Re: S3 Savage4 Xp Driver Download

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Jahed Stetter

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Jul 10, 2024, 11:26:58 PM7/10/24

to gresporeasi

A while back i made a post about my Pentium III gaming rig mentioning how i had issues with the video card not performing as nicely as expected. Well someone suggested it was because the VIA chipset drivers were incorrectly installed. One Windows 98 reinstall later and after correctly installing the VIA chipset drivers specifically the IDE DMA drivers lo and behold my games work correctly great. But there's another issue i ran into that this didn't fix. Pretty much every time i go to turn the machine on it usually freezes the first time and i have to reboot like twice before it boots properly. And I'm not alone in these either LGR did a video on this card a while ago and had this same issue in his Packard Bell although i don't think he ever got it to boot at least mine boots. Is there any fix for this? it's not really an issue but it is VERY annoying especially since I do like to show this thing off sometimes and it sort of ruins the effect when I'm rebooting it like 2 or 3 times.
quick edit: I forgot to add that I didn't have this issue before I upgraded to a Savage 4 card so I'm nearly certain that's the issue

If its a socket 7 VIA board the issue is likely not the card but the buggy and poor agp implementation on that chipset. The likely works fine on a BX or a intel board. If it was a PCI card it would likely give you no problems, on a VIA chipset like how voodoo 3s work fine becasue they lack the agp features that are buggy on VIA. Different cards have different problems some can be worked out through drivers others theres no hope.

S3 Savage4 Xp Driver Download

DOWNLOAD https://picfs.com/2yUI2a

Haven't installed the VIA PCI Latency patch yet might do that tomorrow. I enabled those other settings and that seemed to help a bit. What was happening is a lot of times when I would turn it on it would usually boot up to a black screen with the Windows hour glass in the middle and the system was completely locked up and then I'd restart it'd tell me Windows failed to load last time and I'd boot as normal and then it'd boot again and then when the little Window would come up for Microsoft networking it would begin to render the outline and the X button and then freeze. Then I'd restart again and it usually would successfully boot then. After changing those options in the BIOS it seems to have fixed that last one but still hasn't fixed the Black screen with the hour glass although that seems to be happening less. I also already had the Hyperion drivers installed so perhaps maybe I could try the reverse of what you suggested and try the 4 in 1 driver. I'll try installing the PCI Latency patch tomorrow and see if that fixes it.

You may also wish to try a different Savage4 driver set. There's an 'Engineering BitFlip' set that seems rock-solid on my end, though that might be simply because I am running an AGP model (Number Nine Savage4 Xtreme AGP). Not sure what exactly is different with this, but give it a shot.

I tried this driver and your other suggestions and still nothing. I think I'm throwing in the towel here I think I'm just going to get an AGP capable motherboard and get an Nvidia GeForce 256 or something along those lines. Thank you everyone for your help even if it was for nothing.

I've always been fascinated by this semi-defective GPU. It was supposed to outperform GeForce 256 but the drivers were rather nasty and the T&L is broken. But the chip does work in games to varying degrees of success and it is a 2x2 pipeline design so it is fairly fast compared to TNT2 or G400. I remember that S3 had a Quake 3 event and that their drivers were essentially designed for Quake 3 initially. And it also runs the S3 Metal API so it is a great UT/Unreal card and can run the S3TC textures.

Hehe! No not yet. I read a Wikipedia article about it some time ago, and it stated that its driver was poor, and so I decided to avoid it. I think I've probably got enough cards from that particular era - Voodoo, nVidia, ATI and Matrox offerings. IMHO, as all these 4 types of cards have good things about them, I don't feel any strong need to get a 5th card from this period in time.

Its GL drivers were bad, slow texture uploads made lightmap dynamic lights go slower in older engines. Also it doesn't like vertex arrays in GL either as much as other cards, causing some normals to break up as unintended (such as in their favorite game, Quake III Arena) and some glColor calls getting more saturated primary colors than the real color it tried to use. This is an ANNOYING card to program for.

It is amazing that S3 was always so incompetent. None of their 3D hardware ever amounted to anything. The entire Savage line was a failure mainly because of shitty drivers. You might even be able to say the same about the Virge because even D3D 3/5 games don't work right on them.

For UT99, the Diamond Viper II driver pack includes a pack of S3 Metal updated drivers supporting the Savage 2000. Surprisingly it runs extremely well. It was pulling 40-70fps at 1024x768x32-bit with high world and skin detail. That's definitely good for a card with 128-bit SDR SDRAM and with the fillrate it has. It would undoubtedly slap around the D3D driver on a TNT2, G400 or Rage Fury. I bet that it would be a better experience than even faster cards stuck on the D3D driver. And you get S3TC textures. The readme states that the S3 Metal driver does 3 textures per pass.

I've been wondering about why driver development just died off for this card. I'm thinking the card didn't sell very well for a number of reasons. But also Diamond and S3 are of course known for screwing customers. Curiously, S3's legacy drivers page has no generic drivers at all for Savage 2K.

If the driver listed is not the right version or operating system, search our driver archive for the correct version. Enter S3 Inc. Savage4 (Engineering BitFlip) into the search box above and then submit. In the results, choose the best match for your PC and operating system.

Once you have downloaded your new driver, you'll need to install it. In Windows, use a built-in utility called Device Manager, which allows you to see all of the devices recognized by your system, and the drivers associated with them.

By his own count, Savage drove 18 different Funny Cars, but I think that may be an undercount depending on how you tally them, but he was nonetheless the definition of a journeyman driver, the kind of guy that a team owner in need could call and plug into his car with minimal fuss and ramp-up.

If one has savage hardware, would this driver be automatically installed as part of an openSUSE-13.1 install, or is it necessary for one to select this when installing openSUSE ? Does the OP have this installed ? < not sure if relevant >

But what you could try is upgrade your whole X stack to the latest version in the X11:XOrg repo. That contains a newer version of the savage driver (2.3.7 vs. 2.3.6), which contains a few fixes.
Maybe that would help?

Recommendation: Download DriverDoc [Download DriverDoc - Product by Solvusoft], a driver update tool that is recommended for Windows users who are inexperienced in manually updating S3 Graphics Card drivers. This tool does all of the work for you by downloading and updating your Savage4 Xtreme drivers automatically, preventing you from installing the wrong drivers for your operating system version.

When you use a driver updater such as DriverDoc, not only does it update your Graphics Card drivers, but it also keeps the rest of your PC drivers updated as well. With a database of over 2,150,000 drivers (updated daily), you can rest assured your hardware is covered.

S3 Graphics's Savage4 Xtreme are subject to corrupt and out-of-date device drivers. Device drivers can break down inexplicably, for various reasons. You shouldn't be concerned because you can update your Graphics Card drivers as a prevention measure.

It is very difficult to find the respective device driver for Savage4 Xtreme-related hardware because the information and support is hard to find on S3 Graphics's site. Even for someone who is experienced at finding, downloading, and manually updating Savage4 Xtreme drivers, the process can still be exceptionally tedious and extremely annoying. This is problematic because installing the wrong or incompatible driver will potentially produce worse results.

Using a driver upgrade application can allow drivers to update without difficulty. A good driver update software will ensure you have the most recent and best driver so you're never left with a problem with your device again. Driver backups offer an instant, secure way to restore a driver to an earlier configuration, if needed.

These days S3's cards have a poor reputation, and aren't a popular pick for retro gamers. This is partly due to the often buggy driver software in Windows. For DOS use, S3 cards prior to Savage had a great level of compatibility.

Tip: To speed up DOS games, try the S3VBE20 and S3SPDUP utilities if the specific games support VBE 2.0 and/or are compatible with S3SPDUP.
Tip: For Windows 98, use S3 drivers over the default ones that come with Windows.

The Trio3D/2X came out a year later in 1999, again with 4 MB or 8 MB RAM options, though it supported the faster SDRAM. The 2D acceleration was improved again from the Trio3D, and S3 managed to eek out better 3D performance, though it sits somewhere between the budget ViRGE/MX and its bigger brother the GX/2 of 2 years prior. Texturing in system memory is supported (and is 24-bit depth), leveraging AGP 2x's higher transfer rates. S3 also managed to rehash their drivers with Trio3D/2X with good compatibility.