Super7 Video Accelerator Comparison - Part 2: Mid-Range Gaming Solutions (June 99)

In the original tests, the S3 Savage4 PRO+ performed well below par, not a good sign at all considering even the older TNTs were giving it a run for its money with the frame rates it was cranking out. S3’s history with the Savage3D and Savage4 has always been that performance improvements are commonly seen with updated drivers, and after the help of quite a few AnandTech readers (thanks guys) AnandTech soon had another Savage4 test system running with updated drivers. The results?

The Savage4’s performance is much more improved than in the first article, and in order to be fair to S3, all benchmarks were run over again with the new drivers. Unfortunately these drivers are not available on S3’s website, instead you’ll have to do a little surfing to grab these, but the performance is worth it.

With that settled, we are brought to the next issue at hand, what defines a mid-range gaming solution. A high-end solution is easy to pick, just grab the fastest processors out there and stick them on a motherboard. With mid-range, you have to estimate what the majority of the population will be using.

At the release of the K6-2, the only chips available for purchase were the K6-2 300s and the rare K6-2 266s. The release of the 333MHz K6-2 did not inspire everyone to go out and buy 333MHz K6-2s simply because the 95MHz FSB requirement of the chip didn’t offer the performance advantage over the 100MHz FSB of the K6-2 300, causing the overall speed of the processor to be little more than what everyone could already buy at a lesser cost with the 300. Therefore the K6-2 300 was an ideal choice for a mid-range system since it is a popular CPU, however what about faster mid-range systems?

The K6-2 400 was the first processor to use the improved CXT core, and also drew quite a bit of attention as it was released during a time when the Pentium II 450 was the fastest desktop Intel CPU available and also the most pricey. This gave AMD yet another popular buy, as the K6-2 400 eventually dropped in price to a very affordable level, making the second CPU for the mid-range test bed the popular K6-2 400.

Using the same Epox MVP3G-M from the first article, and the same system configuration, let’s get to the setup for the test.