Is it really worth 3dfx in Ms-DOS? I mean, just to speed up a bit games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, GTA 1...
Do I need any drivers for DOS?
I know that you need a Pentium minimum but I want to try it in a 486.
- Worth it? Depends if you're going to play any of the supported games.
- Drivers? Some games use dynamic links and if they don't include the glide2x.ovl file in the game directory you need to add it yourself. Either through installing Windows driver, copying it to the game directory or specify a PATH command in the autoexec.bat file.
- A quick 486 is good enough for some of the Glide games. Forget about Carmageddon on a 486 though.
- Incase you (or someone else) want to use a Voodoo2, then that card works with almost (and all the important ones) DOS Glide games.
So a Voodoo2 is better than a Voodoo1 in terms of Ms-Dos compatibility ?
wrote:So a Voodoo2 is better than a Voodoo1 in terms of Ms-Dos compatibility ?
I believe a Voodoo is better for DOS. E.g. when I tried the 3DFX patch for Tomb Raider it worked without having to to anything. With a 486 I don't see a benefit in having a Voodoo 2. Heck a Voodoo 2 needs a Pentium 2 to really separate itself from a Voodoo 😀
wrote:wrote:So a Voodoo2 is better than a Voodoo1 in terms of Ms-Dos compatibility ?
I believe a Voodoo is better for DOS. E.g. when I tried the 3DFX patch for Tomb Raider it worked without having to to anything. With a 486 I don't see a benefit in having a Voodoo 2. Heck a Voodoo 2 needs a Pentium 2 to really separate itself from a Voodoo 😀
All the DOS Glide games work on the Voodoo1, so the Voodoo2 is not better. I just brought it up incase you had one laying around, it could be used as well (if you can live without the Blood Alpha patch (which looks like crap), Dreams of Reality and Tie Break Tennis). There are some games that benefit from the Voodoo2's increased performance and resolution of 800x600, but as Mau1wurf1977 says on a 486 it won't matter much.
Some DOS Glide games will work straight out of the box without doing anything. Those games are either statically linked games (like the Tomb Raider 3DFX Voodoo Graphics patch) or include the Glide2x.ovl already in the game directory. Having a Windows installation with the 3DFX drivers installed will not have you worrying about games not starting up.
Final official Voodoo Graphics Win9x drivers include a glide2x.ovl that doesn't work with many DOS games. To get around this, I just copy an older glide2x.ovl into each affected game directory. Screamer Rally includes one that works well.
I think a Voodoo card on a P90 is worthless, i'd say it serves almost 0 purpose on a 486. Also I don't remember Duke 3D working with Voodoo cards.
You're a bit wrong with it serving zero purpose. Games like Descent 1 and 2, Tomb Raider, Fatal Racing, Actua Soccer, Extreme Assault, GTA, Starfighter 3000 and UEFA Championsleague run well on a quick 486 with a Voodoo. Then you also have some of the early Direct3D games like Hellbender. There are probably more.
It doesn't add much, but if you have a slot available, I say why not?
Duke never had a glide patch, and Voodoo patches for Blood and Shadow Warrior tends to result with even lower framerates than in software. It's mostly for the "HAHAHA 16-bit 3DFX BILINEAR FILTERING RULES!!!" novelty than anything else. To speed up BUILD games you're better off with something VESA 2/3 compliant and a 6th generation processor. The way those 3dfx patches for Blood/SW work still involve the CPU very much to render the level into polygonal column chunks for the 3dfx card so it's not even having any Polymost-like true 3d advantages, not to mention the voxel sprites will be missing.
p.s. Voodoo2 is beneficial for some games on a 486 despite naysayers around here, but BUILD games are not one of them. GLQuake is much rather playable because it takes out the dynamic light updates and has no surfacemipblock functions, for example
Yeah, there's no Voodoo patch for Duke Nukem 3D and the 3dfx patch for Blood looks...bland. I've never tried with Shadow Warrior though, but since the BUILD engine doesn't have a proper 3dfx patch, I didn't bother to check it out.
Voodoo2 might be a better option, since it's pass-through quality is much better, but might need additional workaround for some games to make them work, but if it's available, can be used even though we are not expecting speed improvements over a Voodoo 1 on a 486.
If you have extra voodoo cards, you can just drop one into your 486 and check out with the games you have.
