Graphics chip maker S3 Inc came out with its latest high-end graphics chip offering on Monday, the Savage3D accelerator, aimed at the 3D games and DVD digital video disk market. Santa Clara, California, California-based S3 is hoping that the new chip, known until now under the GX3 name, will take it back into the high-end of the market, where it has lost ground over the last year, due to the non-appearance of a successor for its Virge 3D chip. S3 is pitching up against competitors such as 3Dfx Inc and Nvidia Corp: Nvidia’s anticipated RIVA TNT chip, expected to offer similar or greater performance, is due out later this year. Intel Corp, which launched its i740 chip earlier this year, is also a competitor, though it offers lower performance. The new 0.25 micron, 128-bitSavage3D chip is said to be the first to perform trilinear filtering without degrading the performance of other functions, resulting in smoother motion than current bilinear alternatives. It also incorporates the S3TC texturing technology which Microsoft Corp agreed to incorporate within the DirectX 6.0 application programming interface earlier this year (CI No 3,375). It is optimized for Intel’s 440 LX/BX AGP Advanced Graphics Port chipset, and has a VIP video port for delivering data rate transfers up to 60 MB/s. Sampling today, the chip should be in volume production by the third quarter of this year, with process starting from $35 in quantities of 1,000.
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