3D performance is where the Intel740 reaches its best with a high image quality and fairly solid performance. Transparencies are crystal clear and color saturation is great. The Terminator 2x/i, churns out clean and contrasted images, supporting a few advanced features like anti-aliasing and tri-linear dithering (a slightly less impressive method of tri-linear filtering).
Even so it fails to excel over Matrox's G200 which in my opinion pretty much whoops the Hercules 2x/i in just about everything. 2D performance is better, image quality too, and we shouldn't even compare 3D performance. But having said that the G200 series is still significantly pricier than any Intel740 that I know- even if Quantum 3D were to try and take a stab at it. The 2x/i does a good job shifting polygons and offers high framerates in most titles when playing at lower resolutions, BUT the G200 is in many cases at least as fast even while playing at resolutions one or even two steps above. Hmm… why is it that I'm doing a review of an Intel740 board and keep veering away to a G200? Is there any meaning in that? I wonder…
In 3D benchmarks however the Hercules 2x/i scores hit the big time. In both Wizmark and Final Reality it produces scores exceeding even a Voodoo2 SLI setup, very odd considering that in real-world applications it can't even begin to compare (do we smell benchmark optimization here?). And do we even care about the benchmark scores anyway? I mean how much time do we spend benchmarking our 3D cards every day, in comparison to playing Quake 2? I'll leave that up to you readers. Call it a rhetorical question. Still running ZDbop's 3D Winbench also offered a nice score; a full 895 Winmarks were produced (compares to 1010 for the G200 and 1300 for the Voodoo2 in SLI). It also offered a couple of hours of complete boredom. And since those guys borrowed from Tom's and Alex's ideas for the 3D Game Gauge then perhaps we might decide to make our own benchmark and call it 3D FinBench.
