VIA to Launch Another "Paper" GPU This Year?

[Dio]

Their metal drivers looked and performed better than their dx drivers ever did.

Seeing that Tim Sweeney went to all that trouble creating extra textures CD for UT you'd think S3 would've had their native API ready for SAVAGE2000.

My view nowadays is that the only thing Savage2000 is _any_ use for is playing Unreal Tournament through Metal

I think there were 'issues' with shipping Metal packaged with the main driver, but it was certainly available for Savage2000.

All those involved appreciate the compliment

 

[OVERLORD]

S3 driver team sure have good experience killing hardware development. Hope the same ain't true for COLUMBIA!

You're blaming S3's hardware problems on the driver team? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Never having bought/used SAVAGE2000 because of poor driver support on savage3d card I beg to differ. I had gl wrapper running @ higher FPS than S3's mcd/icd for opengl games. This even enabled me to run games @ resolutions which made S3 gl stutter and die! S3 should contact SCITECH team for driver support http://www.scitechsoft.com/ftp/gld/gldirect-3.0.0.exe

 

[Dio]

Never having bought/used SAVAGE2000 because of poor driver support on savage3d card I beg to differ. I had gl wrapper running @ higher FPS than S3's mcd/icd for opengl games.

The ICD was very slow for a long time, but in later days picked up quite a lot in performance (mostly in the late Savage4 and Savage2000 time frame). Eventually S3 stopped maintaining the miniGL they used for Savage3D because the ICD was actually faster.

 

[OVERLORD]

Never having bought/used SAVAGE2000 because of poor driver support on savage3d card I beg to differ. I had gl wrapper running @ higher FPS than S3's mcd/icd for opengl games.

The ICD was very slow for a long time, but in later days picked up quite a lot in performance (mostly in the late Savage4 and Savage2000 time frame). Eventually S3 stopped maintaining the miniGL they used for Savage3D because the ICD was actually faster.

Faster by S3 standards maybe. But they still broke more than they fixed!

 

[hax]

Faster by S3 standards maybe. But they still broke more than they fixed!

Broad based statements are hardly accurate. There were a few things wrong with the ICD, particularly dealing with buffer management and power management. Functionality-wise, it was fairly solid for what it had supported. Since you didn't have a Savage4 nor a Savage2000, are you making broad assumptions based on hearsay?

 

[Doomtrooper]

are you making broad assumptions based on hearsay?

Oh that would never happen here..really

 

[Randell]

The icd was only really any good for QIIIA though, other OGL games liek Kingpin had problems all the time with my S4.

Still it took a long time for me to get over using Metal/S3TC on UT when I switched to a V3.

 

[Randell]

One thing in the driver teams favour, several of them did come to the Savag Daily News forum and try to help, and took a lot of flak and a CS guy used to take questions/prioritise issues with customers at the S2000 forum.

 

[hax]

liek Kingpin had problems all the time with my S4.

Kingpin? Kingpin worked fine for me, and was a game I had played to completion several times on an S4/S2K. Out of curiosity, what problem did you have?

 

[Randell]

it was an intermittent one, soemtimes it just wouldn't load after the menu screen, soemtimes turning fog off fixed it. A friend if mine never got it to work and I remember a couple of posts at the Kingpin forum with the same issue.

The main reason I got rid of the card though was hard locking online in UT.

 

[hax]

One thing in the driver teams favour, several of them did come to the Savag Daily News forum and try to help, and took a lot of flak and a CS guy used to take questions/prioritise issues with customers at the S2000 forum.

Yeah, most of the problems were D3D related though. There was one haunting issue, which appeared to be an ICD issue, but was actually not. That was an intermittent hang on some systems.

 

[hax]

it was an intermittent one, soemtimes it just wouldn't load after the menu screen, soemtimes turning fog off fixed it. A friend if mine never got it to work and I remember a couple of posts at the Kingpin forum with the same issue.

The main reason I got rid of the card though was hard locking online in UT.

hehe, ok. I've not heard of the fog problem, but if it was an intermittent hang, I know what that was. It wasn't an ICD issue.

 

[Randell]

ah ok what was it then? another hardware bug?

BTW it had great IQ, especially on UT, but too slow at 10x7 and would have been excellent VFM apart from the irritations bearing in mind it was about half the V3/TNT2 price.

 

[KimB]

And the worst thing that I've seen that is of direct relevance to this topic was the integrated Savage video of my friend's computer. I tried to get the latest drivers for him, but he was ultimately utterly unable to run UT in either Direct3D or OpenGL (I couldn't find MeTaL drivers for his integrated Savage...).

Given that this driver was under development after the switch to VIA, it really, to me, means that there's pretty much no way that any good 3D processor is going to come from VIA for the forseeable future.

 

[OVERLORD]

Faster by S3 standards maybe. But they still broke more than they fixed!

Broad based statements are hardly accurate. There were a few things wrong with the ICD, particularly dealing with buffer management and power management. Functionality-wise, it was fairly solid for what it had supported. Since you didn't have a Savage4 nor a Savage2000, are you making broad assumptions based on hearsay?

Forums over the net support my view. S3 support for SAVAGE series stunk! Fix one hole create another. How many companies have to be petitioned to support their own cards eh?

I just hope VIA got rid of dead wood to progress S3's cause, as tech always looks good on paper till they launch. Features never get enabled or the thing never operates @ full speed due to issues. Hard/Software who knows?

They should have had forum on their site with all the problems they created.

S3- Still Sub Standard. Can they learn by previous mistakes?

 

[hax]

Forums over the net support my view. S3 support for SAVAGE series stunk! Fix one hole create another. How many companies have to be petitioned to support their own cards eh?

More hearsay without specific points to validate said argument about the ICD. Problems involve many aspects. Substandard, for the most part yes, but not with respect to the ICD. Like I said, there were some problems in specific areas, the bulk of which I had already listed.

Anyhow, this conversation is over. There is no point discussing a matter with someone who has no base of experience.

 

[KimB]

More hearsay without specific points to validate said argument about the ICD. Problems involve many aspects. Substandard, for the most part yes, but not with respect to the ICD. Like I said, there were some problems in specific areas, the bulk of which I had already listed.

Anyhow, this conversation is over. There is no point discussing a matter with someone who has no base of experience.

Here's a simple point that I brought up a couple of posts ago:

My friend, who owned a motherboard with integrated Savage graphics (VIA chipset), could not run UT in either OpenGL or Direct3D properly. Not even at 640x480 was the game remotely playable.

 

[OVERLORD]

Forums over the net support my view. S3 support for SAVAGE series stunk! Fix one hole create another. How many companies have to be petitioned to support their own cards eh?

More hearsay without specific points to validate said argument about the ICD. Problems involve many aspects. Substandard, for the most part yes, but not with respect to the ICD. Like I said, there were some problems in specific areas, the bulk of which I had already listed.

Anyhow, this conversation is over. There is no point discussing a matter with someone who has no base of experience.

I didn't know I was talking to a MOD!

Having used MANY tweaked S3 drivers in the past this gives me some authority bud! Now go moderate yourself!

 

[hax]

My friend, who owned a motherboard with integrated Savage graphics (VIA chipset), could not run UT in either OpenGL or Direct3D properly. Not even at 640x480 was the game remotely playable.

Hehe, no argument from me there. That's not particularly a driver issue though. It's integrated, and the core has no bandwidth saving techniques. The Q3 engine, which is infinitely more efficient than UT (UT's GL layer is absolutely horrid in terms of efficiency), wasn't that great at 6x4 either. If you understand where VIA is coming from, then you'll understand why that part doesn't work well. 1) SavageNB is Savage4 based, a core that was designed to render to VRAM only, but ended up having a shared system memory target. Memory agent arbitration aside, there's going to be some slow downs there. 2) Cost is everything. 3) OEM checkmark.

 

[OpenGL guy]

I didn't know I was talking to a MOD!

Having used MANY tweaked S3 drivers in the past this gives me some authority bud! Now go moderate yourself!

hax is not a "mod". He is a person who worked on the ICD at S3 (in case you didn't figure it out). I, also, worked on the ICD while at S3 (hence my handle here).

My friend, who owned a motherboard with integrated Savage graphics (VIA chipset), could not run UT in either OpenGL or Direct3D properly. Not even at 640x480 was the game remotely playable.

It was working when I left S3 in 2001... What did you break hax? Which integrated chipset is this, anyway?

P.S. I did much of the ICD bringup on the early integrated parts.