The S540 is powered by S3's Savage 4 Pro+ graphics chip. Cards with this chipset (starting with the Savage 4) had been plagued by poor driver performance since their debut, but S3 seems to have finally gotten a handle on the Savage 4 drivers.

S3, once king of the 3D accelerator world, fell by the wayside as the likes of 3dfx, nVIDIA and ATi brought their own 3D products to market. S3 remained in the shadows of the "big three", losing retail sales to 3dfx and nVIDIA, and, watching ATi gain ground on the OEM front by leaps and bounds.

Things finally seemed to be looking up for S3 when they announced their Savage 3d chipset, but, lower than expected production yields and driver deficiencies shattered this hopefulness. One good thing that did come from the Savage 3d chipset was S3TC, a texture compression technique that makes for absolutely gorgeous 3D texture renderings with a minor hit to performance.

With the Savage 3d debacle behind them, S3 focused on improving the performance of it's next generation chips. S3 also started looking for a board maker/more diversified company to merge with (to broaden their market presence and give them their own graphics card label much the same way 3dfx did with STB Systems). Well, they did both, the Savage 4 was introduced and S3's merger with Diamond Multimedia (a broad based company with good name recognition) was announced. Things are looking up for S3 since their merger with Diamond, and the future seems even brighter if they can follow through with their next product, the Savage 2000.

Ok, enough background. On to the important stuff...