S3's Savage 4 part (both the PRO and PRO+) was, in general, well received. The system OEM sector lapped it up, dishing up design wins for Diamond, ELSA and Number Nine. During the summer, the retail sector also seemed to be awash with Savage 4 cards from major vendors. Clearly a job well done by S3.

With the original Savage 4 Pro chip costing $22 in quantities of 10,000 and a total board cost peaking at only $129.99ESP, these 32MB boards did the job required. S3 seems to have recognized that the graphics card industry has split into two wildly different camps. On the one hand is the $200 to $300 sector, where end-users are expected to shell out for expensive but blazing quick 3D accelerators whilst the other sector is aiming for the sub-$130 card.

To be honest, you no longer need to pay $200-$300 in order to play a decent game of Half-Life or gain access to a growing library of hardware-only accelerated titles that are not available to a 3D card-less system owner. Amidst all the exciting news concerning next generation 3D accelerators from NVIDIA (see T&L tidbit) and 3dfx (see the T-Buffer story) comes a story from S3 (not the one about them buying Diamond Multimedia). This one will perhaps generate less of a 'splash' but nonetheless it could still be significant for the industry. It's bound to raise the bar at the lower-end of the scale- a good thing in our book.

Now before you all get your knickers in a twist thinking the Savage4 Pro Xtreme (huh?) is a 'next-gen' or 'high-end' chip- it isn't. Sources close to Sharky Extreme have told us that later on in the year, when S3 does release their next generation part, currently known as the GX4, it will have complete hardware support for Transformation & Lighting. The way T&L works by offloading the geometry transforms and lighting calculations from the CPU, it could work to S3's advantage if they are following their recent traditions and going after the more competitively priced markets. Thus, rather than dubbing the Savage4 Pro Xtreme as a 'new' chip altogether, it's more accurate to think of it as exactly the same that's come before with the original Savage4, only faster (and here comes the hook) yet at the same price. The Savage4 Pro Xtreme uses the same Savage4 chipset but the memory speed has been upped, as has the graphics clock of the chip itself.

S3 is due to issue the surprise announcement of the Savage4 Xtreme part and the Sharky Extreme lab (complete with half-eaten sandwiches and executive cashews) has for the past few days been extensively testing out a beta board with this new part in residence.