With a presumption you do not want to change any hardware, have you tried setting the SW1 jumpers to 112MHz FSB? Are you amendable to running the game at 512x384 resolution?

Performance in Unreal Tournament is heavily dependent on CPU speed.

Your Voodoo 3 3500 should be able to comfortably run it at 1024x768 with 60+ FPS using the Glide renderer, but it would need a Pentium 3 800 or higher to reach that level of performance.

i see, so it's overclock and lower the quality more or put the voodoo in a better machine...
what would be a better fit for a k6-2? a savage4? or a tnt2-m64 maybe? (the thing with nvidia is that i have to play with different drivers to see which one performs the best, and i don't like that)
i have both a duron 950 and a pentium 3 800 where i can use the voodoo3, but the pentium doesn't perform very well i think, it uses a gigabyte board with a via apollo pro chipset (ple133, no tualatin), maybe there are some tweaks needed

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 16:40:

i see, so it's overclock and lower the quality more or put the voodoo in a better machine...
what would be a better fit for a k6-2? a savage4? or a tnt2-m64 maybe? (the thing with nvidia is that i have to play with different drivers to see which one performs the best, and i don't like that)

The TNT2 M64 would be a decent fit for that K6-2. Pair it with period-correct drivers like 3.68 and compatibility with games made before the year 2000 should be pretty good.

i have both a duron 950 and a pentium 3 800 where i can use the voodoo3, but the pentium doesn't perform very well i think, it uses a gigabyte board with a via apollo pro chipset (ple133, no tualatin), maybe there are some tweaks needed

The Duron 950 would make that Voodoo 3 fly.

The TNT2 M64 would be a decent fit for that K6-2. Pair it with period-correct drivers like 3.68 and compatibility with games made before the year 2000 should be pretty good.

I see, so i have to do some more testing then...

The Duron 950 would make that Voodoo 3 fly.

yeah, the thing is, it's a little bit unstable that machine, is one of these pcchips boards with the cpu soldered in, the processor does indeed run at 950mhz (meaning it's not a slower, overclocked part) but i think the issue is in the ram slots, sometimes the machine boots with less ram, or doesn't boot and makes the beep code of no ram or ram fault

To echo the above advice for a game like UT, your best bet is going to be running it on a Pentium 3 / Athlon era system. A K6-2 is better for 1998 and earlier era of 3D games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake 2, etc.).

A TNT2 M64 would probably be more appropriate for a K6-era system.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-26, 16:55:

To echo the above advice for a game like UT, your best bet is going to be running it on a Pentium 3 / Athlon era system. A K6-2 is better for 1998 and earlier era of 3D games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake 2, etc.).

A TNT2 would probably be more appropriate for a K6-era system.

interesting... i thought that the voodoo3 and the tnt2 were from the same era and as such they perform similarly (the savage4 too but it's slower) but a m64 variant is slower so it should be fine

There is one tweak that the OP could do without swapping hardware: Enabling write combining on that K6-2 CPU (which is CXT), it should improve performance in certain scenarios. Still, it isn't going to a smooth experience considering the non-pipelined FPU.

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:00:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-26, 16:55:

To echo the above advice for a game like UT, your best bet is going to be running it on a Pentium 3 / Athlon era system. A K6-2 is better for 1998 and earlier era of 3D games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake 2, etc.).

A TNT2 would probably be more appropriate for a K6-era system.

interesting... i thought that the voodoo3 and the tnt2 were from the same era and as such they perform similarly (the savage4 too but it's slower) but a m64 variant is slower so it should be fine

Oops, I meant to specify the TNT2 M64, not a TNT2 in general. You're correct that performance-wise a TNT2 (esp. Pro/Ultra) would be generally comparable to a Voodoo3 3500.

Another option would be to leave the Voodoo3 in the K6-2 and pair either the Duron or P3 system with a GeForce 256 DDR. That should yield better overall performance than the Voodoo3 in one of those systems.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:08:

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:00:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-08-26, 16:55:

To echo the above advice for a game like UT, your best bet is going to be running it on a Pentium 3 / Athlon era system. A K6-2 is better for 1998 and earlier era of 3D games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake 2, etc.).

A TNT2 would probably be more appropriate for a K6-era system.

interesting... i thought that the voodoo3 and the tnt2 were from the same era and as such they perform similarly (the savage4 too but it's slower) but a m64 variant is slower so it should be fine

Oops, I meant to specify the TNT2 M64, not a TNT2 in general. You're correct that performance-wise a TNT2 (esp. Pro/Ultra) would be generally comparable to a Voodoo3 3500.

Another option would be to leave the Voodoo3 in the K6-2 and pair either the Duron or P3 system with a GeForce 256 DDR. That should yield better overall performance than the Voodoo3 in one of those systems.

i see, but i like to see the voodoo maxxed out, before i had a duron morgan 1.2ghz with the voodoo and 384mb of ddr ram, that thing was fast!, sadly the motherboard or the processor died, that had a lot of performance since it supported sse (that i feel in some games, if there's no sse support, they default to mmx)

Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:06:

There is one tweak that the OP could do without swapping hardware: Enabling write combining on that K6-2 CPU (which is CXT), it should improve performance in certain scenarios. Still, it isn't going to a smooth experience considering the non-pipelined FPU.

i've already enabled write combining, in unreal it adds 2 fps overall

This was the best I could achieve with my MVP3G-M, a K6-3+ @616 MHz, and a GeForce 3 Ti 200.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-26, 16:32:

Performance in Unreal Tournament is heavily dependent on CPU speed.

Maybe I'm missing something existential, but I have trouble understanding why (other than extreme nostalgia, I suppose) one would want to run Unreal Tournament on a vintage system, especially one at the lower bound of period-correctness... (_I_ was playing UT back in the day on a 700MHz PIII with a TNT2 M64, and that wasn't exactly the best of GPUs at the time. Or even the best CPU - I think at least 900MHz and the second-gen GeForce was available at the time I got that machine. Just the best I could afford. I am trying to remember what resolution I was playing it at... maybe 1024x768...)

The folks at OldUnreal have done an outstanding job with their patches - you can run it flawlessly and at insane frame rates on modern hardware (including an ARM Mac if you wanted). And if you want vintage hardware, well, the original UT without OldUnreal patches will scream on a mid-late 2000s XP system.
(I was actually playing it on a 2010 Mac Pro a few months ago, which is an interesting combination of modern and vintage at this point)

And I don't recall that UT is one of those games (*cough* EA... NFS Porsche, for example, is a huge mess) that will break horribly as soon as you run it on a slightly different OS, hardware, etc than what it was designed for.

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:36:

i see, but i like to see the voodoo maxxed out, before i had a duron morgan 1.2ghz with the voodoo and 384mb of ddr ram, that thing was fast!, sadly the motherboard or the processor died, that had a lot of performance since it supported sse (that i feel in some games, if there's no sse support, they default to mmx)

In that case then the Voodoo3 would be better placed in one of your faster systems.

VivienM wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:48:

Maybe I'm missing something existential, but I have trouble understanding why (other than extreme nostalgia, I suppose) one would want to run Unreal Tournament on a vintage system, especially one at the lower bound of period-correctness... (_I_ was playing UT back in the day on a 700MHz PIII with a TNT2 M64, and that wasn't exactly the best of GPUs at the time. Or even the best CPU - I think at least 900MHz and the second-gen GeForce was available at the time I got that machine. Just the best I could afford. I am trying to remember what resolution I was playing it at... maybe 1024x768...)

Agreed. I used to run UT on an Athlon 800 with an Asus v6800 deluxe (GeForce 256 DDR) back in the day. It's a P3/Athlon era game and really needs hardware of that era for decent performance.

VivienM wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:48:

Maybe I'm missing something existential, but I have trouble understanding why (other than extreme nostalgia, I suppose) one would want to run Unreal Tournament on a vintage system, especially one at the lower bound of period-correctness... (_I_ was playing UT back in the day on a 700MHz PIII with a TNT2 M64, and that wasn't exactly the best of GPUs at the time. Or even the best CPU - I think at least 900MHz and the second-gen GeForce was available at the time I got that machine. Just the best I could afford. I am trying to remember what resolution I was playing it at... maybe 1024x768...)

Agreed. Nowadays, my default recommendation for Unreal engine games is to use either UTGLR or OldUnreal on a modern PC. Far less hassle that way.

As for playing on period correct systems, I suppose experiencing these games on 3DFX hardware using Glide does have some nostalgic charm. It was how they looked and performed best back in the day. Also, people who have an Aureal Vortex 2 card may want to try A3D 2.0 with its wavetracing stuff in Unreal Tournament, and that only works properly under Win9x.

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:36:

i see, but i like to see the voodoo maxxed out

you will need fastest Tualatin, any P4 or ~1.6GHz AMD

weldum wrote on 2023-08-26, 17:36:

lot of performance since it supported sse (that i feel in some games, if there's no sse support, they default to mmx)

SSE was very optional. I can only think of couple games being able to use it, and nothing required it pre 2005. I cant even find any info if Nvidia Detonator drivers ever used SSE.
MMX is useless for games, it does only integer math and was designed for DSP/multimedia acceleration. There is one documented case of Intel paying $1mil to Ubisoft to plaster 1997 POD game box with MMX advertisement while the actual game uses MMX for one optional audio filter 😀

AMD was extreme budget low performance option until SlotA, there is nothing you can do to speed that system up.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-26, 18:00:

Also, people who have an Aureal Vortex 2 card may want to try A3D 2.0 with its wavetracing stuff in Unreal Tournament, and that only works properly under Win9x.

This is a good point as well. Authentic, 3D audio experience needs authentic 3D audio of that era.

Also makes me sad that Creative Labs put Aureal out of business because of Creative Labs bogus lawsuit.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-08-26, 18:10:

SSE was very optional. I can only think of couple games being able to use it, and nothing required it pre 2005. I cant even find any info if Nvidia Detonator drivers ever used SSE.

Nvidia drivers from the 4x.xx series are at least aware of SSE and SSE2. As to whether they utilize those instructions or not, I can't say for sure, but I did notice that there was a performance increase when going from older 3x.xx drivers to something like 45.23 on an Athlon64 CPU.

Also, if you open up the console in Quake 2, you can see that it lists some instruction sets next to the rendering device. Here's an example (sixth line from the top):

Again, I can't say for certain whether those instructions are used or not, but they are definitively listed.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-26, 18:27:

Nvidia drivers from the 4x.xx series are at least aware of SSE and SSE2.

Most earlier Detonator drivers have support for these instructions as well but prior the 4x.xx series (or Release 40 as older nVidia driver release notes mention), it was restricted to Intel CPUs.