is based on S3 Savage4 Pro chipset, which is famous for itsbrilliant ability to work at higher frequencies than provided by the drivers, we decided to killtwo birds with one stone. And that's why we can offer you both: the benchmark results at the defaultfrequencies and those after overclocking up to 143/143MHz.

Although this Creative tweaker doesn't allow setting frequencies higher than 143/143MHz, we stillmanaged to find a way out. In other words, in Registry we disclosed the keys responsible for thesetting of these particular frequencies. However, we want to say right away that Creative 3D BlasterSavage4 lost its working stability at 150/150MHz already that's why we made up our mind to stay by143/143MHz. The graphics card proved stable at these frequencies in both testing systems.

So, let's get down to the benchmarks. What we would like to start with, it is 2D graphics. Thediagram below shows the performance in 2D for Intel Pentium III 500 system with the resolution setto 1600x1200 in 16-bit color depth:

The first thing that probably catches your eye is the resolution w chose for 2D testing.We resorted to such high parameter because at lower resolutions it is a powerful CPU, whichcontributes mostly to the 2D fastness, and not the graphics card, which is our primary goal.Besides, the card performance in extreme conditions allows the reader to easily imagine itsperformance at lower resolutions.

So, what have we got here? Unfortunately, not much: Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 proved notthat cool in 2D. Of course, it's not a tragedy because its performance is very close to that ofATI Rage 128, but still S3 Savage4 manages to get only the last position among all the newestgraphics chipsets by this time.

And even more disappointing was a very mediocre image quality shown in 2D at higher resolutionsdespite a considerably big RAMDAC frequency - 300MHz, which failed to save the situation. At1280x1024 the picture already appears slightly washed out (not to mention the blurring at 1600x1200!)Thus this graphics card has again proved being a purely gaming device intended for not very exactingusers with a less than 17" monitor. In other words this graphics card is quite cool in 2D at theresolution equal to 1024x768 or less. By the way, its 32MB version costs less than $140!

Finally we came to the most important point, namely to 3D. First a small introduction. As isknown, S3 Savage3D and Savage4 chipsets make use of a texture compression technology supported byDirectX 6.0. What does it mean? Let's dwell here for a while.

Most of you have already heard about larger textures, which are already handled by Riva TNT,Rage 128 and are still a mystery for 3dfx chipsets. What do they need this feature for? Why iseverybody striving for this larger textures support? And the answer is evident: for the sake ofimproved image quality. It's not a secret that the best image can be created at higher resolutions.That's why clearer and more detailed textures (not to mention the 32bit ones) are the best solutionfor a high quality image, though they take too much memory.

At first sight it seemed as if these textures could be stored in RAM and then transferred tothe graphics card through AGP bus, designed especially for this purpose. There are two possibleway of handling textures through AGP:

• the system memory of you PC serves as a texture storage, and as far as necessary, they aresent to the graphics card and are processed there;
• all the texture manipulations is carried out directly in the RAM.

However, not every PC can boast such a large RAM, which could be freely shared with textures.Besides, the software providing AGP texture transfer is not quite checked. It especially concernsSocket 7 systems.

It seems that the S3 company had been guided by exactly the same arguments when developing itsown texture compression technology called S3TC. It works after a very simple rule: archiving texturescan help to make them considerably (a few times) smaller. Then it's much easier to operate with themwithin the graphics card local memory. And moreover, there some interesting additional advantages.

The first one is a fillrate increase, which takes place because the AGP bandwidth remainsunlimited. The second advantage is a general performance increase since data transferring via AGPis not used at all. The thing actually is that graphics cards work with local memory much fasterthan through AGP. And the third advantage is that the card manages to achieve the same largertextures quality, as if it were using AGP, however, with lower expenditures. The compressionratio of this S3TC technology is surely worth mentioning, because it is equal to 1:6, and thatis why the card local memory can hold really large textures. Especially taking into account thatS3 Savage4 chipset supports up to 32MB of local memory. With the S3TC technology this size will bemore than enough for a considerable while, since the games supporting superlarge textures are notgoing to overwhelm the market in the near future.

S3TC support implies a wonderful ability of S3 Savage4 to decompress large textures simply "on-fly"as far as necessary. Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 drivers make it possible either to set an automaticcompressed texture recognition and automatic further utilization of S3TC or to disable this technology.Our tests showed that if you want to avoid slowing down your graphics card performance, you'd better findout in advance whether the game you are about to run supports S3TC or not. Otherwise, if you leave S3TCenabled with the game not supporting it, the driver will keep on checking the presence of larger texturesand hence cause a slight speed reduction.

As for the games, which support S3TC nowadays, we can't list many of them. All that is availablenow is only a recently introduced Quake3 in a test demo-version, a special demo-level for Quake2, anda couple of demo-levels for Unreal. In addition, we can also mention the game - Forsaken. Unfortunately,the tools for fps measuring in Quake3 are not completed yet, that's why it's pretty hard to comment onthe texture compression and its influence on the card general performance.

Now let's have a look at the speed rates of Creative 3D Blaster Savage4.

We would like to start with the results achieved in 3DMark 99 MAX in the system with IntelPentium III 500MHz.

First, 16-bit color. Below you can see a comparative diagram to all the latest graphics cards.

The advantage of Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 over ATI Rage128 is evident. And overclocked up to143/143MHz, it managed to catch up with nVidia Riva TNT2 (125/150MHz). But it turned out reallyimpressive that at the resolution set to 1600x1200 Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 took the lead andwas an absolute and indisputable winner.

Now let's take the 32-bit color. Here we compared our card to ATI Rage 128 and nVidia Riva TNT2.

And again we see the same picture: Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 performs almost the same as RivaTNT2 and much better than ATI Rage 128. Unfortunately, Creative drivers do not support 1600x1200x32,so we cannot say anything here.

In Quake2 at 16-bit color depth we got the following:

And here we were simply struck dumb with disappointment. Why?! Why on earth did Creative 3DBlaster Savage4 show such low performance and let even ATI Rage 128 leave it so far behind?However, the reasons are very ordinary: ICD OpenGL, which goes with our Creative graphics carddoesn't yet (we hope just temporarily!) support multitexturing. That's why Creative 3D BlasterSavage4 will be slow as a snail with all OpenGL-games, which may utilize this technology.Its architecture is very similar to that of Voodoo3 and includes one rendering pipeline, buttwo TMU-modules for texturing. It means that if S3 Savage4 supported multitexturing, its fastnesscould almost double compared to what we have now.

In 32-bit color in the same Quake2 we obtain:

The picture hardly shows any difference. Again Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is lagging behindin all respects, though not that gravely (it even manages to achieve the level of ATI Rage 128).

Then, we decided to add a new famous game to our testing tools set - Shogo from Monolith Games.It provided a utility to measure the fps rates and can also use multitexturing. Unfortunately, thisapplication supports only 16-bit color that's why we can offer you only one diagram:

This test demonstrates sufficient performance close to the level of Rage128 at lower resolutions.However, the higher we set the resolution, the slower performs Creative 3D Blaster Savage4. Note, thatwe disabled multitexturing while running this benchmark (that's why, actually, Riva TNT2 surpassed Voodoo3).We resorted to this action because Creative graphics card behaved very strangely with the enabledmultitexturing. When enabled, we expected its speed to increase, but despite all our certainty itwent down! Not a great lot down, only 1-2 fps, but still. We are still puzzled by this incident,and unfortunately can't provide you with a sensible explanation yet.

And of course we haven't forgotten the most popular tool for graphics cards performance checkingin Direct3D - the game Incoming. Since it is practically the only one, which gives a more or lessobjective picture of the performance drop when shifting from 16- to 32-bit color. Unfortunately,Incoming supports only three resolutions. The results given below correspond to 16- and 32-bit color:

This game doesn't support multitexturing that's why our Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is againtrailing at the back.

And now let's take a look at the diagram showing the graphics card performance drop whileswitching over from 16 to 32 bit color:

We have to admit that the card performance suffers a significant drop, very close to that bynVidia Riva TNT2, which is even more disappointing in this case.

To finish with the first test, we would like to post a diagram of Creative 3D BlasterSavage4 performance depending on the CPU frequencies:

What should be mentioned in this respect? Probably, that at the lower processor frequenciesall the latest video-accelerators perform on almost the same level even at higher resolutions.So, in this case it is the price that determines the choice of a graphics card.

Now it's high time we discussed the results obtained in the system with AMD K6-2 450processor. The benchmarks were run in the same sequence as in the pervious case with IntelPentium III.

We begin with 3DMark 99 MAX in 16-bit color regime:

Here Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 looks very attractive, almost like Voodoo3.

Then we pass over to 32-bit color in 3DMark 99 MAX:

Well, here Savage4 is beyond all comparison! It is the best! The only bad egg in this barrelis the lack of 1600x1200x32 regime support in Creative drivers.

As for Quake2 in 16-bit color,...

Hm... No comments... It's an absolute fiasco.

Quake2 in 32-bit color. May be this time...

There is hardly any noticeable difference compared to the previous benchmark. Thesedisgraceful results should cause S3 enormous pricks of conscience for its negligence interms of OpenGL support for the new Savage4.

Shogo in 16-bit color:

Creative 3D Blaster savage4 is still lagging behind, though not so far behind. It looks as ifthere were the same problems with multitexturing.

Incoming, 16-bit color:

Incoming, 32-bit color:

And in this game Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 performed quite satisfactory having fallenbehind only at the resolution set to1024x768. In all other cases it showed brilliant resultsand significantly surpassed even Voodoo3.

The performance drop while shifting from 16- to 32-bit color in Incoming:

The situation is very similar to that we saw with Pentium III system. Unfortunately, thedrop is rather tangible, and there is no appropriate 32-bit color optimization.

The scalability diagram for AMD K6-2 system, i.e. the diagram of the dependence of thegraphics card performance on the CPU frequency, positions Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 to thesecond place, right after Voodoo3:

Well, let's sum up all we have mentioned and make the final conclusions. First, concerningthe Intel Pentium III based system. The graphics card Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 generallyperformed pretty well in API Direct3D, however, the drivers are a bit too raw yet and themultitexturing regime is thoroughly bad. Only 3DMark 99 MAX showed the true worth ofmultitexturing: the fillrate with multitexturing is almost twice as high as without it.And as for OpenGL support is leaves very much to be desired. Multitexturing support is thekey thing about this graphics card, because the top chipset performance directly depends onit, and the drivers do not let the card to fully use the potential of this valuable feature.So, the oversight of S3 company is more than evident. However, it may be kind of consoling thatalmost all companies launch their new graphics cards with incomplete drivers. Take, for instance,ATI, which is still trying to rectify bilinear filtering of Rage128, and there seems to be no endto it. That is why judging by working speeds we can undoubtedly recommend Creative 3D Blaster Savage4to those users, who don't feel like loosening their purse-strings for a Riva TNT2, and who are notsatisfied with Voodoo3 for some reasons (for instance, because it lacks 32-bit color support). If wetake a look at the history of S3 Savage3D, at its evolution and constant improvement, we will becomefirmly convinced of S3's ability to introduce all the necessary enhancements and to release new driversversions. We hope they will take note of all their mistakes and the new drivers won't have any problemswith multitexturing.

Now let's make a few final conclusions about K6-2 system. As we have seen, Voodoo3 retains theleadership here. However, if you prefer and admire a 32-bit color (especially taking into account thecoming Quake3), Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 is the proper choice for you. And what may be a determinativehere, it's a relatively small performance difference (except OpenGL) and a relatively low price. Buthere we hope S3 will do its best to prevent OpenGL from spoiling the whole picture of a very promisinggraphics card and will correct the OpenGL drivers.

Speaking about the 3D graphics quality we would like to continue the idea about larger texturessupport. We checked Savage4 performance in special demo-levels for Unreal using compressed textures.The screenshots are given below:

As we have already said in our review of Diamond Stealth III S540 sample, high image qualityis very closely connected with the compressed texture support. But now we have every right to sayfor sure that this image quality is achieved only by sacrificing the speed. When we consideredUnreal and its compressed textures, we noticed an incredible lag (the game response couldn't catchup with the player's actions). However, we pinned our hopes on beta-version of the drivers. And whatdo we see now? The new release retained all the disadvantages of its predecessor.

We were also disappointed about API S3 Metal, which allows viewing Unreal scenes with compressedtextures. However, here it's none other than a nightmare. What's the matter? Of course, we shouldn'tblame Unreal for anything. Yes, yes, it's again the drivers for Savage4, which sounds as another reproachto S3.

All these beautiful Egyptian frescos and fantastic holographic textures present an incrediblywonderful sight for your eyes, but is, unfortunately, absolutely impossible to play on such levels.

Let's dwell on Savage4 performance in one more game - in so long-awaited Quake3, which is stillavailable only as a demo-version with a number features typical of a multi-player two-level game.What is so special about this program? First of all, it tries to get the maximum of OpenGL. Moreover,it supports a wide range of various regimes - 32- and 16-bit rendering with different textures (16-,32-bit and compressed). That's why we were particularly interested in comparing the image quality invarious conditions.

32-bit color implies use of corresponding 32-bit textures. For a better comparison we offer youanother screenshot from the same episode made for Riva TNT2.

S3 Savage4

nVidia Riva TNT

You can hardly notice any serious differences between these screenshots in terms of imagequality. It looks just perfect!

However, we should note that on Riva TNT2 at 1024x768x32 resolution Quake3 runs pretty fast,while on Savage4 it needs speeding. In the same color depth the speed stays within the standardlimits only at 800x600x32 and down.

16-bit-color requires 16-bit textures.

S3 Savage4

nVidia Riva TNT 3dfx Voodoo3

At 16-bit color all the images are very much alike by different graphics cards, but as forSavage4 its gaming performance has significantly increased, and you can enjoy yourself playingat 1024x768x16 resolution.

32-bit color with texture compression.

S3 Savage4

Here we can see what the S3TC developers aimed at. We can play at 1024x768x32 resolution whilethe quality is somewhere between 16- and 32-bit color regimes, but still closer to a more natural32-bit one, and the speed remains on the same level.

But let us repeat once again that there is no way to measure fps in Quake3 that's why we can'tback up our arguments with any exact figures. So, it's just our personal conclusion.

Summing up, we would like to repeat that the Savage4 image quality in API Direct3D and OpenGL isup to the competitors' mark. Texture compression makes the image look more like the one with 32-bitcolor while the working speed remains on the same level as by 16-bit and no reduction occurs. However,API Metal still rouses a lot of censure, because it works slowly, has some strange texture blinking andeven vanishing.

In conclusion we would like to say a few words about Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 and DVD. As youprobably know, S3 announced that Savage4 has all the necessary hardware support for a number ofMPEG2-decoding functions, and in particular the movement compensation. Unfortunately, the card supplydoes not include any DVD players. Having tried the ATI DVD Player version 3.0, we noticed that the CPUis only 55-60% utilized. That's why we have every reason to admit that DVD is supported though notabsolutely. By the way, practically all the new chipsets can boast these functions. So, consideringthis question is most likely to become a waste of time, since there will be no graphics cards withouthardware DVD support.

Our final conclusions will sound as follows:

1. Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 graphics card is a very promising device. We hope that S3 will manageto get rid of all the drawbacks of its drivers in the near future. Besides, a relatively low price andrelatively high performance are likely to win the market for this product.
2. For Socket 7 systems owners, who are longing for 32-bit color in 3D, Creative 3D BlasterSavage4 will be the best choice. However, it should be noted that unfortunately not all systemlogic chipsets correctly support AGP. In particular, this graphics card doesn't work with themainboards based on ALI Aladdin V. Though a new AGP-patch from ALI may settle the matter.
3. Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 graphics card may turn out the best example of highest imagequality in 3D, if S3 introduces the required corrections into API S3 Metal (to be more precise -into its drivers) and improves OpenGL support.