Remember buy one back on time for glquake on NT4

was great, good memories of this card. All my friends buy too

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-05-15, 13:24:

I’m pretty sure starfighter pci models were available with 12mb or 16mb because with less you had to split the frame buffer in half.

https://vintage3d.org/i740.php#sthash.F7kINyE4.dpbs

Those are actually 4 and 8MB models with that glued emulated AGP 8MB ram. If i740 chip really cant fetch textures from main video ram then its even bigger WTF, why support 32MB of it in the first place? 😮
Also surprising how well it runs on SS7 considering the above.

DEAT wrote on 2026-05-15, 04:23:

Yeah sure: […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-15, 03:02:

I'm willing to test that. Any examples?

Yeah sure:

GLTron - https://sourceforge.net/projects/gltron/
The first nine games from ABA Games - https://abagames.github.io/games-web-pages/windows.html
SuperTux 0.13 (last stable version that is 9x-compatible) - https://sourceforge.net/projects/super-tux/fi … supertux/0.1.3/
Trackballs 1.0.1c (last version that is 9x-compatible) - https://sourceforge.net/projects/trackballs/f … alls/1.0.1-win/
Tux Racer - https://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/

Those games are highly compatible with other OpenGL 1.1 ICDs, yet they all completely fail with the i740.

I will try those games. Meanwhile, I tried other OpenGL games from the 90s that did not use the Quake engine.

Descent II, Shogo: MAD, both worked as expected in OpenGL mode. I would assume you would get more mileage out of the card if you used MiniGL/WickedGL.

The ABA Games stuff, for example, is from 2004, and if it requires hardware t&l, that's OpenGL 1.2 area.

Overall, I would not expect there to be many people in 1998 complaining about Torus Trooper not working on their i740, because the game didn't exist yet and wouldn't exist for about 6 years.

But I'll see if it works with Intel's ICD and then with WickedGL.

marxveix wrote on 2026-05-15, 09:41:

SuperTux is using 32bit @ OpenGL mode, newer OpenGL standard needed? It does no accelerate out of the box at OpenGL (menu option selected), its slideshow.

TuxRacer works at 16bit. GLtron and Trackballs also work.
Intel i740 OpenGL also works only at 16bit and not more?

I can confirm that Intel i740 does not support 32-bit color in 3D accelerated modes.

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-15, 08:24:

appiah4 wrote on 2026-05-14, 14:27:

Much like the Voodoo 3, i740 takes absolutely no advantage of any AGP features so if an AGP card will work with your SS7 board, that is the i740.

How do you mean? It explicitly leans heavily on AGP texturing and does use Sideband Addressing for example. Did later drivers disable that?
I just looked at i740 datasheet and it DOES support up to 32MB of ordinary SDRAM with no fuss. Intel reference design even mentions ordinary SO-DIMM connector for user expandable Video memory - I would love that! WTF was Intel thinking manufacturing only 4 and 8MB models?

i740 supports AGP texturing through DDMA and the AGP aperture and sideband addressing out of the box. It neither requires nor supports the newer features of AGP 2.0 specification.

rmay635703 wrote on 2026-05-15, 13:24:

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-15, 08:24:

appiah4 wrote on 2026-05-14, 14:27:

Much like the Voodoo 3, i740 takes absolutely no advantage of any AGP features so if an AGP card will work with your SS7 board, that is the i740.

How do you mean? It explicitly leans heavily on AGP texturing and does use Sideband Addressing for example. Did later drivers disable that?
I just looked at i740 datasheet and it DOES support up to 32MB of ordinary SDRAM with no fuss. Intel reference design even mentions ordinary SO-DIMM connector for user expandable Video memory - I would love that! WTF was Intel thinking manufacturing only 4 and 8MB models?

I’m pretty sure starfighter pci models were available with 12mb or 16mb because with less you had to split the frame buffer in half.

https://vintage3d.org/i740.php#sthash.F7kINyE4.dpbs

The PCI models are very interesting - they emulate the AGP aperture on-card, because the i740 chip does not support normal on-board texture memory - at all. Which explains why they have no performance advantage whatsoever over the AGP i740 cards.

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-15, 14:33:

I will try those games. Meanwhile, I tried other OpenGL games from the 90s that did not use the Quake engine.

Descent II, Shogo: MAD, both worked as expected in OpenGL mode. I would assume you would get more mileage out of the card if you used MiniGL/WickedGL.

There is no OpenGL version of Descent II or Shogo for vintage OSes, is there?

Descent II predates any standard API, so it's probably a source port. Shogo was always Direct3D.

For 1998, Intel 740 wasn't a bad card when you compare it to budget atrocities like S3 Virge and ATi Rage that flooded the market. But it suffers the same curse that modern Intel GPUs have - requires solid implementation from motherboard interface, in this case AGP. And AGP was shit in 1998, unless it was Intel.

RandomStranger wrote on 2026-05-14, 14:50:

I'm sort of the same way with the Savage3D. It came late with immature drivers, but over all a competent card with OK performance.

Just another example of how building 3d hardware wasn’t the hardest part back in the 90’s. The hardest part was to make a library of software work that had been designed, debugged, and optimized around someone else’s quirky hardware. Well, that and not getting caught cheating at 3d benchmark optimizations. That was important back then too.

I found that my i740 card performs pretty much like a Riva 128 on my super 7 motherboard and I wasn’t able to get 3d acceleration to work when I put it on an i815 motherboard with a universal AGP slot. Neither directX or open Gl. Caught me off guard. Probably user error.

douglar wrote on 2026-05-16, 13:27:

Just another example of how building 3d hardware wasn’t the hardest part back in the 90’s.

Hardware very much was also hard. Most of early 3D "accelerators" lacked blending modes (additive, multiplicative). Even second-generation chips like Permedia 1 and 2 from 3Dlabs didnt do those.

Garrett W wrote on 2026-05-16, 09:11:

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-15, 14:33:

I will try those games. Meanwhile, I tried other OpenGL games from the 90s that did not use the Quake engine.

Descent II, Shogo: MAD, both worked as expected in OpenGL mode. I would assume you would get more mileage out of the card if you used MiniGL/WickedGL.

There is no OpenGL version of Descent II or Shogo for vintage OSes, is there?

Officially no, but there's wrappers.

Could you be a little bit more forthcoming with information?

Neither game is an OpenGL as your post seemed to imply. Shogo is indeed D3D only and Descent II had ports using proprietary APIs from 3D Hardware from that era + modern source ports that use OpenGL. What did you try exactly?

OpenGL wrapping anything on Intel 740 sounds like a horrible idea.

Just before I put money on the i740 card for fun, how much of dos games that is more useful with faster CPU like PII 400 which I do not have, or slot 1 800MHz which I have with BX board? I have option of later video cards as which I have in my inventory.

Cheers,

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-14, 12:14:

I found out the Deskpro had an old revision BIOS and updated it - which might have fixed the compatibility issues with AGP cards, but I was so impressed with the Intel 740 card I decided to keep it. It's good and if you get your hands on one, I suggest you give it a chance. You too might be pleasantly surprised.

Out of curiosity, have you confirmed if the i740 supports paletted textures and table fog?

The former can be tested using the Final Fantasy 8 demo, while the latter can be checked using either Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire or Thief II: The Metal Age. But you need the retail CD release, as the GOG/Steam version of Thief II contains fan made fixes, which make it unsuitable for the table fog test.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-05-17, 17:18:

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-14, 12:14:

I found out the Deskpro had an old revision BIOS and updated it - which might have fixed the compatibility issues with AGP cards, but I was so impressed with the Intel 740 card I decided to keep it. It's good and if you get your hands on one, I suggest you give it a chance. You too might be pleasantly surprised.

Out of curiosity, have you confirmed if the i740 supports paletted textures and table fog?

The former can be tested using the Final Fantasy 8 demo, while the latter can be checked using either Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire or Thief II: The Metal Age. But you need the retail CD release, as the GOG/Steam version of Thief II contains fan made fixes, which make it unsuitable for the table fog test.

Good question, I'm curious about that.

Cheers,

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-15, 14:33:

The ABA Games stuff, for example, is from 2004, and if it requires hardware t&l, that's OpenGL 1.2 area.

they're 1.1 games - they don't even use texturing. I've even played some of them on my PCX2. if a powervr1 can play gl games a i740 can't, then there's something fucking wrong

The GL ICD on the later related chipset i754's better but there's no dithering that I can recall, so games stuck in 16-bit color looked rather ugly. Serious Sam had huge artifacts regarding the lightmap.

If you wanted other OpenGL games around 98-99 that weren't Quakes....:
- Return Fire II
- Unreal (patches' WIP OpenGLDrv)
- A2M's platformers
- Starsiege Tribes (the most likely would be played out of this list in i740's time)
- Grand Prix Legends
- VRML games (Cosmo plugin)

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-05-17, 17:18:

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-14, 12:14:

I found out the Deskpro had an old revision BIOS and updated it - which might have fixed the compatibility issues with AGP cards, but I was so impressed with the Intel 740 card I decided to keep it. It's good and if you get your hands on one, I suggest you give it a chance. You too might be pleasantly surprised.

Out of curiosity, have you confirmed if the i740 supports paletted textures and table fog?

The former can be tested using the Final Fantasy 8 demo, while the latter can be checked using either Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire or Thief II: The Metal Age. But you need the retail CD release, as the GOG/Steam version of Thief II contains fan made fixes, which make it unsuitable for the table fog test.

I'll try the FF8 demo for paletted textures and Thief II for table fog, btw I remember GOG version of Thief II not working on Win98 - Thief 1 for sure doesn't (it contains tfix). The executables themselves are affected.

The i740 feature sheet shows both must be supported on hardware level:
https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/in … 57447830572.pdf

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-05-17, 15:15:

OpenGL wrapping anything on Intel 740 sounds like a horrible idea.

It is a horrible idea, in the sense that the card is a lot slower in OGL mode than D3D, and the additional software layer leads to even worse performance.

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-21, 15:04:

I'll try the FF8 demo for paletted textures and Thief II for table fog, btw I remember GOG version of Thief II not working on Win98 - Thief 1 for sure doesn't (it contains tfix). The executables themselves are affected.

The i740 feature sheet shows both must be supported on hardware level:
https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/in … 57447830572.pdf

Cheers! I've provided step by step instructions for testing both table fog and paletted textures in this post.

BTW, the i740 datasheet mentions "Fogging and Atmospheric Effects" but that doesn't necessarily indicate table fog support. There were other types of fog that were commonly used back then (e.g. Vertex Fog). But table fog is somewhat unique, and not many graphics card of that time supported it properly.