I'd say try the rage pro that is built in. That cpu is pretty good for a '97 game. I played Jedi Knight on an S3 Virge/DX and weaker CPU when it came out. A voodoo pci is better, yes, and any late reputable pci card will likely work better than the ATI, but it won't be needed if you try it and you're ok with the res.

Jedi Knight doesn't do fancy blending and the like, the Rage Pro should absolutely be fine for JK (even a virge should be good). JK's movement framerate is capped except for the weapon model which can appear uncanny on the generations after.

Good call - played through the first two levels with 3D acceleration on without any problems. JK at 640x480 on a CRT is how it belongs anyway - I'd kind of forgotten that.

I played it when it originally came out on a P-MMX 166 and some no-name S3 card and it wasn't that bad at 640x480. Performance improved a lot when I got the Voodoo2 card of course, and 800x600 was no problem. I think your Rage might do a decent job considering it's using a much stronger CPU than I had.

Yeah, I played this back in the day on a Pentium 120 with a PCI Riva 128. I recall it working rather well at the time too. In fact, it was one of the only games I owned initially that used Direct3D, which was the only API that the Riva 128 supported at the time. Dark Forces 2 is pretty much a first gen 3d game. It should run on literally any card that supports D3D to my knowledge. Well... probably ruling out cards that are too new without wrappers like dgVoodoo2 and the like.

I think I played it new on a P2-400 and Matrox G400. And it was fine then. But I was wondering if I could get it better since most hardware (but not all) of the era has gone down in price.

I'm probably due for a replay of it. I'll load it up on my W98 machine ( PIII 450, TNT2, same Voodoo2 ) and see how it does on my 1280x1024 monitor. I don't remember if the game had a resolution cap or not, but it's one of my all-time favorites. I played it using a 3D Pro joystick and keyboard. 10+ button mice weren't a thing yet at the time, and the hat switch was great for mapping Force powers.

Jaron wrote on 2022-12-05, 14:51:

I'm probably due for a replay of it. I'll load it up on my W98 machine ( PIII 450, TNT2, same Voodoo2 ) and see how it does on my 1280x1024 monitor. I don't remember if the game had a resolution cap or not, but it's one of my all-time favorites.

I recently played it at 1280x1024 on a Voodoo 3 and it ran just fine.

Your TNT2 should have no trouble with it either.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-12-05, 15:08:

I recently played it at 1280x1024 on a Voodoo 3 and it ran just fine.

I'd love to get a V3 3000 PCI. It'd be nice to ditch the VGA passthrough cable for the few Voodoo games I play now and then. I wouldn't mind trading my V2 for a V3, but I can't justify paying current V3 prices for something I only use occasionally.

Jaron wrote on 2022-12-05, 14:51:

I'm probably due for a replay of it. I'll load it up on my W98 machine ( PIII 450, TNT2, same Voodoo2 ) and see how it does on my 1280x1024 monitor. I don't remember if the game had a resolution cap or not, but it's one of my all-time favorites. I played it using a 3D Pro joystick and keyboard. 10+ button mice weren't a thing yet at the time, and the hat switch was great for mapping Force powers.

I saw 1280x1024 as an option, I suppose I should try it and see if it works. My monitor can do that at 65hz.

One thing I've noticed is that in 3D accelerated mode outside lights are off, while in SW mode they are on.

Yep. Software mode does the classic 'unshaded colors in the shading lookup table' trick Dark Forces and Quake did. Doing this on hardware *then* would be an expensive (and possibly flickery) polygon overlaid with an additional alpha'd texture.