LGR - Experiencing the S3 Savage4 Pro+

It's not just lacking "implementation", it's that getting the semantics of a powerful 3D engine into a GPU requires a high level of "programmability", something quite far removed from 3D acceleration architectures of the era. Modern Blender versions can render on your GPU, but using either CUDA or OpenCL which are not even graphics-oriented APIs, and emerged very recently (2007 and 2009 respectively).

32bit textures? That is an odd feature. An really odd feature, the only 32bit images I know how are HDR images which are cool for a bunch of reasons when it comes to 3D. But at that time? Or do you mean RGBA? With 8bit for each channel in which case, really the voodoo 3 couldn't do that? Well I gess that settles the question if you should consider a voodoo 3 for blender3d. Actually I would be intersted in seeing how long one of those cards take to render a scene in cycles. But since I know that is impossible for the lack of implementation. Also probably any scene with more than a cube in it would require more than ram than those things could possibly provide.

Ezydenias

I still love Unreal Tornament, So many nights wasted on Facing Worlds battles.

QUiKSR20

Sure was, it was the premiere API for a while! I'll still be sticking to Voodoo cards for most of my builds because of it.

LGR

That was tried, sadly made no difference.

LGR

Glide was well implemented in a lot of games back then.

Bryndal Dwyre

matrox millenium parhelia

Bryndal Dwyre

You may need to install the card in the top slot in the packard bell. Some bios for them seemed to read the first pci slot for a video card before checking the onboard graphics otherwise it'd cause an irq conflict as they share the same irq.

Bryndal Dwyre

I had plain UT99 as well as the AGP version of the Stealth III S540, and it did come with a second CD that had the compressed textures on it. Playing with that texture pack made the game look spectacular, and interestingly enough almost all Unreal 1-based games had S3 MeTaL support. Deus Ex did, and it looked and ran a lot better than Direct3D or OpenGL did on the Savage 4. I'm not surprised that Max Payne ran like garbage. The Savage 4 chip's performance dropped dramatically at resolutions beyond 800x600, even though it was nearly as fast as a Voodoo 3 at 640x480. And, while the 3D image quality was pretty good, the 2D image quality on the S540 that I had was kind of crap compared to what I had on my previous Rage Pro Turbo or Radeon 8500. There was odd banding in FMV clips in NHL 2000/2001 where I noticed it the most, but it was also present in Wing Commander and some other apps. Those issues disappeared when I upgraded to the Radeon back in 2002.

Bryan McIntosh

Hey Clint, there is a black frame at around 0:45

DECK 16! Oh so many fond memories of battling bots on that map. So many indeed. Really impressed at the quality of the texture pack, I never saw those back in the day (had plain UT99, and by the time I had kit which was capable of it… 2004 was all the rage). Interesting watching this one… after "experiencing" a Virge, I had zero interest in putting a board with an S3 chipset in a machine for a very long time. But it actually does a decent enough job - an an AGP one probably more so. Well, at least for a little while… :)

Rob Caporetto

Oh, Drimacus, how many times have I blown you up with a rocket or flak cannon over the years? :) This reminds me so much of that era. I bought my then-boyfriend his first 3D card in the late 90's (I can't remember what model, it was a lower-end Voodoo), and I remember our complete awe and wonder at 3D-accelerated Quake II vs. the software rendering we'd been used to. Did you ever have a favourite 3D engine? I seem to remember preferring Unreal engines over Quake ones, because the Unreal ones seemed to be easier to tweak to run faster on our hardware.

Aleisha

Awesome dude!

Zet The Legendary Hero

3D accelerator comparison? Well, you and Phil could do a collab here and test all the 3D "deccelerators" from the mid 90s that claimed to accelerate 3D but didn't quite got the mark. :D

BastetFurry

I think the first 3D accelerator I personally owned was a Matrox Mystique.

Paul

Reminded me of the early days of 3D acceleration, during that short period when it seemed like all games wanted to be Chinese New Year in Mexico City during Mardi Gras. Lens flares, colored lighting everywhere, insanely high res textures on low poly models, a blizzard of particle effects whenever you sniffled... And each series of visual assaults was different, depending upon which accelerator you owned. LOL The original release of Unreal was a pretty chief offender, in that regard. So. Many. Colors...

Paul

S3 got so much bad rep from their Virge decelerator cards...I was really pleasently surprised when I plopped the same PCI Savage 4 into my K6 rig and then games not only ran decently but looked amazing too! Even w/o texture packs games like Quake 2 look amazing thanks to Savage4's texture filtering.

Oh hey, a computery thing! Just what I voted for!

John Covil

Looking at how it rendered that scene in Max Payne bought back various bad memories of how my Savage 3D failed miserably to render things in certain games. Good times.

Matthew Dooley

I also had a Voodoo3 3000 AGP. Man that box art on those was rad. I proudly put it on display. And yeah GLIDE support pretty much guaranteed a smooth fps.

Desmo

Ooh fair point :D

LGR

Heh, yeah I have a few ViRGE cards still, they're totally passable. "ViRGE!" I do dig the '90s stylized capitalization.

LGR

Right? It is absolutely wild for 1999. I don't think I've seen any other textures that nice on a game from then! Serious Sam did something like, but it was two years later.

LGR

Ha, nice. We used to call these cards "s3 cabbage" even though they weren't all that bad. the predecessor, the S3 Virge was terrible, though :)

Blair Harrison

That Unreal Tournament texture comparison blew me away. Frankly, those S3 textures look good *now*, let alone 17 years ago. That is some mighty fine work.

Curus Keel

My people!

LGR

Yep, it's a great change of pace. I've got dozens of Voodoo setups lying around, but only one with S3TC support like this!

LGR

If we're into 3D accelerator comparisons? Heck yeah I am!

Nathan (PixelPipes)

It is disabled, that's just a crappy tripod I'm using :P

LGR

Glad to hear it :) I really do need to cover Nuke Strike sometime, I'd almost forgotten about it until the memories came flooding back

LGR

Awesome! Yeah that right click menu is the worst, haha

LGR

Hehe as long as there are computers to upgrade, there will be random failures

LGR

Disable stabilization on your GH5 if you have it on, it'll give you smoother pans. Aside from that, loooove the video <3

Metal is the name of Apple’s OpenGL replacement. And Vulkan is the god of blacksmiths. You wanted metal in your graphics, you got it :)

Bastien Nocera

I would definitely go with a voodoo card in my 98 machine but this does look impressive as heck for certain games like UT99

Alyxx the Rat

Of course we're into them! We subscribe to you, don't we? ;) And Nuclear Strike was so much fun back in the day. Wish they'd've come out with Future Strike, but what can you do.

Oh wow, this was the very first graphics card I ever owned! I especially remember the awesome box art (which I first thought had a Minbari cruiser on it) and that annoying Diamond right-click menu. I know we didn’t get the card when it first came out and never did really intense games, but it’s what opened the door to 3D gameplay. Thanks for the nostalgia trip!

Will Herrmann

Enjoyed this a lot! Loved the troubleshooting/frustration part (especially the mouse toss), which brings back many, many memories of doing the same back in the day. Ah, who am I kidding? This still happens to me today. :) Keep up the great work!

Gray-Haired Gamer