S3 Attacks the High-End PC Market with the Industry's Highest Performing 3D Graphics Accelerator
	Savage3DTM Outperforms all Shipping 3D Accelerators in AGP Performance, Trilinear Mipmapping, Texture Compression and DVD/Video Processing

Santa Clara, CA -- May 4, 1998 -- At this week's Computer Games Developer Conference, S3^® Incorporated (Nasdaq: SIII) will debut its Savage3D accelerator running the industry's top 3D games at blazingly fast speeds. Delivering the highest 3D quality and performance, the 128-bit Savage3D chip achieves an unprecedented 125 million pixels per second through its single cycle trilinear architecture; and delivers more than 4X AGP performance through its newly designed AGP engine and Microsoft-endorsed texture compression technology.

"Savage3D's technology leadership aggressively positions S3 in the high-end of the PC market against existing and next generation 3D controllers from Nvidia, Intel, 3Dfx and ATI," said Terry Holdt, president and CEO of S3 Incorporated. "This technology advantage combined with S3's ability to quickly deliver high-volumes at attractive price points should spearhead S3 ahead of the competition."

Savage3D produces vivid and realistic images through its true color rendering, which enables the use of 16 million colors versus the traditional 64 thousand. The chip also includes an S3 proprietary dithering algorithm that enables games running at 16-bit to run at true color quality. As most 3D accelerated games today still support 16-bit mode, this exclusive feature sets Savage3D apart from the competition.

Single-Cycle Trilinear Mip-mapping

Trilinear filtering significantly enhances image quality over traditional bilinear filtering approaches by removing motion artifacts for smoother images. S3 believes that Savage3D is the first accelerator to perform trilinear filtering with no performance degradation and, as a result, delivers the highest fill rate of 125 million full-featured trilinear filtered pixels per second.

According to Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Associates (Tiburon, CA), "As PC games continue to evolve, software developers are looking to new 3D technologies such as trilinear mip-mapping to provide higher levels of realism and interactive game play. Looking forward to Christmas '98, our belief is that advancements in 3D controller technology which support trilinear filtering operations at high-throughput will quickly replace bilinear filtering as the standard for image quality in the PC gaming market."

"Trilinear is clearly the standard in 1998 as it removes all the artifacts associated with bilinear filtering," said John Heap, technical manager at Rage Software Plc, developer of the popular game Incoming. "In the past, we've had to rely on bilinear filtering because when we turned on trilinear, our games would experience a major performance hit. Now that trilinear actually works with no performance degradation in Savage3D, we anticipate the industry moving almost completely to trilinear by the end of the year."

S3 Texture Compression (S3TC)

Savage3D is the first 3D accelerator to include S3TC^TM, which was selected by Microsoft as the standard compression technique in DirectX^®. By compressing data up to 1/6 the normally required space, S3TC enables Savage3D to deliver 4X AGP performance and essentially doubles the chip's frame buffer size by allowing more textures to be stored.

"We chose to incorporate S3's technology into DirectX 6.0 because it delivers the best image quality, provides a developer-friendly implementation process and can be easily and cost-effectively implemented in hardware," said Kevin Bachus, product manager for DirectX at Microsoft. "Incorporating S3's algorithm into DirectX will empower content developers to better utilize the bandwidth and storage available on mainstream PCs, which will allow them to write more complex and visually compelling 3-D games."

"Using S3's texture compression scheme, we can easily see Monster Truck Madness 2 operating at 4x AGP," said Mark Randel, president of Terminal Reality. "Game developers are going to love this technology!"

Highest AGP Performance

S3 designed Savage3D's architecture from the ground up, enabling engineers to design it specifically for AGP texturing. This unique AGP design combined with S3's own S3TC technology enables Savage3D to deliver the highest AGP performance of any currently announced product in the industry.

To achieve unprecedented AGP performance levels, Savage3D was designed specifically for true execute mode, was optimized for Intel's 440 LX/BX AGP chipset and features a sophisticated tile-based architecture. In addition, Savage3D's proprietary "AGP Texture Look Ahead" scheme enables the engine to intelligently request textures before needed, thereby reducing the number of engine stalls due to AGP latency.

Best Software DVD/Video Solution

S3's Savage3D features what S3 believes is the best software DVD solution in the industry. To achieve this, the Savage3D incorporates sub-picture blending and includes a highly-tuned motion compensation block that utilizes the lowest CPU power of any competitive 3D accelerator. In addition, Savage3D features multi-tap upscaling and downscaling, Macrovision 7.1 and supports multiple third-party software decoders for maximum flexibility and performance.

Delivering powerful video capabilities, Savage3D is the only accelerator to feature a VIP video port, which delivers the highest data rate transfers at 60 MB/s. The chip also features support for multiple video windows and integrated TV-out capabilities.

Rich 3D and 2D Feature Set

Savage3D features a rich 3D feature set for optimal performance. These features include specular and diffuse shading, alpha blending, multiple textures, palletized textures, edge anti-aliasing, vertex and table fog and 16/24 bit Z-buffering. In addition, Savage3D supports bump mapping, anisotrophic filtering, reflection mapping, shadows, texture morphing and procedural textures.

Pricing and Availability

The Savage3D accelerator is manufactured in a .25 micron design, supports 125MHz SGRAM memory and also supports all legacy operating systems. The chip is sampling today and is scheduled to be in volume production in the third quarter of 1998. Pricing for Savage3D starts at $35 in quantities of 10,000 units.

About S3 Incorporated

S3 Incorporated, founded in 1989 with headquarters in Santa Clara, California, is the world's largest supplier of multimedia acceleration hardware and its associated software. S3 is committed to applying its expertise in graphics and video and platform acceleration to create innovative and affordable products for the home, desktop and mobile markets. The company's vision for the future is to also bring a rich, consumer electronics-type experience to PC users -- integrating the best available consumer multimedia technologies into the mainstream PC platform.

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