Creative 32mb Savage 4 is it good?

[harry lo]

Hi i was thinking of getting a Creative Savage 4 with 32mb, it is cheaper than the TNT 2 and the V3 is it a good card?

[Luke-Skywalker]

In my honest opinion the savage 32 is an average card, it is not crap by any standards but it will not set your world on fire either compared to TNT2 or V3. It is a solid performer until you get into higher resolutions than 1024x768 in Games like quake 2, q3test, AvP etc.

The upside it has 32mb of memory,128 bit engine,300mhz RAMDAC, 32bit color, twin texel pipeline,agp 2x implementation, S3Texture Compression(very good feature) to name a few,

The Downside;
Very horrid drivers they make the card AVERAGE at best, Clock speed only around 135mhz meaning fram rates are slow, S3tc not widely supported yet.

It is a good card and the image quality is beatiful, but if speed is more you fore' then a Voodoo3 2000 is probably better.

[harry lo]

Thanks Luke i heard some people say that the V3 series has some problems like stuttering and lockups is it true? What kind of computer have you got?

[Luke-Skywalker]

I have a ;

Celeron 400@600
V3 3000 (166mhz)
128 mb ram
WD 9.1 GB HDD
SB Live value

And no i dont have any problems with lockups or stuttering. I have the latest 3dfx reference drivers installed and i get around

118 fps in quake 2 (td1) at 640x480 highest quality settings and

140 fps with ugly settings, 201 fps with high performance auto exec.

I would recomend a V3, but they do have questionable image quality ie only 16 bit. If you play in resolutions of 1024x768 then a savage4 would give good frame rates and look mighty pretty.



[This message has been edited by Luke-Skywalker (edited 09-22-99).]