Xtreme Differences?

What's the difference between the Savage3D and the Savage4 Xtreme?

The Savage4 was a Savage3D with an extra texture unit. The Savage4 Pro chip increased clock rates, upped the memory to 32MB, and added AGP 4x support. The Savage4 Xtreme increased the clock rates even more, removed the TV-out, cleaned up a few unneeded gates, and improved the S3TC technology. The new Savage4 Xtreme design also lowered S3's production costs by a significant amount.

Clock Speeds?

The original Savage3D only had a 90MHz core, and 100MHz memory clock speed. The Savage4 Pro only had a 110MHz core and 143MHz memory clock speed, but you could overclock it up to 143/143.

The Savage4 Xtreme retail will feature a 166MHz core speed and a 166MHz memory clock speed. The OEM version will feature a 143MHz core speed with a 166MHz memory clock speed. That translates into 6ns memory for the retail version and the OEM version.

Of course, we immediately asked Paul and Mark about overclocking just to see how they would react. As we expected, Paul and Mark gave us the corporate response that S3, like Intel, generally frowns on overclocking. They were adamant that S3 doesn't want users to clock their cards above specifications, and that doing so would void your warranty. Unofficially, we hear that the Savage4 Xtreme can overclock pretty well. They didn't give us any numbers, but we'll be sure to test how far our card can go when we get it later this week. Our only concern is if the speed of the memory can handle any overclocking.

The retail Savage4 Xtreme will go for $129, but expect to find it for under $100 with a rebate. The Savage4 Xtreme's price puts it up against the Voodoo3 2000 and TNT2 OEMs.