Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-05-21, 16:10:

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 indicated table fog support. There were other types of fog that were commonly supported (e.g. Vertex Fog) but table fog is somewhat unique, and not many graphics card of that time supported it properly.

Hmm. My expectation is that it will support vertex fog but not pixel fog. My experience with pixel fog is a bit weird; seems like only 3Dfx and PowerVR reliably supported it up to 2000, and don't quote me on this, maybe Matrox G400 and S3 Savage4 in 1999. But will need to test to be sure. I'll follow your procedure, as my main Win98 gaming rig is a Voodoo3 machine, kinda took it for granted.

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

The Windows performance was fast even without drivers, something even newer/more powerful cards often struggle with, and I assume it's because of VBIOS level VBE/AF support.
I got 26 to 30 FPS in Quake 2 in OpenGL mode with really nice picture. I had been told so many times that Intel 740 was a disappointment and useless for 3D

People talk a lot of nonsense online. I have used the 740 like a decade ago for a few days. The performance and compatibility was approximately on par with a riva128 in the tasks and games i have tested.

The problem with this card is: its descendants have used by intel for ages, integrated even into the chipset of some of the most expensive pentium3 motherboards around 2000, when the performance of this architecture was obviously not enough to compete with the geforce2 cards and so on.

Likely this is why the bad reputation of the card arised.
Objectively when it was released, it was a very nice midrange gaming/multimedia card with good drivers, compatibility and performance.

Geri wrote on 2026-05-21, 21:17:

People talk a lot of nonsense online. I have used the 740 like a decade ago for a few days. The performance and compatibility w […]
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songoffall wrote on 2026-05-14, 12:14:

The Windows performance was fast even without drivers, something even newer/more powerful cards often struggle with, and I assume it's because of VBIOS level VBE/AF support.
I got 26 to 30 FPS in Quake 2 in OpenGL mode with really nice picture. I had been told so many times that Intel 740 was a disappointment and useless for 3D

People talk a lot of nonsense online. I have used the 740 like a decade ago for a few days. The performance and compatibility was approximately on par with a riva128 in the tasks and games i have tested.

The problem with this card is: its descendants have used by intel for ages, integrated even into the chipset of some of the most expensive pentium3 motherboards around 2000, when the performance of this architecture was obviously not enough to compete with the geforce2 cards and so on.

Likely this is why the bad reputation of the card arised.
Objectively when it was released, it was a very nice midrange gaming/multimedia card with good drivers, compatibility and performance.

I think it came out a year too late, but even then it was quite reasonably priced. I still think I'd be more than happy with it if I had it in 1998 and even later. Most people I know had an S3 Trio64 in better cases. Hell, the PC I put this in came with a Realtek RTG3105iEH.

As for the onboard options, being released in 1999-2000 that was no longer good enough and gaming cards were going mainstream. GeForce2 MX, another card that gets shit-talked a lot, was still a beast of a card compared to most things that came before it, unless we're talking absolute top of the line stuff.

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:06:

I think it came out a year too late

In 1998 cards like the riva128, permedia2, and the voodoo rush, were still in production with a still ascending volume.
These represented the actual market when gaming was considered. The 740 arrived to this.
Cards like the sis 6326, ati rage 2+, virge, early 3d cards from trident and cirrus, and whatever other noname products i forgetting to mention now, represented the entry level.

The voodoo2 - which was a paper launch and the price of the card was almost 10 times higher than the 740 - and similar is true about the tnt1.
These very luxury producuts and no mortal had them, just like nowadays with the RTX 5090, which is already a year old card in theory, and in practice the average joe has a radeon rx470, a 730gt or a 1060 at most (or even something far worse).

Those who got a 740, didn't really had to replace it, until the tnt2 m64 and other similar trashy multimedia cards flooded the market in 1999. After this point, the 740 cant really be defined anything beyond being a display adapter 😁

Geri wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:57:

The voodoo2 - which was a paper launch and the price of the card was almost 10 times higher than the 740 - and similar is true about the tnt1.
These very luxury producuts and no mortal had them, just like nowadays with the RTX 5090, which is already a year old card in theory, and in practice the average joe has a radeon rx470, a 730gt or a 1060 at most (or even something far worse).

Those who got a 740, didn't really had to replace it, until the tnt2 m64 and other similar trashy multimedia cards flooded the market in 1999. After this point, the 740 cant really be defined anything beyond being a display adapter 😁

I think you got some things mixed up up there. In march 1998, I remember going to a store and seeing 8mb voodoo 2 cost about $220 and the i740 cost about $140 for the 4mb card.

The performance of the i740 wasnt worth the money. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphic- … il-98,64-6.html

And at the time, the voodoo 2 had solid drivers that worked and played games without any issues while the i740 was not the most faithful image quality. Better than the riva 128 though, but the rendering left a lot to be desired. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphic- … il-98,64-9.html

probably revising history seeing quantum3d's prices as the baseline for the voodoo2........ or perhaps it's slop history. It wouldn't be the first time....

(first-hand v2 owner here, now where's my monocle at......)

Geri wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:57:

In 1998 cards like the riva128, permedia2, and the voodoo rush, were still in production with a still ascending volume. These r […]
Show full quote

songoffall wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:06:

I think it came out a year too late

In 1998 cards like the riva128, permedia2, and the voodoo rush, were still in production with a still ascending volume.
These represented the actual market when gaming was considered. The 740 arrived to this.
Cards like the sis 6326, ati rage 2+, virge, early 3d cards from trident and cirrus, and whatever other noname products i forgetting to mention now, represented the entry level.

I meant for the press that reviewed it at the time.

douglar wrote on 2026-05-22, 03:40:

I think you got some things mixed up up there. In march 1998, I remember going to a store and seeing 8mb voodoo 2 cost about $2 […]
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Geri wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:57:

The voodoo2 - which was a paper launch and the price of the card was almost 10 times higher than the 740 - and similar is true about the tnt1.
These very luxury producuts and no mortal had them, just like nowadays with the RTX 5090, which is already a year old card in theory, and in practice the average joe has a radeon rx470, a 730gt or a 1060 at most (or even something far worse).

Those who got a 740, didn't really had to replace it, until the tnt2 m64 and other similar trashy multimedia cards flooded the market in 1999. After this point, the 740 cant really be defined anything beyond being a display adapter 😁

I think you got some things mixed up up there. In march 1998, I remember going to a store and seeing 8mb voodoo 2 cost about $220 and the i740 cost about $140 for the 4mb card.

The performance of the i740 wasnt worth the money. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphic- … il-98,64-6.html

And at the time, the voodoo 2 had solid drivers that worked and played games without any issues while the i740 was not the most faithful image quality. Better than the riva 128 though, but the rendering left a lot to be desired. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphic- … il-98,64-9.html

I think Voodoo2 released at $250-300 and i740 released at various prices, Palit releasing their card under $100 and Real3D Starfighter releasing at about Voodoo2's price.

I'd say the Riva128 comparison is very fair.

Voodoo 2 was add-on card - you had to have any 2d card to combine it with. Voodoo2 was first true multitexture card, Nvidia / ATi true multitexure cards released later date at the end of 1998.
ATi Rage Pro, Riva 128, i740 and others where one class lower, usually older 3D videocards, Intel came late to that party with Matrox and you had to wait for the next Intel VGA very long time. 😀

douglar wrote on 2026-05-22, 03:40:

I think you got some things mixed up up there. In march 1998, I remember going to a store and seeing 8mb voodoo 2 cost about $220 and the i740 cost about $140 for the 4mb card.

"The i740 was released in February 1998, at $34.50"
-wikipedia
(not sure if this is the chip itself or a card tho)

You might stumbled on an expensive i740 model.
In contrast, all voodoo2 was very expensive (even the 8mb versions).

I found a PC shop's price listing in an email from 1998.
It only contains the 8mb 740 and even the 8mb version was around 90$ so the 4mb version should have between 50-90 somewhere.

Geri wrote on 2026-05-22, 09:13:

"The i740 was released in February 1998, at $34.50"
-wikipedia
(not sure if this is the chip itself or a card tho)

Bare chips in bulk 10K orders. Not to mention why compare against Voodoo2 when i740 is on a level of Voodoo1 minus good compatibility minus Glide plus two years later.

How does it fare on the compatibility side, though?
Sadly it is not part of Gona's compatibility matrix, does it have glitches in Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Pinball Fantasies etc?

rasz_pl wrote on 2026-05-22, 11:44:

Bare chips in bulk 10K orders. Not to mention why compare against Voodoo2 when i740 is on a level of Voodoo1 minus good compatibility minus Glide plus two years later.

It can't do glide. Instead, it can do windowed 3d (just like the riva128, the g200, and pretty much everything else), can run indie games (meanwhile 3dfx cards which frequently struggle with anything non-aaa).

Buying a voodoo2 card was not as good idea and the 3dfx driver quality wasn't as fantastic as people remember.
If everything went well, and you was playing the supported popular aaa games from gamemags and nothing else, then a voodoo2 offered performance multiple times faster than the i740 and beat the tnt1.
Otherwise the driver quality of the voodoo2 was very bad, and most games didn't care about the conception of a secondary 3d card. Not to mention you had to try 3-4 drivers till both d3d and glide was functioning on a given pc especially when the computer was based on a non-intel solutions. If someone got a weak pc without agp ports, wanted to play the aaa games of the era, then the voodoo2 was a good choice, as it had a small driver overhead, otherwise 3dfx was not a good choice.
The price of the voodoo2 was also high. Voodoo2 was more like a luxury card for triple a gaming, and you still had to buy something as a real primary graphics card - for example the 740 was a good candidate for that purpose.
The conception of these type of accelerators was abandoned by 3dfx for a reason, it was already unviable after a few months of its release.

NorsteinB wrote on 2026-05-22, 12:39:

How does it fare on the compatibility side, though?
Sadly it is not part of Gona's compatibility matrix, does it have glitches in Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Pinball Fantasies etc?

I have not used the card in DOS, i only used it under Windows. The compatibility with games when doing windows gaming was better than sis or s3, but worse than riva 128.

Geri wrote on 2026-05-21, 22:57:

The voodoo2 - which was a paper launch and the price of the card was almost 10 times higher than the 740 - and similar is true about the tnt1.
These very luxury producuts and no mortal had them, just like nowadays with the RTX 5090, which is already a year old card in theory, and in practice the average joe has a radeon rx470, a 730gt or a 1060 at most (or even something far worse).

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. While the average office PC at the time didn't have a dedicated 3d accelerator, the original Voodoo and the Voodoo 2 in particular were incredibly popular and sold very well, it was THE card to have. Many gamers had one, maybe a SLI configuration was more of a "rich kid" thing but even that was nowhere near close to the absurd prices of current high-end GPUs. Even I, as a jobless teen in a third world country managed to save some money to get a 12MB version and it didn't seem like a major expense, getting 4 extra megabytes of RAM 3 years before that felt much more harmful to my wallet in fact.

Today I wouldn't even attempt to get a 5090 or whatever bullshit nVidia is selling at over-inflated prices even if I was gaming 24/7, the pricing scale for these things has gone out of the window in the last decade.

And I don't remember any major issues with drivers or games not detecting a dedicated 3D accelerator.

TheMobRules wrote on 2026-05-22, 16:25:

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. While the average office PC at the time didn't have a dedicated 3d accelerator, the original Voodoo and the Voodoo 2 in particular were incredibly popular and sold very well, it was THE card to have. Many gamers had one, maybe a SLI configuration was more of a "rich kid" thing but even that was nowhere near close to the absurd prices of current high-end GPUs. Even I, as a jobless teen in a third world country managed to save some money to get a 12MB version and it didn't seem like a major expense, getting 4 extra megabytes of RAM 3 years before that felt much more harmful to my wallet in fact.

Because you was a clueless unemployed tihrd world youngster - as you have explained - and you got mesmerized by the succesful ad campaigns of 3dfx and you did everything to get it.
Now you see buying the 5090 as an irrational spending, bc now you are a grown up with healthy judgement, and couldn't be mass-manipulated into buying the overpriced hardware.

If you would be a kid now, maybe you would be manipulated by tiktok videos and paid influencers again to buy some brand new nvidia card, but to compare it with something else, the voodoo2 was the shiny cabrio which is already unusable if the rain starts to pour, and the 740 is a suzuki sedan which you use to pick up your groceries.

TheMobRules wrote on 2026-05-22, 16:25:

And I don't remember any major issues with drivers or games not detecting a dedicated 3D accelerator.

You dont have to, because i still have a voodoo2. And in my ali chipset based socket 7 system i had to try multiple drivers when i put an amd cpu in, otherwise the drivers were crashing. Then the same issue with an athlon, again, multiple drivers had to be tried till one finally wanted to work. I have checked last year, and when trying games from late 90s there were more games not running on the voodoo2 than games running on it due to various bugs and reasons. The g200 or the tnt1 did far better job, those usually manage to run games even from 2000 and being consistent in delivering enjoyable experience.

Geri wrote on 2026-05-22, 17:18:

Because you was a clueless unemployed tihrd world youngster - as you have explained - and you got mesmerized by the succesful ad campaigns of 3dfx and you did everything to get it.
Now you see buying the 5090 as an irrational spending, bc now you are a grown up with healthy judgement, and couldn't be mass-manipulated into buying the overpriced hardware.

If you would be a kid now, maybe you would be manipulated by tiktok videos and paid influencers again to buy some brand new nvidia card, but to compare it with something else, the voodoo2 was the shiny cabrio which is already unusable if the rain starts to pour, and the 740 is a suzuki sedan which you use to pick up your groceries.

I have to disagree with you as well. 3d accelerators that people wanted to play games on were specialty items and 3DFX was the undisputed market leader in that specialty from 1996-1998.

And your tone here seems inappropriate. You are attributing things to the OP that just don't make any sense.

douglar wrote on 2026-05-22, 17:39:

And your tone here seems inappropriate.

Did you even read the title of the topic?

So how does the i752/810 stack up in comparison?
I know that it was die shrunk and of course used shared memory, but were there other significant changes made?
To be honest I've had more experience with the 810 than the discreet options, although I still don't have much.

Kind of seems like Intel management is fond of letting their engineers start up a product only to let it die once it gains some traction.