Diablo II is too demanding for your build. Quake II is probably also too demanding for a 200MHz CPU. Starcraft should be OK.
Being stuck in software mode in Quake II might be caused by a driver issue. In fact, Quake II has a port for verite chips and a patch to utilize 3d now in Winchip2. Stutter in Starcraft could either be driver or incompatibility with Winchip2.
Too rule out incompatibility you can use other CPUs running at 200MHz and onboard VGA. By the way, did you turn off onboard VGA while using the PCI card?

lazibayer wrote:

Diablo II is too demanding for your build. Quake II is probably also too demanding for a 200MHz CPU. Starcraft should be OK.
Being stuck in software mode in Quake II might be caused by a driver issue. In fact, Quake II has a port for verite chips and a patch to utilize 3d now in Winchip2. Stutter in Starcraft could either be driver or incompatibility with Winchip2.
Too rule out incompatibility you can use other CPUs running at 200MHz and onboard VGA. By the way, did you turn off onboard VGA while using the PCI card?

Thanks for replying! What you are saying makes sense, but how do I go about uninstalling the drivers? Can it be done just by going to control panel or do I need to perform extra steps? I ask, because the usual recommendation today to completely clean the drivers of moder GPU's involves using "Display Driver Uninstaller".

Could it be possible that my setup or Windows 98 is not compatible with the Quake II I downloaded? I was thinking about buying the original disk on eBay, because the game is a direct run version; it didn't came with the soundtrack and you didn't need to install it.

I also happen to have C&C Red Alert 2, which is also a direct run version, and it's comlaining about WNSOCK32.dll not compatible with my OS, asking me to upgrade. This doesn't make sense to me since I used to play this game in Windows 98 when I was a kid.

Yes, I have disabled the onboard VGA. Read somewhere that I only needed to disable shared memory on BIOS. Is that right?

You should definitely run some benchmarks of that IDT Wnchip 2 against mainstream Pentium-MMX or K6/2 chips.

Anecdotally, I remember having a Dell (430TX) Pentium-133 system, and it ran the original Starcraft just fine (but then again, 20 fps to me was 'fine' back in those days). Couldn't run Quake2 very well (10-15 fps with a Riva 128 @ 640x480). But hey, it was still playable. Nowadays, average of sub 20 fps is unplayable for me, so my goal posts have definitely shifted.

Here's a Winchip 200 review from 1999 as a starting point.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/224/5

The default quake 2 opengl render path is not compatible with the verite.
You can find the necessary files on the site listed below.
https://gona.mactar.hu/v1000/

I took the Verite out of the PC and used the SiS iGPU instead. Performance is the same! Same stuttering, same speed! Games like Age of Empires II crashes on both the Verite and iGPU. I am afraid the drivers are not being installed correctly. This time with the SiS though I was able to run Quake II on fullscreen at the lowest resoltion, whereas on the Verite my monitor would display an "Out of Range" message.

Every time I install the last driver from Vogons, after boot Windows will "find a new driver" and ask me to point me where the driver is. It then installs a "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter". On Device Manager you can see both the Verite and this " Standard PCI Graphics Adapter".

I am not sure what this is about. I have also been noticing the PC getting stuck during POST, from time to time and I am wondering if the motherboard I got was bad. Any help would be appreciated.

gravitone wrote:

The default quake 2 opengl render path is not compatible with the verite.
You can find the necessary files on the site listed below.
https://gona.mactar.hu/v1000/

Thanks a lot I will take a look!

dexvx wrote:

You should definitely run some benchmarks of that IDT Wnchip 2 against mainstream Pentium-MMX or K6/2 chips. […]
Show full quote

You should definitely run some benchmarks of that IDT Wnchip 2 against mainstream Pentium-MMX or K6/2 chips.

Anecdotally, I remember having a Dell (430TX) Pentium-133 system, and it ran the original Starcraft just fine (but then again, 20 fps to me was 'fine' back in those days). Couldn't run Quake2 very well (10-15 fps with a Riva 128 @ 640x480). But hey, it was still playable. Nowadays, average of sub 20 fps is unplayable for me, so my goal posts have definitely shifted.

Here's a Winchip 200 review from 1999 as a starting point.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/224/5

The Rendition v2x00 was supposed to be decent. I can only do 320x240, but barely. And I have seen the Verite V1000 on videos running Quake II quite well. I also took out the Verite and used the SiS and the performance was identical. It seems that the drivers are not being properly installed.

FXing Serious wrote:

I took the Verite out of the PC and used the SiS iGPU instead. Performance is the same! Same stuttering, same speed! Games like Age of Empires II crashes on both the Verite and iGPU. I am afraid the drivers are not being installed correctly. This time with the SiS though I was able to run Quake II on fullscreen at the lowest resoltion, whereas on the Verite my monitor would display an "Out of Range" message.

Every time I install the last driver from Vogons, after boot Windows will "find a new driver" and ask me to point me where the driver is. It then installs a "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter". On Device Manager you can see both the Verite and this " Standard PCI Graphics Adapter".

I am not sure what this is about. I have also been noticing the PC getting stuck during POST, from time to time and I am wondering if the motherboard I got was bad. Any help would be appreciated.

The Verite is an interesting little card. I also have an S220 and when using resolutions below 640x480, it tends to produce the same "out of range" error with some drivers. It does work with the sii95105 driver for me though.

Performance wise, these are a tad slower in 2D than most cards, while 3D games tend to run ok at 512x384 or so, but it depends on the games in question. I wouldn't go for Quake 2, but the first one did have an official port made for the original Verite called vQuake. Didn't try it though.

Winchip 2 @ 200 is kinda like an imaginary 200 MHz 486 with weak implementations of MMX and 3DNow. It's not very fast and definitely not great for 3D games.

Diamond Stealth II S220 is similar in speed to Voodoo 1. Better image quality however, assuming the drivers work well with your game of choice. Make sure you have the video BIOS update for it that clocks it at V2200 speed. Quake 2 is really more a Voodoo2 level game.

swaaye wrote:

Winchip 2 @ 200 is kinda like an imaginary 200 MHz 486 with weak implementations of MMX and 3DNow. It's not very fast and definitely not great for 3D games.

Diamond Stealth II S220 is similar in speed to Voodoo 1. Better image quality however, assuming the drivers work well with your game of choice. Make sure you have the video BIOS update for it that clocks it at V2200 speed. Quake 2 is really more a Voodoo2 level game.

That's he problem... I am clueless as to what the recommended sytem requirements are for a particular game. I tried Diablo 1, enemy infestation, screamer 2 and age of empires 1. Now it seems to run better but the mouse movement is so slow and stutters so bad that it's barely playable.

I got tired of this. Maybe I will try the Cyrix Mii 366 next

Diablo 1 and AOE 1 should run ok. Those are playable on 486s.

You might want to get Rendition's DMA test and see if your motherboard is capable of fast DMA transfers on PCI. Very important for Verite performance. You never know with Socket 7 chipsets...
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … &menustate=17,1

BTW if you are not aware of Verite's DOS performance quirk you might want to know that its VGA 320x200 and Mode X performance is terrible. Doom and Dark Forces use Mode X for example. You need to use VESA graphics modes with Verite cards otherwise you'll see 386 like speed. It's a matter of VGA emulation vs it running natively on the Verite processor. Unfortunately there is no way to use other modes with some games (like Doom and Dark Forces 🤣). There is a utility called Renutil that can fix games that use standard VGA modes, but not Mode X.

swaaye wrote:

Diablo 1 and AOE 1 should run ok. Those are playable on 486s. […]
Show full quote

Diablo 1 and AOE 1 should run ok. Those are playable on 486s.

You might want to get Rendition's DMA test and see if your motherboard is capable of fast DMA transfers on PCI. Very important for Verite performance. You never know with Socket 7 chipsets...
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … &menustate=17,1

BTW if you are not aware of Verite's DOS performance quirk you might want to know that its VGA 320x200 and Mode X performance is terrible. Doom and Dark Forces use Mode X for example. You need to use VESA graphics modes with Verite cards otherwise you'll see 386 like speed. It's a matter of VGA emulation vs it running natively on the Verite processor. Unfortunately there is no way to use other modes with some games (like Doom and Dark Forces 🤣). There is a utility called Renutil that can fix games that use standard VGA modes, but not Mode X.

Thanks a lot swaaye, I will perform a DMA test. I got a question. How do I use "VESA graphics modes" I tried googling it but there is not much info about and when I do find something related to VESA, it seems to be a very complicated process. Can you link me to some sort of guide? I would really appreciate it. I didn't know about any of that stuff.

This utility should let you do just that:

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … &menustate=17,1

My personal opinion is that you are trying to play games that are just too new for these CPUs. The Winchip 2 for example, much like swaaye already pointed out, was only aimed at office applications and not certainly not games. You have a very nice base to work with (the Soyo SY-5SSM motherboard) and you already have a K6-2 500 which is plenty faster than either CPUs you are testing out. If you want something faster, you can get a K6-III+ off of eBay and these are essentially K6-III CPUs with a die shrink, so they run a lot cooler and demand far less voltage. The 400MHz one is affordable and it is pretty much standard practice to overclock these at 500-600MHz, at which point you're at the top in terms of where you can go with this platform.

I suggest getting a single stick of 128MB RAM as well, I think the SiS 530 allows you to run the RAM at 133MHz, but I could be mistaken, so take that into consideration. 64MB is kinda small, 128MB is the sweetspot, 256MB and onwards usually takes a slight performance hit and is usually not needed over 128MB. Also, make sure your HDD is in good shape, that could be the cause for some of the slowdowns you are experiencing, although it really sounds like the CPU is just way too slow.

As far as the GPU goes, the Rendition Verite V2100/V2200 is a pretty cool card, but it's more of a card I would experiment with just because I like fooling around with hardware. For a system with less hassles, you might be interested into looking at some faster alternatives that are also less buggy. The classic choices are Voodoo3 and TNT2, but the lack of an AGP port might pose a problem. Do you have any other cards available for use?

Thanks a lot F2bnp! This is exactly what I needed! Yes indeed, I picked games that were too new. When building this PC I was just thinking about the year these things came out; 1997ish. I googled some 1997 PC games but never thought they were too demanding for the hardware I got.

The graphics card also seemed to draw on the screen a bit slow sometimes on Windows. Much more like modern cards when drivers are not properly installed. So I kept thinking my drivers were not properly installed because I have read good things about the verite and couldn't believe the horrendous performance I was getting.

I also tried the integrated SiS gpu and pretty much performed the same as the verite! I ordered a new hard drive, and will be doing the DMA test and such. Hopefully it works better this time, otherwise I will just put the K6-2 back.

I only have a SiS 6326 which I haven't tried yet. I read it was popular because of the price but was also too slow for gaming. I have considered Voodoos but they are quite expensive and like you said, my mobo lacks AGP port. How good is the Matrox Mystique 220 or the G200?

I will get some more RAM. Thanks!

G200 could suit you well, with performance well above the Verite 2. Mystique is slower and lacks many image quality enhancements other 3D accelerators offer.

But get rid of that CPU bottleneck first, Verite 2 should run twice as fast as your integrated graphics, which is virtually same tech as the discrete 6326.

FXing Serious wrote:

How do I use "VESA graphics modes" I tried googling it but there is not much info about and when I do find something related to VESA, it seems to be a very complicated process. Can you link me to some sort of guide? I would really appreciate it. I didn't know about any of that stuff.

Usually if a game offers higher resolutions than 320x200, it uses VESA VBE, or will let you choose from both standard VGA and VESA modes. The speed difference will be very obvious on Verite. Though with a slow CPU you don't want to go higher than 320x200 or 320x240 typically.

Rendition's Renutil can remap regular VGA 320x200 to its VESA equivalent. Useful for games with no graphics mode choices. Not for games that use mode X though.

I took the Winchip 2 out and tested the Cyrix MII-366 GP. Performance in most games was improved but marginally. With the Winchip 2 I was lagging like crazy in Need For Speed III. Now I was able to run the game in low settings with decent FPS. There was a stutter when moving the mouse in RTS games. With the Cyrix this stutter disappeared but the games were not faster.

I then tried the AMD K6-2 500Mhz. Boy! No wonder I was able to do some gaming when I was a kid, even with an integrated SiS. This chip is fast! I was able to run NFS III everything High. Everything is smooth. Windows is fast. I am wondering if I am able to run Diablo II now.

Quake II still lags but is more playable on the K6-2 than the two other chips of course. Heretic 2 is the same. The only way is to go 320x240. When switching to VeriteGL from software rending on Heretic II, all I see is a bunch of gray and pink rectangles instead of text in the "console". Going back to the game shows nothing but a gray square on the right and a beige background.

I will add some more RAM and maybe get a K6-3. Thanks guys!

Consider getting another video card as well, it will help dramatically, especially in the case of Quake 2 and Heretic 2.

Also, give the 3DNow! patch for Quake 2 a go, it can help a lot.

Thanks! Can you recommend a better PCI graphics card?