DOS Days

Diamond SpeedStar A90

The SpeedStar A90 arrived in 1999 and was based on the S3 Savage4 graphics accelerator chipset.

Released 1999
Bus AGP 4x (at 2x)
Chipset S3 Savage4 Pro+
Standards Hercules, CGA, EGA, VGA
Memory 16 MB or 32 MB SDRAM
Ports 15-pin DSUB (video out)
26-pin VGA Feature connector
RAMDAC 300 MHz
Part # 28020100-001, 28020100-002
FCC ID  
Price At launch: £69
See Also  

The Savage4 can be thought of as a bug-fixed Savage3D - good specs on paper, but it turned out to be a commercial failure. As we had come to expect from S3, their drivers were awful, but they did support OpenGL and Direct 3D as well as S3's own 3D API, S3metal.

The card has solder pads for A/V out as well as DFP (Digital Flat Panel) out.

This card supported DirectX 6. The A90 was similar to other Savage4 cards such as the Creative 3D Blaster and Number Nine SR9, with a core clock that ran at 125 MHz and its RAMDAC at 300 MHz. Memory bandwidth was 1000 MB/second.

3DMark 99 score: 2049
3DMark 2000 score: 704

 

Board Revisions

One board revision is known, B.

 

Competition

Cards that used the Savage4 Pro came with 16 or 32 MB of SDRAM, while most Savage4 non-Pro cards came with just 8 MB. Despite the clock ratings and memory throughput being in the same ballpark as the nVidia RiVA TNT2, the chip itself just wasn't comparable. So what did the S3 cards have going for them? Price! At just £69 retail, they suited those with shallow pockets.

 

In the Media

 

Setting it Up


Downloads

Operation Manual
(missing)

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Original Utility Disk
(missing)

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VGA BIOS ROM
v2.21e (missing)

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VGA BIOS ROM
v2.25e (missing)

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VGA BIOS ROM
v2.36e (missing)

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More Pictures