VOGONS


First post, by 386SX

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l33t

Hi,

just want to say I finally got working don't even know exactly how the GPU in 3D of my Atom D2500 mini-itx board having its GMA3600 (PowerVR SGX545) with a never supported Windows 8.1 x86. If anyone know this gpu and its story should remember how difficult was the compatibility with modern o.s. and basically everything after Windows 7 32bit, and with linux things were not exactly better with only much later a full DRM kernel module gma500_gfx capable of 2D support (but not 3D).
In Windows 8.1, the only modern retail boxed o.s. I got and mostly never used, I always had problem installing most drivers that were not working but now just using latest drivers (as I think I always did, can't say what's changed beside reducing the ram) it's working (with a 2Gb only module) and with 2013 latest Intel drivers much much better then I was thinking even if with strange things.
3dMark2000 get 1356 points with 126 points in cpu but the cpu is detected as a Celeron with no L2 cache but gfx effects are mostly perfect with no visible problems beside a not stable framerate and some wrong background images before every tests. Strangely 3dmark2001 got 3992 points (!) (first test 54/11fps, second 91/35, third 67/24 fps impressive pixel shaders values 22fps @ Nature 71fps in Pixel shader test and 35 in Advanced pixel shaders), still need to test later 3dmark tests.
Old games seems to run quite well, Half Life in OpenGL @ 1024 is running a bit slow (like a 25fps more or less) but playable, Far Cry seems to need some patch cause everything is bright and mostly see nothing, I'll update with more games!
It's a sort of big goal considering I never thought I could see this GPU running something not having Windows 7 to try. But I'm impressed that after all the bad things read about this, it's sort of working quite well for retro games.
Bye

Last edited by 386SX on 2020-04-14, 15:25. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 1, by 386SX

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Some updates even if I imagine may interest few people have ever had this strange config. This GPU has always been a low end integrated one but at the end if I've to say I'm quite impressed considering how slow the D2500 atom cpu was.
I've tried Far Cry with latest patch works with almost no gfx errors beside the water looks a bit strange compared to what I remember back in its days, probably something wrong with pixel shading in this game (3dmark2001 shows a perfect lake pixel shader rendering), frame rate is quite low on the medium details at 800x600 maybe 20fps.
I tried Thief 3 and it works but something is wrong with the illumination. Old games like Half Life 1 runs ok in OpenGL at 1024. I've tried GTA 4 and it incredibly works without problems even if low frame rate from 10 to 20fps I'd say in the outside scenes.
But stilll I think I may optimize something, I've seen a youtube video where 3dmark on this gpu/cpu was running at higher frames maybe cause in the correct Win7 environment while this is a unsupported Win8.1 one which drivers shouldn't even work.
I'll update more.