Shuttle HOT-158 AGP i740

Finding an open slot for the HOT-158 was not a problem at all, the uniquely colored AGP slot on the AOpen LX board used for testing made a nice home for Shuttle's 8MB wonder.  The size difference between the HOT-158 and the Starfighter may even make the difference in whether or not you are able to install it in some situations, especially if you happen to have a motherboard with intruding capacitors placed in close proximity of the AGP slot.  This just goes to show you that bigger isn't always better.

Unlike the Starfighter's installation, the software installation of the HOT-158 AGP will proceed as if nothing were wrong if you have Windows 95 OSR 2.0 loaded on your system.  However the USB Supplement Patch (OSR 2.1) is necessary for proper operation of your HOT-158 card, otherwise your system will not operate at its full potential. 

Using the included drivers CD-ROM, the installation process was a breeze.  A quick reboot after modifying Windows 95's Display Properties Control Panel resulted in a crisp and clear 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color resolution for the test system which was an AOpen AX6L Pentium II - 300 based system.  Overall, the installation process of the HOT-158 could have been improved with some more user friendly installation procedures, but Shuttle chose to keep it short and sweet.  Getting the job done and getting it done well was what they concerned themselves with. 

Shuttle failed to include the OpenGL Wrapper which you can find on Real3D's website for use with Quake 2 in OpenGL mode.  While the image quality and performance leaves much to be desired from this GL Wrapper, a installable client GL driver is in the works and should make its debut shortly.

The drivers included with the 158 are Intel's standard i740 drivers, and work perfectly fine under Direct3D/Direct X games.  There is still a little room for improvement on the performance end under Direct3D games but you can expect the performance this card offers now to remain fairly consistent throughout the many driver revisions that are to come in the near future.