@kreats:
I wouldn't bother trying to use PCX2 with a 486. The chip was considerer to need a lot of FPU performance. I think there was an interview with one of the developers of the Tomb Raider port where he stated that a PPro was needed for optimum performance in some scenes.
I'd either move the Apocalypse 5D to a faster machine (at least a faster Pentium) or sell it and get a different card. It's a waste in a 486, and that's a pity since those cards are not exactly common.
Of course the Tseng ET6100 is a good choice for a 486, but I guess you won't notice lower performance with a slower PCI video card, it probably won't even be measurable.
If you really want to have some 3D acceleration in DOS in that machine, you should better look at 3dfx or perhaps Rendition.

Voodoo2 is the best 3d card I can think of that would be appropriate for a 486 (fast drivers and a multitexture pipeline to ease up on the bus with). I wouldn't recommend any PowerVR card.

leileilol wrote:

Voodoo2 is the best 3d card I can think of that would be appropriate for a 486 (fast drivers and a multitexture pipeline to ease up on the bus with). I wouldn't recommend any PowerVR card.

Yeah, even on a 233 PMMX computer games using a PCX2 card are barely playable and top of that, the compatible games list is a JOKE... 😖
A 3dfx voodoo is way faster, and you can run almost every game you want (only drawback is the image quality)...

darksheer wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Voodoo2 is the best 3d card I can think of that would be appropriate for a 486 (fast drivers and a multitexture pipeline to ease up on the bus with). I wouldn't recommend any PowerVR card.

Yeah, even on a 233 PMMX computer games using a PCX2 card are barely playable and top of that, the compatible games list is a JOKE... 😖
A 3dfx voodoo is way faster, and you can run almost every game you want (only drawback is the image quality)...

the Voodoo 1/2 cards' image quality isnt too bad tbh, its very much dependant on the primary video card's quality too.

Voodoo1 can be a bit too bright at times though , that much is true.

Voodoo 1/2 image quality isn't that bad (but tend to look better on CRT than TFT for me), it's just that if you compare Quake II running on a Voodoo 1 or a PCX2,
the PowerVR will show far better textures and overall image quality 😎
The difference really shocked me the first time I tried it because I was really used to the Voodoo 1 rendering 🤣

I have a pure3d in there also - so it isn't an either/or situation.

The et6100 is the main draw of the card - but the heat generated makes me consider just putting in a s3 card instead (stealth 3d 2000 pro). the 5d is probably more appropriate for a pentium yeah.

Rendition sounds quite attractive but for the terrible dos performance.. Shame really

darksheer wrote:

The difference really shocked me the first time I tried it because I was really used to the Voodoo 1 rendering 🤣

Yeah, and guess what? 15 years of NOT maining a Voodoo card for all 3d games made me miss and want that muddy filter back. Started writing one 2 years ago, accomplished and learned a lot of things on the way like implementing it in GLSL, Cg, HLSL and software 😜 (ps 1.4, ARB, and R300 "smartshader" shaders I probably can't do)

It's undeniably true that the PowerVR PCX2 is nowhere neear the compatibility of any Voodoo card... but to me that's part of its charm 😀 helps to know context, it had a relatively low price point for 1997 ($99) and was very performance-competitive with 3d cards twice or triple that price.

however it is quite true (and even well known then) that the drivers are float-heavy and higher-spec'd Pentiums were often recommended for them. Assembly coding department skimped out at Videologic, i'm not sure.

leileilol wrote:

Yeah, and guess what? 15 years of NOT maining a Voodoo card for all 3d games made me miss and want that muddy filter back. Star […]
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darksheer wrote:

The difference really shocked me the first time I tried it because I was really used to the Voodoo 1 rendering 🤣

Yeah, and guess what? 15 years of NOT maining a Voodoo card for all 3d games made me miss and want that muddy filter back. Started writing one 2 years ago, accomplished and learned a lot of things on the way like implementing it in GLSL, Cg, HLSL and software 😜 (ps 1.4, ARB, and R300 "smartshader" shaders I probably can't do)

It's undeniably true that the PowerVR PCX2 is nowhere neear the compatibility of any Voodoo card... but to me that's part of its charm 😀 helps to know context, it had a relatively low price point for 1997 ($99) and was very performance-competitive with 3d cards twice or triple that price.

however it is quite true (and even well known then) that the drivers are float-heavy and higher-spec'd Pentiums were often recommended for them. Assembly coding department skimped out at Videologic, i'm not sure.

🤣 To tell the truth my guilty pleasure would be to play all of my favorite early D3D games with the Matrox Mystique "render" It has that nice crisp colors and details (kind of optimised software "render ") or with the Maxtrox M3D.
IMO the PCX2 "render" offer the best of the two worlds, between the raw colors and details from the Mystique and the sharpness of the Matrox later models (G*** and Kyro in mind).
Really suck that supported games are so rare, I would love to play Thief or Shogo with the PCX2 or the Mystique 😵
Jedi Knight and Lands Of Lore 2 are two games that can perfectly use both Matrox M3D/Mystique and I really enjoy the rendering.
I tried so many games of that era with the hope that they would be supported that it almost killed me to see that only a few were running fine.
PCX2 or Mystique render with 3dfx compatibility would be killer stuff 😎

I still have a place for 3dfx in my heart because of its oustanding speed with relatively resources hungry video games but its blurry render prevent it to be one of my favorite "eye candy" retro hardware solution
(Requiem Avenging Angel and Half Life for exemple, are playable with a 4 MB 3DFX Voodoo 1 and a 166 PMMX, that's just crazy 😵 )
Heck, my K6-2 350 with an ATI Rage Pro 3D 8 MB at that time was a complete piece of sh*t compared to a PMMX/3DFX combo (software render was faster than the OpenGl/Direct 3D acceleration) 🤣

kreats wrote:

I have a pure3d in there also - so it isn't an either/or situation.

The et6100 is the main draw of the card - but the heat generated makes me consider just putting in a s3 card instead (stealth 3d 2000 pro). the 5d is probably more appropriate for a pentium yeah.

Rendition sounds quite attractive but for the terrible dos performance.. Shame really

S3 is always a good choice for 2D games.
You are right about Rendition, a 486 is very appropriate for playing doom so that would hurt. But remember that this is not an issue with all games.

Hey guys I need an opinion

Right now my PCX1 card is sitting in a dual tualatin machine, but its a much newer machine than the card.

I do have a newly assembled Pentium Pro 180 /256k machine and thought it might be more appropriate.

Does a Ppro have enough CPU grunt to utilise a PCX1 decently? The build has 64mb EDO and an 8mb Rage Pro

Thanks in advance

I have a PCX2 in my dual Pentium Pro 200, and it performs fine in the SGL games I play (Mechwarrior 2, Ultimate Race, PureVex, Tomb Raider). As long as you play the games that run well on the PowerVR it should be more than enough CPU.

I might go slightler faster than a PPro to be safe, but it is not totally off.
See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accele … step,51-21.html
(Turok, glQuake and Q2 on Cyrix, K6, PMMX 200 and P2 300)
It is possible that with SGL games less cpu power is needed as vetz wrote.

I disagree, you'd need all the FPU you can get. Pentium rival CPUs need not apply.

furthermore that article predates the final driver release later in the year, so it may not be entirely accurate 😀

The numbers are close though. P2 300 and PCX2 in Turok gets 24fps average in this benchmark.

hmm , well , I put the PCX1 card into this system (with a VS440FX motherboard and WIn95B) , with the drivers I downloaded from VOGONS and the Turok demo gets an average of 22.5fps in the benchmark.

I would have to imagine this isn't bad , Tomb Raider and Biohazard (PowerVR version) are likewise very smooth (Biohazard actually ran too fast at any resolution below 800X600, at which point it actually slowed down a bit).

the one game that is significantly slower than on the Tualatin system is Quake 2 , where the benchmark gets a score of 12 fps as opposed to 20. but I have to wonder if thats because Quake2 really needs a PII to run well.

According to http://www.vintage3d.org/pcx2.php PCX1 is capable of > 20fps in Quake2.
A PPro should have no problems hitting > 30fps in Q2 with other 3d accelerators (see http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accele … step,51-17.html), but as said PowerVR is quite FPU hungry.
Besides the CPU being too slow, it could in theory also be the FX chipset which helds it back (memory/PCI performance is better with BX). But that's speculation.
Anyway, a PCX1 is not the accelerator of choice for Q2, so as long as all games you really want to play run fast enough I would leave it at that. If you also have a faster P2/P3 I would still switch the PCX1 to such a machine.

hmm , well with the Voodoo1 in that same machine Quake2 gets 27.5 frames (640X480), I also overclocked the FSB a bit from 60 to 66 , turning it into a PPro200Mhz (Im using Arctic Silver 5 , and also put an extra fan on the cooler ,so it should be fine). the small overclock brings the PCX1 to 15.8fps in Quake2.

for the record Im using an ATI Rage Pro 8MB card in this machine, and yeah , every other game I ran on it ran great

You should also use 24-bit/32-bit color when you can, pass -bpp 32 to quake2. The PCX will transfer the image faster that way and you should see a slight FPS boost. You might have to enable 24bit support in the registry first however, since most drivers lock that out by default

leileilol wrote:

You should also use 24-bit/32-bit color when you can, pass -bpp 32 to quake2. The PCX will transfer the image faster that way and you should see a slight FPS boost.

Can you prove that? PCXs are packing the transfered pixels. For me 16 bit was always hair faster.

One issue I've encountered oddly is with MDK , the Powervr version has strange corrupted. Colours , I know the PCX is fine as other games work and im using the latest drivers

Anyone know the reason or solution to this?

Since I got some M3Ds I started testing them... tombraider/DOS was a nice surprise once Single Buffering was activated. Is there a list of "true" powervr accelerated games? Don't care about D3D ones... I searched but I can't get a definitive list 😐

Also I don't know if it's of interest, I have both games that Matrox gave with M3D cards: MDK Mission Laguna Beach and Hexen II Continent of Blackmarsh. Anyone looking for either?

edit:
well, I started uploading the images either way... 🤣

a. MDK Laguna Beach image (CCD, RAR5 compression)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/wico4aw5ody … b-MDK.part1.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ilo8y0gd18f … b-MDK.part2.rar

b. Hexen II Blackmarsh (CCD, RAR5 compression)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/vp1bt7xizo0 … exen2.part1.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/1ic4zomvwx5 … exen2.part2.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/tiytr4q8v1l … exen2.part3.rar

c. Driver - patches - Ultimate Race (CCD, RAR5 compression)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/1aaic8g9seh … disc1.part1.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/vvrf6e5b196 … disc1.part2.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9gk4bbhvvah … disc1.part3.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/3g24zfbp95q … disc1.part4.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/w25xu1v2mck … disc1.part5.rar

all done! 😊