Savage XP (Zoetrope) to Come in June

by Anna Filatova
05/28/2002 | 11:18 PM

Finally the chip will be released! No matter that it is going to happen not in May, as we have expected before (see this news story), but a bit later, in June, maybe even at Computex 2002 Taipei, as we read over here. However, what is important, it’s the fact that the chip will come out :)

Here are some new facts about the upcoming Zoetrope chip, besides the already familiar details (such as: 0.15micron manufacturing technology, 2 pipelines with 2 TMUs each):

• Firstly, the official name for Zoetrope will be SavageXP, another name, which allegedly doesn’t have anything to do with Windows XP. It means that besides the already existing Blade XP and Athlon XP there will be one more product with “XP” suffix in the market.
• Secondly, the chip will be equipped with 64MB or 128MB DDR SDRAM with 5.7GB/sec bandwidth. This is very little, because it corresponds to 350MHz (175MHz DDR) frequency only.
• Thirdly, the performance of Savage XP is supposed to be close to that of NVIDIA GeForc4 MX420, according to some preliminary data. We’ll hope that they mean the actual chip performance and not the performance of MX420 + SDRAM combination against Savage XP + DDR SDRAM (as you understand, in this case the comparison will be definitely not in favour of Savage XP).
• Fourthly, they report that the price of Savage XP will make only $15 per piece, which positions this chip as a Low-End and very Low-End solution (for your reference: SiS Xabre400 costs around $30, see this news story).