Posted on 5/28/2002


"According to sources, VIA Technologies plans to launch its first graphics chip, the Zoetrope core-based Savage XP, in June, aiming at the low and medium-end markets. Several graphics card manufacturers also reportedly plan to showcase supporting products at the Computex Taipei exhibition.

However, VIA was still reluctant to comment about whether it has decided to introduce the product as an independent graphics chip.

VIA’s Savage XP is said to be able to support the DirectX 8 standard, dual-display function, 64 or 128MB DDR memory and a memory bandwidth of 5.7GB/s. The performance of the chip is similar to that of Nvidia’s GeForce4 MX420.

Sources said that the new chip will be quoted at around US$15, which is almost half as cheap as the latest Xabre400 graphics chip from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), whose performance matches that of the GeForce4 MX460.

Although several graphics card makers have shown interest in developing Savage XP-based cards, they noted that the launch schedule may not be very favorable to VIA, as the mass production of the Savage XP chips is likely to coincide with Intel 845G chipsets hitting the market on a large scale. Comparatively, they have greater expectations for VIA’s Columbia high-end graphics core, whose performance is reportedly similar to that of Nvidia’s NV25."

Full Article:
http://www.digitimes.com/asp?datePublish=2002/05/28&pages=14&seq=85