S3 SuperSavage MX/IX Mobile 3D Accelerator

It's not that easy: the competition

Although we've painted a fairly positive picture of S3's new SuperSavage, it can't be ignored that they will be up against some very fierce competition.  Let's start with an analysis of the threat ATI poses and then continue on to the company that managed to out compete 3dfx, NVIDIA.

The Radeon Mobility will most likely offer power consumption figures equal to or slightly higher than the SuperSavage, although we don't anticipate ATI being able to beat S3 in power consumption when running at full speed (depending on what the clock speed of the chip is set to). 

Without a doubt the Radeon Mobility will have a superior DVD playback engine to the SuperSavage.  The Radeon Mobility borrows from the desktop Radeon's HWMC and iDCT engines, which won our praises in our DVD Quality, Features and Performance comparison back in October 2000.  Although the Savage2000 received some honorable mentions, second best doesn't cut it in the cutthroat graphics market. 

The performance of the Radeon Mobility will also have a good chance of beating the SuperSavage simply because the Radeon base is a much stronger and higher performing platform than the SuperSavage's Savage4 base.  Regardless of how tweaked it is, the Savage4 is still a 2 year old chip while the Radeon just made it out last June.  The Radeon Mobility does come crippled as it only has 1 rendering pipeline, making it similar to the desktop Radeon VE we reviewed not too long ago. 

ATI currently has the majority of the mobile graphics market share, and they will definitely keep on fighting to maintain that territory.  It doesn't look like the SuperSavage will pose too much of a threat to the Radeon Mobility, but it is not something that ATI can easily dismiss. 

The biggest threat to both ATI and S3 happens to be NVIDIA.  The GeForce2 Go itself is actually a pretty crude solution, basically an underclocked GeForce2 MX that is stuck in a laptop.  The fact of the matter is that the GeForce2 MX can currently be found in a shipping laptop from Toshiba (the Satellite 2805-S402) while the Radeon Mobility and the SuperSavage cannot.

But NVIDIA understands that the thin and light notebook market is quickly growing to be a large portion of the mobile market, and a GeForce2 Go that can be used in that segment is necessary for their success in this arena.  Thus came the release of the GeForce2 Go 100 and GeForce2 Go 200.

The GeForce2 Go 100 features a small package due to its support for a 32-bit DDR memory bus and nothing else (thus lowering pin-count like S3's T64C).  The clock speed of the Go 100 has also been reduced from 143MHz down to 125MHz to save power.  NVIDIA claims that the Go 100 is capable of power consumption as low as 0.5W however it is not known how they arrived at that figure.  It probably wouldn't be a stretch to say that the GeForce2 Go 100 could offer power performance comparable to a SuperSavage. 

The fact that the GeForce2 Go 100 only has a 32-bit DDR memory bus will help put these chips in thin and light notebooks but at the cost of performance.  It will be interesting to see how the GeForce2 Go 100 compares to a SuperSavage solution.  The performance could be very close.  This part also apparently runs at 1.575V, compared to the 1.8V of the SuperSavage courtesy of its lowered core clock speed, which is another interesting tidbit.

The GeForce2 Go 200 is clocked at the regular 143MHz GeForce2 Go clock, except it only offers support for a 64-bit DDR memory bus.  This is the most attractive GeForce2 Go option as it features the second lowest pin-count out of the three options but with performance equivalent to the regular GeForce2 Go solution.  It isn't known if the Go 200 is feasible for use in thin and light notebooks. 

This makes the regular GeForce2 Go the only 128-bit SDR solution in NVIDIA's 2 Go line, which is actually a very interesting and effective way of segmenting the brand.

The DVD performance of the GeForce2 Go line and the SuperSavage will be very close, it will most likely come down to which DVD player you are using and how well the different HWMC engines are taken advantage of. 

In terms of 3D performance, the GeForce2 Go and the GeForce2 Go 200 will most likely offer higher performance than the SuperSavage.  However their use in thin and light notebooks, where the SuperSavage is targeted is questionable.  The GeForce2 Go 100, which could theoretically be used in a thin and light (in spite of the fact that it has no on-package memory option), may not be able to dominate the SuperSavage in performance and might actually have a hard time competing with it in terms of feasibility for use in this particular segment because of the attractive features of the SuperSavage (single package with integrated memory, some pin-compatible versions with the mobile Savage MX/IX, etc…).

There is definitely a niche for the SuperSavage to succeed in, however looking forward, this particular part won't last for too long until either ATI or NVIDIA, or both can manage to infiltrate this niche with a higher performing part with similar power characteristics.