It was only a matter of time before S3's purchase of Diamond would sprout a new graphics card. The board we tested was a Diamond Stealth III S540 Xtreme (fresh in beta form of course). Sporting similar specs to the original Stealth III S540, this newer version came with 32MB of SDRAM clocked at 166MHz as opposed to 143MHz on the original. The graphics clock is also set to 166MHz, an increase of 41MHz over the S540's 125MHz graphics clock perhaps due to improvements in the .25micron process or just an accumulation of higher performance parts after such a high volume of speed binning. In any case, S3 has internally been touting a performance increase of 20%.

Current Savage4 owners backed by a fast processor will be used to playing at 800x600 resolution (those with a lower-end CPU will be playing at 640x480). The Xtreme's Quake 2 benchmarks show that a 1024x768x16 resolution is perfectly acceptable in terms of frame rate (although some way below a Voodoo3 2000). The jump from 800x600 to 1024x768 will be a welcome and noticeable one. More complex engines such as the Quake III 3 engine won't fair so well at 1024x768. This is largely due to the limitations of the Savage4 architecture using a 64-bit memory interface. When the GX4 comes out by the end of 1999 and the architecture begins using a 128-bit (or possibly 256?) memory interface this issue will probably be resolved. But for now the 'ceiling' for most Savage 4 Pro Xtreme users will be 800x600.

At either 'High Quality' or 'Normal' settings in Quake III: Arena, frame rates in the mid-to-high twenties weren't quite fast enough in 16-bit at 1024 x 768. A real hook and improvement with Quake III is the 32-bit support, which the Xtreme is able to cope with VERY well at 640x480 and acceptably at 800 x 600. With further driver improvements, which are certainly possible at this stage, frame rates might be improved upon by a few welcome notches, thus 'enabling' more acceptable play at 1024x768.