Real3D Starfighter

After installing the StarFighter AGP drivers, the rest of the setup procedure went without a hitch. Three new tabs appeared in the Windows 95 Display Properties Control Panel, much like 3Dfx's excellent configuration utility, the Real3D drivers allow the user to tweak the StarFighter AGP to the max. The Cockpit configuration utility Real3D includes with the Starfighter card makes installing the three CD's worth of additional software a much easier task, not to mention the simplified configuration process. The most difficult part to the StarFighter's setup is the initial installation of the card, if you can get past that step then the rest of the way is easy riding.

The 220MHz RAMDAC present on the StarFighter AGP provides for realistic and sharp images under Windows, the 1280 x 1024 x 24-bit color current resolution limit of the card may prevent some owners of 21"+ monitors from enjoying their visual experience completely, however the sharp image quality of the card almost completely makes up for it.

In 3D situations the supported resolutions shouldn't be much of a problem, achieving 640 x 480 isn't a difficult task at all. Making full use of the AGP 2X Specification, the StarFighter AGP manages to really make a difference in your Desktop Video experience. The i740 will definitely raise the standards for Desktop 3D Acceleration, no longer will manufacturers be able to ride on the ability to run Quake 2 smoothly at 640 x 480 with their boards. With the release of the Voodoo² it became clear that the 640 x 480 resolution was finally on its way out for games, being replaced by 800 x 600, easily achievable on the Voodoo².

It should be noted that although the i740 is a great chipset, it isn't nor was it intended to be a Voodoo-killer. The image quality and performance (courtesy of features such as per pixel mip-mapping and full AGP support) are beyond that of the original Voodoo chipset, and give the Riva 128 a good run for the money, however the Voodoo2 remains the king of the 3D world by a considerable margin.

As mentioned before, the StarFighter will be available with TV-Out features later on, unfortunately the AGP version tested here lacked all TV-Out/DVD Interface features. Real3D paid great attention to detail with the StarFighter AGP, and their talents are quite apparent in their product. The card is also packaged with a cool looking Desktop Bitmap Background as well as an animated Busy Cursor to put a smile on your face, knowing that a company would go to these great lengths to please their customers is truly heat-warming in this industry.

Enough about the card, let's get to some real world tests and image quality comparisons shall we?