Intel740

The Intel740 (i740) was a graphics accelerator using an AGP interface made by Real3D (a division of Intel).

The product was designed specifically to take advantage of (and promote) the use of AGP interface, during the time when many competing 3D accelerators (notably, 3dfx Voodoo Graphics) still used the PCI connection. A unique characteristic, which set the AGP version of the card apart from other similar devices on the market, was the use of on-board memory exclusively for the display frame buffer, with all textures being kept in the computer system's main RAM. However, the Intel740 AGP boards were taking a performance hit due to the need to constantly access textures over the comparatively slow AGP bus (which supported transfer rates of only 1x or 2x at the time) and compete with CPU for the limited system RAM's bandwidth.

Some PCI versions of the accelerator also were made; they used an AGP-to-PCI bridge chip and had more on-board memory for storing textures locally on the card (and were actually faster than their AGP counterparts in some performance tests).

The technology was the first major entry of Intel into the field of 3D graphics accelerators. Intel was seeking to become a major player in the performance 3D graphics field, but competition from 3dfx, ATI, Matrox, and NVIDIA pushed Intel to focus on budget-minded integrated graphics solutions instead.

Following the original launch of the i740 in the late 1990's, ATI and NVIDIA have dominated the performance 3D graphics industry. Today, Intel GMA graphics parts are sold as integrated motherboard solutions. They are typically low-budget products designed to give users an engine that performs 3D capably, but not necessarily sufficient for heavy gaming purposes. The current Intel GMA technology is based on the original i740 design; however, the current lineup features considerably improved performance and graphics features.

Intel has reportedly hired a number of graphics hardware designers to work on a new series of discrete graphics cards, with the codename Larrabee.

External links

*Intel Support Pages: [http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intel740/ i740] Dead link|date=June 2008 [http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/express3d/ Express3D] Dead link|date=June 2008 [http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/starfighter Starfighter] Dead link|date=June 2008
* [http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel740/sb/cs-011235.htm i740 Feature Sheet] Dead link|date=June 2008
* [ftp://download.intel.com/support/graphics/intel740/29061902.pdf i740 Datasheet (PDF)]
* [http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel740/sb/cs-011241.htm i740 Hardware Product Help] Dead link|date=June 2008