Detailed Savage XP Specifications

by Ilya Gavrichenkov
06/05/2002 | 06:59 PM

There is no wonder that recently announced Savage XP and AlphaChrome videochips from VIA/S3 are shown at Computex 2002.

Their detailed specifications have also become available. We will start by saying that both chips are based on the same Zoetrope core and most likely differ only in marking, so they should not be viewed separately. And here are some Zoetrope specifications:

• Memory interface – 64/128 bit DDR SDRAM
• Upto 64 MB external videomemory support, upto 32 MB embedded videomemory
• Core frequency – upto 166 MHz, videomemory – upto 366 (183 DDR) MHz
• Two pixel pipelines with two TMUs each
• Possibility to integrate two pixel pipelines into one with four texture modules
• Support of bilinear and trilinear filtration
• S3TC/DXTC texture compression support
• Full screen anti-aliasing support with programmed filtering templates
• Edge anti-aliasing support
• T&L hardware unit
• RAMDAC frequency – 350 MHz
• DVI support, embedded NTSC/PAL TV-encoder
• Two-monitor configurations support with any devices combinations
• Simultaneous scaling support and two videostreams output
• PowerWise power saving technology
• AGP 2x/4x support

It should be noted that the chip’s clock-rate is only 166 MHz! Not too much, especially that it will be made with 0.15 micron process, but not expensive ;) We’d like to remind that VIA is aiming this chip to the cheap market, so nothing extraordinary can be expected from Savage XP and AlphaChrome performance.