Intel i740 AGP with Sigma Designs Malibu DVD-accelerator

Technical details
Name: i740
Company: Intel
Chipset: Intel i740 (Auburn) at 55 MHz, REALmagic EM8220 MPEG-2 accelerator
Bus: AGP 2x
RAM: 8 MB SDRAM 10 ns 64 bit 110 MHz, 2 MB SDRAM on DVD upgrade
DAC: integrated 220 MHz 32 bit
Connectors: VGA
Direct3D: 5
OpenGL 1.1
Manufactured: 1998


The Intel i740 was a 3D accelerator from Intel to promote the at this time new AGP bus. The on board SDRAM is for framebuffer only. For texturing the AGP bus is always used which offers half of the bandwidth compared to the on board memory. Then benchmarks showed that the PCI version performed faster in benchmarks. The cards performance is compareable with a Riva128.

Here the Video Module Interface of the i740 is used for a DVD accelerator card.

Intel i740 with DVD upgrade drivers

Sigma Designs Malibu DVD playback quality comparison video (with brief footage from The Fifth Element DVD):


My notes:


System used:
P2 233 MHz on i440LX chipset.
i740 AGP 8 MB SDRAM with Sigma Designs Malibu daughterboard with Realmagic EM8220 2MB, SB16
graphics mode 1024x768 24bit color depth

The decoder seems to have problems with the format of PAL 4:3 resolution.
If the movie is 16:9 with less vertical lines it seems to work.

Audio sounds as if capped with a low frequency.
Conversion Quality Setting in Windows was set to high though.

The daughterboard is mapped through the i740 resources.


Intel i740 performing in Unreal Tournament, 3DMark2000, 3DMark2001SE, XL-R8R: