Regular Sharky Extreme readers might scratch their heads (we don't advise you scratch some other part of your anatomy) and ponder about the current state of affairs with regards to the 'next generation' 3D accelerators that were supposed to be 'on tap' for Q3/Q4 of this year. What's happened and what went wrong? Here we are already approaching November and the best 3D accelerator available in most countries (including the US) is STILL a TNT2 Ultra.
This is especially true when bearing in mind the price cuts that have recently occurred. 3dfx' Napalm, which was originally slated for a 'November/Xmas' release, is no longer on schedule to make the cut this year. Matrox has already stated that the G400 (and G400 Marvel) is where they're at for 1999. PowerVR Series3 is AWOL (until further notice) and the Bitboys Oy long shots still have yet to solder their 'bits' together on to real silicon.
NVIDIA's GeForce 256 is actually the only ray of light about to make it to market (and not quite on time either) with both Creative and Guillemot boards having shipped to retailers and available on pre-order schemes (indeed if you live in South East Asia, boards have been available for a few weeks now). And then out of leftfield, there's ATI's Aurora, the Rage Fury MAXX, which is to be released just before the millenium draws to a close (funny how a statement like that is no longer sarcastic eh folks?) which will add one more contender this year. So what happened to S3's Savage 2000 then? Well we're here to tell you the latest on what we know. And we've also got the first available suite of benchmarks for you, albeit rather early and in 'beta' form, done on an Athlon 600MHz in-house at S3.
S3's delay has, in part, been due to the same reason as the rest of the pack in the industry. If the die shrink from .35 to .25micron seemed tough it probably compares to a walk in the park when moving from .25 to .18micron. NVIDIA has used a .22micron casing interim solution until .18micron yields improve over at the TSMC in Taiwan. S3 has been more fortunate than most in that the process was not only started earlier than its competitors but they've already successfully undergone the die shrink process with their mobile Savage MX/IX part. The Savage 2000 has a .18micron graphics core, which is encased in a .22micron die. Thus we're here to tell you that S3's Savage 2000 (formerly known as the GX4) and its 12million transistors are on course to make it in time for Santa and your stockings. The Diamond Viper 2, priced at $199.95, should be on store shelves as early as November (towards the end).