Does AGP Really Improve Performance?

The Deal With The I740

Intel often talks about a "Balanced Architecture". A 3D graphics computer with a small amount of graphics memory is horribly imbalanced. It is interesting to observe that Intel is now manufacturing and selling its own i740 based graphics cards. These cards come in 2 meg or 4 meg configurations only - and there is no option to add more memory. Why would any intelligent user select such a board? Just to save a few dollars on graphics memory?

Though the i740 seems to be a very good product, beneath the surface, there are some things which are very odd about it. First and foremost, its drivers have been crippled so that it will refuse to allocate any textures in local graphics memory. Any texture allocated by D3D will be automatically redirected to AGP space regardless of how much graphics memory is available. With an 8M configuration, about 2M is usually used for the front and back buffer (plus Z sometimes). This leaves a very generous 5 or 6 megaBytes for high speed local texture caching. The i740 drivers will refuse to make use of this precious resource (even when the game demands it) but instead moves all textures into slower AGP memory. It should be no surprise why the i740 is not blowing away the competition in terms of raw performance.

If Intel insists on crippling the i740, there is only one other company that has the ability to fix the situation. That company is Real3D - the developer of the i740 and its drivers (in cooperation with Intel). If Real3D becomes the only i740 board manufacturer that supports local texturing, their product could blow away all of the competing i740 based boards. As an alternative, they could make a good business out of licensing their drivers to other graphics card manufacturers.

Meantime, the best bet for anyone who cares about 3D performance is to distance yourself from AGP texturing by choosing a high performance graphics card with a generous memory configuration - or at least the option to add a memory upgrade later. If you cannot stop yourself from buying a i740 card, the safest bet may be to buy it from Real3D - then to bombard them with email until they implement local texturing capability in the drivers.