Ryccardo wrote on 2023-03-04, 21:24:

I thought Atom (before becoming "tablet/neo-netbook CPU whose higher end models are called Celeron and Pentium") was Japanese for "Pentium 4 equivalent done right"? 😜

Granted, even in 2010(?) when we bought an Asus 1005HA, a slower "Pentium 4" with Win7 and 1 GB of memory wasn't going to be remarkable by neither ultraportable, office, or cheap-ass standards; but after installing XP on it* it seems more than decent 😀 EXCEPT for not liking very much to be used with an external VGA monitor only (boots to black screen unless you use the "VGA mode" boot option)

I had the EeePC 900 with the Celeron M 900MHz. When Intel moved to the Silvermont architecture with a Gen 7 IGP in an 8 inch tablet then I needed one.

Thanks to multithreaded programs a dual core "Bonnell" Atom 1.6 is pretty competitive with a single core P4 3.2. I think the P4 would be a better overall experience though.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/atom-d51 … top,2649-2.html

I'm still testing these Atom based configs and tried most of the old and modern o.s. combinations. I usually tested the low end version without HT with a clock of almost 1,9Ghz dual core SSSE3 SoC having the "famous" GMA36x0 (PowerVR SGX 545 based architecture integrated into it) I've tested so many times to have some opinions. Its x64 CPU was one of the last old Atoms based concept for late netbooks or industrial boards. From a CPU speed point of view we could compare these to some late Pentium4 with 10 watts of power and like 2-3 watts for its GPU.

The problems came with the iGPU situation compared to the older Atoms GPUs that at least had solid driver support and retrocompatibility. The GMA36x0 iGPU was instead based on the SGX545 mobile IC and probably more oriented to OpenGL ES low resolution mobile based config instead of any desktop-like gaming one not to mention once Win7 already released with WDDM modern driver requirements. On paper it had everything to be a Directx10.x / OpenGL 3.x notebook like GPU but maybe the idea of having a smartphone iGPU on a x86/x64 scenario needed (too) much more work into the drivers to get an acceptable compatibility not to mention speed. It's difficult to compare such different architecture; on Win7 32bit the latest driver solved many problems with a speed sometimes close to a (very) slow Radeon 9500 and not a great retrocompatibility and what felt like a very complex driver layers/heavy situation like when using an "API wrapper" to explain its speed. And the syntethic benchmark numbers were low and beside good Pixel Shaders results/speed, fill rate resulted very low, even lower in multitexturing.

Games like Doom3 or Far Cry ran at like 15-20fps at 800x600 more or less. 3DMark05 got a 700 points like result. Old games in Win7 already needed some retrocompatibility o.s. fix (like DirectDraw) to add to the already complex driver situation so it was not difficult that old games were slower than modern ones. For what I remember reading opinions around, this different architecture may have needed specific game level optimizations to get better results and the architecture design was scalable but the one integrated into the SoC wasn't even close the fastest possible option (maybe costs, SoC space, less unified shaders/clocks/power requirement).

XP had some beta drivers I think and not 3D support; Win7 x64 had early beta driver that didn't get far while the x86 one was supported until late 2013. So the only o.s. for this iGPU has been Win7 32bit. On linux the situation was really bad; few Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS proprietary drivers existed for the 2D part not 3D. Nowdays a compatible basic 2D cpu based driver still exists without accelerations. At the end using these was like the "Rage Mobility on AGP" cards where low power video ICs were used on desktop PC to get low speed waiting for newer drivers. The power required by this iGPU at least measured with a meter explain most of the questions. This iGPU serie has been probably the lowest power video chip in a desktop config ever and not much could have been expected when compared to 10x more power demanding GPUs.

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.
I think that the AMD APUs are better in the power-performace ratio for gaming against the Atom because the integrated GPU is far better than the intel ones and also better than the Nvidia ION. And also very compatible because I played NFS Porsche with an AMD A10 7300 (25W max TDP) and Win7 64 at 1600x900 with ought problems, that's a fairly old game, that's why I say that the APUs are very compatible.

I've also tested the E-350 APU too but at the end it had its problems too. The power/heat was a lot for a mini itx config SoC and the boards I've tested felt like difficult to get a good cooling solution but at least the Radeon into it has a very good linux driver. The dual core CPU instead felt like not fast enough beside on paper faster than the Atom D2xx0 serie at the end I didn't have the real world feeling difference visible. It was like the whole SoC space was designed around the probably "too large" iGPU that might have been more balanced with lower clocks / less shaders / less space, to let the SoC run better.
Instead the temperature changes very fast even using good thermal paste still need those awful chipset like fan to run at 8000 rpm or something like that. I've one of these boards almost new, I can't even use on a desktop table because it's so stressing on a noise level. Imho they integrated too much for the 40nm SoC and got too far with the GPU space into it.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 16:42:

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.

That should have the GMA3150 iGPU which should be closer to the proprietary GMA950 and while probably slower than the later Atoms iGPUs, did have better compatilbity and a more standard GPU design (and much higher power requirements I suppose) compared to the PowerVR based ones. I remember I had a netbook with it and beside being very slow it wasn't bad with very old Directx6/7 games I think. Still totally different from the GMA/SGX iGPUs. 😉

386SX wrote on 2023-03-11, 17:08:

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 16:42:

Some years ago I did a test with a Zotac NM10 ITX Wifi, Atom D525, two miniPCIE ,one standard PCIE 1x, two SATA ports and 2gb DDR2 800 and Win 7 32. With a Radeon HD 5570 it was good for anything until 2007 at 1024x768, the low IPC of the atom CPU is a problem even with a better GPU and the dual-core and hyper threading features aren't very useful for those old games. Doom 3 didn't have problems with that GPU, and the CPU was enough. So that board can be interesting because the NM10ITX has drivers for XP and you can use any GPU in it, limited to PCIE 1x, but that's not so important for XP era games. So, this board paired with a Radeon HD5770 may be able to cover almost all the XP era games at 1024x768 at least and older games higher resolution without problems… Maybe someday I'll do the test. I don't consider the games released after Win Vista to be in the XP era games, because Vista has DX10 and XP is DX9 officially.

That should have the GMA3150 iGPU which should be closer to the proprietary GMA950 and while probably slower than the later Atoms iGPUs, did have better compatilbity and a more standard GPU design (and much higher power requirements I suppose) compared to the PowerVR based ones. I remember I had a netbook with it and beside being very slow it wasn't bad with very old Directx6/7 games I think. Still totally different from the GMA/SGX iGPUs. 😉

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforce 256 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-256-ddr.c734), so depending on the drivers and other things I think that it could be good for games up to 2001 maybe some from 2002, but it depends on the driver compatibility, it is a shame that there aren't Win98 drivers for it.
At the time,2010, I've bought it for a low power HTPC with a Broadcom Crystal HD, but I didn't pay attention to the 3150 spec sheet, and then I've had a bad surprise because it only supports up to 1366x768 resolution, so I couldn't take full advantage of the Crystal HD with the 3150, so the low power HTPC wasn't so low power and the Crystal HD wasn't so necessary because the Graphics card I've used then was a GT220, so it already had video hardware decoding capabilities, the Crystal HD has been in a drawer for thirteen years, and I ended repurposing the board for a router/wifi-ap/firewall role for years.
I've thought that that resolution limit was stupid. It was on the spec sheet, but in the year 2010 I've thought that that limit was artificially imposed.
I still have the board, but I don't really know what to do with it, because like I said, I think that any APU is far better for retro gaming, even the first gen ones.
And now I'm using a quad-core APU for the router/wifi-ap//firewall/NAS/torrent-client-server role.

Hoping wrote on 2023-03-11, 19:49:

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforc […]
Show full quote

Yes, it has a 3150, the 3150 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/gma-3150.c3375) in raw power seems to be similar to a Geforce 256 (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-256-ddr.c734), so depending on the drivers and other things I think that it could be good for games up to 2001 maybe some from 2002, but it depends on the driver compatibility, it is a shame that there aren't Win98 drivers for it.
At the time,2010, I've bought it for a low power HTPC with a Broadcom Crystal HD, but I didn't pay attention to the 3150 spec sheet, and then I've had a bad surprise because it only supports up to 1366x768 resolution, so I couldn't take full advantage of the Crystal HD with the 3150, so the low power HTPC wasn't so low power and the Crystal HD wasn't so necessary because the Graphics card I've used then was a GT220, so it already had video hardware decoding capabilities, the Crystal HD has been in a drawer for thirteen years, and I ended repurposing the board for a router/wifi-ap/firewall role for years.
I've thought that that resolution limit was stupid. It was on the spec sheet, but in the year 2010 I've thought that that limit was artificially imposed.
I still have the board, but I don't really know what to do with it, because like I said, I think that any APU is far better for retro gaming, even the first gen ones.
And now I'm using a quad-core APU for the router/wifi-ap//firewall/NAS/torrent-client-server role.

I still remember that Broadcom mini PCI-E decoder and it was a great old style idea of having a specific "accelerator" for the video task the early Atoms could not decode in software mode and not really helped by those early notebook GMA series which required more power than the CPU itself.. I remember that for some time web browsers could use that card for YouTube encoded videos too and it worked really well, I suppose also not much power demanding considering more a smartphone like IC package. If we look at some similar IC package on some old Nokia smartphone I think to remember they also did some GPU package that was installed into the phone (maybe the N8) having 3D/video accelerator on a specific chip instead a single SoC. They could have used something like that while the driver/sw part, as said above, probably would have been really difficult into a Win enviroment drivers model.

The Broadcom card was fairly common for some time, Apple also used it, I don't know its power draw, but I remember that I couldn't touch the chip with my finger after some time, so I added a heatsink.
But back on topic, maybe this idea Re: Old netbook as a DOS gaming powerhouse is more realistic and very interesting for an atom CPU MSDOS doesn't need a powerful GPU. My Zotac board has one PS2 port for a keyboard or mouse.
I think that it's clear that an Atom CPU needs a dedicated GPU because the integrated ones are garbage and even then, their low IPC is a problem for some games, I think that an atom CPU would be very bad for an RTS game.

Probably they can be used as a very light office linux machine or as said some retrogaming Directx6/7 ones or even older as suggested. Imho a huge problem of the netbooks CPU/GPUs wasn't necessary their speed but the time they existed with a changing much heavier and demanding o.s./driver/game scenario and with retrocompatibility not exactly a target. The newer GMA iGPU architectures weren't designed for old style o.s. and as can be read from old discussion it could have done more if choosen in an higher end version that could be scalable up to an high amount of unified pipelines but would have needed more SoC space and more SoC power demand decreasing probably the point of netbooks to exist.

I have an Acer Aspire One Atom N270 1.6 1gb ram, and the best OS I've used on it was Android x86, Angry birds was fast on it and also another games, if you compare the Atom with a mobile phone CPU from that era, maybe even until the 2015 or so, because I think that the Android version I've tried back then was Android 5. It's weird to use the touchpad for Android, but it was very fast back then.
So, maybe Android x86 is still a good option to make an Atom CPU useful for gaming and other things.

I am not sure why , but my last post was deleted.
Witch is the best OS for a Atom 1.6 N270 w/ ssd ? (I am currently testing Win7 Aero edition 2016)

BTW , here is a started gaming list that for that should work for the GMA Intel 950-gma 945 . (I know it's not complete but it's a start).

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP.
This is not your thread, post in your own thread in the appropriate forum section.
You also posted your post in three different sections.......
Also keep your pirated OS off this forum

DosFreak wrote on 2023-08-13, 11:14:

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP. This is not your thread, pos […]
Show full quote

This is for system specs where people list system specs. The OP was asking about Windows 98 and XP.
This is not your thread, post in your own thread in the appropriate forum section.
You also posted your post in three different sections.......
Also keep your pirated OS off this forum

lool. any good os sugestions?

A friend gave me two Intel classmate PC platform Netbooks, one equipped with an Atom N450 Inves Nubi 10, (GMA 3150 5.5 W TDP) and a gigabyte of RAM, (expanded to two, because I have some spare DDR2 modules) and another with an Atom N2600, (it seems to be OEM since it only says Intel classmate PC on the labels), (GMA 3600 3.5W TDP) with a gigabyte of ram as well, but this one uses DDR3 and I do not have DDR3 modules available to expand it At the moment, I think the maximum the N2600 supports is two gigabytes officially, but unofficially it seems to support up to four gigabytes.

Atom N450 Windows XP tablet PC edition fully updated. Two gigabytes of ram.
GLQuake 1024x768 123.5 FPS
Quake 2 1024x768 67.6 FPS
No one lives forever 1024x768 24-60 FPS
Max Payne 800x600 17-40 FPS
Blood 2 1024x768 40-60 FPS
Return to castle Wolftein III 1024x768 30-40 FPS.
Half Life, I can't get started on this team.
Motorhead, without problems, apparently fluid with everything at maximum in 1024x768, I have not been able to measure the FPS rate in this game.

Atom N2600 Windows 7 32 fully updated. One gigabyte of ram, I think some problems are due to little RAM.
GLQuake 1024x768 59.7 FPS (VSYNC?)
Quake 2 1024x768 59.7 FPS (VSYNC?)
Max Payne 800x600 17-40 FPS
Thief 1024x768 40 FPS, but it hangs for no apparent reason, and it is not possible to finish the tutorial.
Half life varies greatly in FPS rate, with jumps between 20 and 50.
Motorhead is not playable, with a lot of graphical errors and very bad performance.

I would say that all video games that use the Quake/2/3 engine run surprisingly well on these computers.
It looks like OpenGL support is pretty good, if the game detects it.
Direct3D support is more of a lottery, it is curious that NOLF works very well and DeusEX does not exceed 15 FPS.
For some reason, I think the Lightech engine from Blood 2 and NOLF gets along very well with these GPUs.
It also seems clear that the Atom N450 is much more compatible than the N3600, probably due to more polished drivers and the help of Windows XP, which in my experience is very compatible with video games created for Windows 9x, although Windows 7 32-bit also surprises with its compatibility sometimes.
The two Netbooks have two USB ports and a VGA port, the image quality through VGA in my opinion is very good. The most modern, the N2600 also has HDMI. I tested them both with VGA and the one that has it, HDMI.
In the graphics driver options of both devices, there is an option to maintain the aspect ratio, which is very useful for reasons that I believe I do not need to explain.
It is curious that both have a fairly good screen with a native resolution of 1366x768 in ten inches, and also a resistive touch screen with a pointer, I have never seen this before on a Netbook, all the ones I have seen have a resolution of 1024x600.
In case anyone else wants to try, I think these Atom laptops are an option to try for games between 1997 and 2000, DirectX6-7, although I doubt the HT&L support, using an external monitor and a USB keyboard and mouse, especially if you use Windows XP, because they are very cheap nowadays since nobody wants them. Windows XP leaves out the most modern Atoms, the case of the GMA 3600 seems unique to me because it only has drivers for Windows 7 32, these drivers work well in Windows 8.1 32. I also tried Windows 8.1 32 on the N2600, and I was able to try GLQuake and Quake 2 without problems.
It is obvious that I only used 32-bit operating systems not because of the available RAM, I used them because of the compatibility with 16-bit installers.
Sorry for the long read, I just think it may serve as a reference for someone.
Edit: the Nubi 10 has a big battery in a fairly good health for its age, around three hours even playing Quake 😀

A friend lent me a 4GB DDR3 memory module, so I started testing again with the Atom N2600 (GMA3600) and although now the laptop responds much better, nothing has changed regarding its performance in games, using D3D compatibility is quite bad but with OpenGL the performance is quite good for a 3.5W CPU.
GLQuake, Quake II and Quake III at 1024x768x32 bit have very good performance. In GLQuake and Quake II it seems that Vsync is activated, but in the drivers it cannot be explicitly disabled.
In Quake III there is no such problem when benchmarking, and it reaches 74.1 FPS, which puts the GMA 3600 above a Voodoo4 according to Phil's results (https://www.philscomputerlab.com/3dfx-voodoo- shootout-project.html), but I used 32bit color depth instead of the usual 16bit of 3dfx. I mention it because it seems curious to me.
I Also tried Medal of honor allied assault and Jedy Knight II, both use the Quake III engine and both run perfectly on the GMA3600.
Any suggestions for other games that use OpenGL to try? That don't use the Quake engine.

Hoping wrote on 2024-01-10, 19:30:

In Quake III there is no such problem when benchmarking, and it reaches 74.1 FPS, which puts the GMA 3600 above a Voodoo4 according to Phil's results (https://www.philscomputerlab.com/3dfx-voodoo- shootout-project.html), but I used 32bit color depth instead of the usual 16bit of 3dfx. I mention it because it seems curious to me.

It's not all that curious, VSA-100 chips were about 6 months to a year too late to save 3DFX and were left in everyone elses rearview mirror pretty rapidly, even if just targeting the by then 3 or 4 year old Geforce2 MX for performance equality later GMA should be faster.

Hoping wrote on 2024-01-10, 19:30:

A friend lent me a 4GB DDR3 memory module, so I started testing again with the Atom N2600 (GMA3600) and although now the laptop […]
Show full quote

A friend lent me a 4GB DDR3 memory module, so I started testing again with the Atom N2600 (GMA3600) and although now the laptop responds much better, nothing has changed regarding its performance in games, using D3D compatibility is quite bad but with OpenGL the performance is quite good for a 3.5W CPU.
GLQuake, Quake II and Quake III at 1024x768x32 bit have very good performance. In GLQuake and Quake II it seems that Vsync is activated, but in the drivers it cannot be explicitly disabled.
In Quake III there is no such problem when benchmarking, and it reaches 74.1 FPS, which puts the GMA 3600 above a Voodoo4 according to Phil's results (https://www.philscomputerlab.com/3dfx-voodoo- shootout-project.html), but I used 32bit color depth instead of the usual 16bit of 3dfx. I mention it because it seems curious to me.
I Also tried Medal of honor allied assault and Jedy Knight II, both use the Quake III engine and both run perfectly on the GMA3600.
Any suggestions for other games that use OpenGL to try? That don't use the Quake engine.

I tested the GMA3600 "smartphone iGPU" a lot using only the latest driver for it which improved a bit compatibility at least. Pixel shading games may run at 800x600 15fps like Far Cry and Half Life II, but it was not supposed to run many games in that config at first. The PowerVR SGX5 config choosen for this Atom platform was the cheap one with four only USSE for both lowest power target and costs. Complex drivers could never solve that. Older games works with DirectDraw fix and with full screen isolation too. Anyway in pixel shading performance it may be similar to a much slower Radeon 9500 but to compare this phone GPU to a desktop one is difficult. Fill rate is low and even lower in multitexturing for example. Beside the infinite discussions about its complex drivers, games would need specific design to better use such mobile alternative architecture. Pixel Shading and the DXVA performances were nice things but at the end the GMA950 into the old platform felt almost a better GPU.

Hoping wrote on 2023-12-29, 19:03:

A friend gave me two Intel classmate PC platform Netbooks, one equipped with an Atom N450 Inves Nubi 10, (GMA 3150 5.5 W TDP) an […]
Show full quote

A friend gave me two Intel classmate PC platform Netbooks, one equipped with an Atom N450 Inves Nubi 10, (GMA 3150 5.5 W TDP) and a gigabyte of RAM, (expanded to two, because I have some spare DDR2 modules) and another with an Atom N2600, (it seems to be OEM since it only says Intel classmate PC on the labels), (GMA 3600 3.5W TDP) with a gigabyte of ram as well, but this one uses DDR3 and I do not have DDR3 modules available to expand it At the moment, I think the maximum the N2600 supports is two gigabytes officially, but unofficially it seems to support up to four gigabytes.

Atom N2600 Windows 7 32 fully updated. One gigabyte of ram, I think some problems are due to little RAM.
GLQuake 1024x768 59.7 FPS (VSYNC?)
Quake 2 1024x768 59.7 FPS (VSYNC?)
Max Payne 800x600 17-40 FPS
Thief 1024x768 40 FPS, but it hangs for no apparent reason, and it is not possible to finish the tutorial.
Half life varies greatly in FPS rate, with jumps between 20 and 50.
Motorhead is not playable, with a lot of graphical errors and very bad performance.

I would say that all video games that use the Quake/2/3 engine run surprisingly well on these computers.
It looks like OpenGL support is pretty good, if the game detects it.
Direct3D support is more of a lottery, it is curious that NOLF works very well and DeusEX does not exceed 15 FPS.
For some reason, I think the Lightech engine from Blood 2 and NOLF gets along very well with these GPUs.
It also seems clear that the Atom N450 is much more compatible than the N3600, probably due to more polished drivers and the help of Windows XP, which in my experience is very compatible with video games created for Windows 9x, although Windows 7 32-bit also surprises with its compatibility sometimes.
The two Netbooks have two USB ports and a VGA port, the image quality through VGA in my opinion is very good. The most modern, the N2600 also has HDMI. I tested them both with VGA and the one that has it, HDMI.
In the graphics driver options of both devices, there is an option to maintain the aspect ratio, which is very useful for reasons that I believe I do not need to explain.
It is curious that both have a fairly good screen with a native resolution of 1366x768 in ten inches, and also a resistive touch screen with a pointer, I have never seen this before on a Netbook, all the ones I have seen have a resolution of 1024x600.
In case anyone else wants to try, I think these Atom laptops are an option to try for games between 1997 and 2000, DirectX6-7, although I doubt the HT&L support, using an external monitor and a USB keyboard and mouse, especially if you use Windows XP, because they are very cheap nowadays since nobody wants them. Windows XP leaves out the most modern Atoms, the case of the GMA 3600 seems unique to me because it only has drivers for Windows 7 32, these drivers work well in Windows 8.1 32. I also tried Windows 8.1 32 on the N2600, and I was able to try GLQuake and Quake 2 without problems.
It is obvious that I only used 32-bit operating systems not because of the available RAM, I used them because of the compatibility with 16-bit installers.
Sorry for the long read, I just think it may serve as a reference for someone.
Edit: the Nubi 10 has a big battery in a fairly good health for its age, around three hours even playing Quake 😀

Thief and Thief II can run in the legacy Directx6 mode using the newer engine and a specific DirectDraw fixing app. But Directx9 mode that would increase a lot fps has two biggest problems; game menu are almost impossible to work with this iGPU driver and in game rendering will crash soon because there's an option to modify into the config files I've totally found edit: tested fixing that, after finishing these games in Directx6 mode. Which game version patches and Direct3D mode do you use?

386SX wrote on 2024-01-11, 19:41:

Thief and Thief II can run in the legacy Directx6 mode using the newer engine and a specific DirectDraw fixing app. But Directx9 mode that would increase a lot fps has two biggest problems; game menu are almost impossible to work with this iGPU driver and in game rendering will crash soon because there's an option to modify into the config files I've totally found fixing that, after finishing these games in Directx6 mode. Which game version patches and Direct3D mode do you use?

Normally in compatibility tests I try to use the first version that was released, and without any patches, so the version that I tested of Thief: The Dark Project is 1.0.
I wonder if with the fix you mention, the game would stop crashing.

Hoping wrote on 2024-01-11, 22:12:

Normally in compatibility tests I try to use the first version that was released, and without any patches, so the version that I tested of Thief: The Dark Project is 1.0.
I wonder if with the fix you mention, the game would stop crashing.

Well I remember now it was actually a suggestion given to me to work with and later I found that setting it to 0 solved it. I tested this game so much with the GMA3600 I lost track of all the testing. The setting to modify is d3d_disp_2d_surf_mode into the new modded engine cfg but the in game menu with the new Directx9 renderer will still be almost impossible to read and basically ending any levels will result in almost impossible situation to continue the game. But using the new engine set to Directx6 renderer, external DirectDraw fix, real fullscreen and a cfg optimization it will still be good like around 25fps @ 1024x768 while with D3D9 renderer it'd have been like 40fps maybe.

Old image of the menu rendered on D3D9 that would have needed a driver or engine update:

I didn't play the game with compatibility tool because the patched version with the new game engine (but without any different gfx mod or changes from the original look) seems to be a better solution. An app that solve the DirectDraw problem is still needed and easier compared to the Win tool compatibility flags.