S3 announces Mobile Savage design wins

S3 has said the notebook-oriented version of its Savage4 graphics chipset has been selected by "four of the top five notebook PC manufacturers". Fair comment, perhaps, but it's telling that S3 doesn't say which vendors have chosen its chips, or what machines they plan to put them into. S3's excuse for the lack of info is that the details will be revealed when Intel launches its Mobile Pentium III parts a wee way down the line -- which just goes to show how closely S3 and Chipzilla are nuzzling up to each other these days. Otherwise there's no connection between the two announcements -- one's graphics, the other is processors -- so there's nothing to stop S3 mentioning its partners even if Intel would rather it didn't. Except, of course, that S3 has been Intel's favourite 3D company for some time. We'd never suggest that Intel is plugging S3's graphics chip to all its PIII customers, so we won't. Presumably those nice people at S3 are way too nice to steal the fire from Intel's Mobile PIII launch. Aren't they? Meanwhile, S3 also said today that IBM has chosen Savage4 for its PC 300PL and PC 300GL series of business systems. S3 cited IBM's choice was, in part, based upon the graphics company's "return to market leadership in 1999". We suspect ATI might have something to say about that, given it controls around 70 per cent of the OEM market. We'd also be curious to know why PCs aimed at mainstream business require slick 3D accelerators. Presumably for all those crafty games of Quake III employees get up to in their lunch hour... ®