S3 has been a dominant force in OEM graphics for years now. When 3D accelerators hit the market, the buzz was no longer about S3 products, but focused on chips from 3dfx and NVIDIA. In 1998, S3 made an aggressive move into the video accelerator market with their Savage 3D. The chip was good enough to see action in low cost systems but wasn't able to compete with the day's fastest chips for high end consumer PCs.
With the release of the Savage 4 chips with a great price/ performance ratio, S3 once again became a strong competitor for OEMs. In 1999, S3 purchased Diamond Multimedia, which used the earlier Savage chips in the low cost Stealth series of video cards. Diamond's Viper line of video cards, previously built around NVIDIA's RIVA chips, needed to be updated for the Christmas '99 shopping season. This was accomplished primarily by decreasing the shipping core speed 37 percent. S3's Savage 2000 chip was readied for launch after its specs were subdued, and the Viper II was born.
Viper II specifications
S3 Savage2000 controller
128-bit 2D, 3D and video
TV-Output (S-Video & Composite)
AGP 4X/2X/1X support
32MB SDRAM
350MHz RAMDAC
Integrated Hardware Accelerated DVD Playback
Integrated Hardware Texture Compression (S3TC)
S3TL Transformation & Lighting
Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000
Direct3D, DirectDraw and DirectShow
OpenGL ICD for Windows 9x
S3TC, what's the deal?
S3TC is the secret behind Savage 2000's ability to render scenes faster and with higher quality visuals. It's S3's own texture compression algorithm, which has been included in Microsoft's DirectX since version 6. S3TC allows game developers to use larger textures without having to worry about swamping the AGP bus with texture transfers. S3 claims that it reduces the amount of data transferred by 4 to 6 times. This allows more textures to be transferred faster. The only real drawback associated with this compression is a slight degradation in visual accuracy. Most people will not notice, though, because it's necessary to look carefull to see it.
Summary
Price:
Street: $128
+ Excellent 3D performance Sharp DVD playback and TV out Low cost - Not the best software bundle
Overall
The Viper II is a low cost/high performance video card that has exceptional 3D gaming capabilities, DVD playback, and TV-Out abilities. It is an unbeatable value today, yet the price performance uniqueness of the card will be pressured by newer and faster cards from NVIDIA and 3dfx pushing down the prices of GeForce competitors.
Setup as tested: Celeron 366 @ 506MHz (92 x 5.5) Abit BP6 motherboard 384MB PC100 SDRAM Sony 5x DVD 20.4GB Maxtor ATA/66 7200rpm drive Diamond MX300 sound card Viper II, Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra 32MB, or ASUS V6600 Deluxe
Celeron 366 @ 506MHz (92 x 5.5) Abit BP6 motherboard 384MB PC100 SDRAM Sony 5x DVD 20.4GB Maxtor ATA/66 7200rpm drive Diamond MX300 sound card Viper II, Creative Labs 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra 32MB, or ASUS V6600 Deluxe
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