With the merger of S3 and Diamond Multimedia, the new S3 has a lot to look forward to. And with renewed vigor in getting S3-powered cards into the hands of gamers, the company has unveiled some tidbits about what it will bring in the year 2000.

　　First, the upcoming Viper II, featuring S3's Savage 2000 graphics chip, will not be supporting transform and lighting (or more commonly referred to as T&L) in hardware. Like its competitor 3dfx, S3 says the gaming market isn't ready for T&L just yet (although S3 stated that T&L would be a feature of the Viper II) and decided not to add the feature at the last minute. And since the only game that currently uses the hardware technique is Quake III Arena (a game that actually only uses transform and not lighting), gamers may be able to wait. In the meantime, the Viper II will be able to render T&L through software.

　　The next iteration of the Viper, a 64MB Savage 2000+, will be clocked higher than the Viper II's 125/155 and will include hardware T&L. Gamers won't see the 64MB card until the end of Q1 2000.

　　In other news, S3 will also announce a new chipset sometime in Q2 2000, and the next Rio, the Rio 600, will be shipping during Q1 2000.