What is the deal with r_surfacelookup? Is this a Rendition only tweak?

Fusion wrote:

What is the deal with r_surfacelookup? Is this a Rendition only tweak?

Yup! To quote someone else:

r_surfacelookup (0 or 1, default 1)

This parameter determines whether the Vérité (value = 1) or the CPU (value = 0) should translate textures into 16 bit format. On slower systems (<P200), I think the value should definitely be left at 1 (Vérité). On faster systems, you may get higher framerates with the CPU. Your results may vary at different resolutions or under different conditions.

As you can see, it makes a noticeable difference.

I've been reading up on different card manufacturers having different clock speeds for these cards... Does anyone know how I can determine the speed of my card, and how I would go about changing the clock speed?

I have a V1000-E card, but I haven't run benchmarks on it. It's not installed in a system.

Powerstrip should show a V2200's clock speeds. And change them too IIRC.

Digging thru the old Renaddiction site might be helpful.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010124012600/ht … om:80/index.htm

How fast is a V2200 on a later CPU in D3D games? Is it faster than a Voodoo 1?

Rendition cards supposedly take way more load off the CPU than other cards from the time, so it would be cool to see if vQuake is actually playable on a 486 class CPU.

swaaye wrote:

Powerstrip should show a V2200's clock speeds. And change them too IIRC.

Digging thru the old Renaddiction site might be helpful.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010124012600/ht … om:80/index.htm

Nice one Swaaye. What version of PS is generally recommended for 9x? And are the BIOSes pretty much interchangeable? (i.e. Could you flash the Diamond Stealth BIOS to get a guaranteed 55MHz? Or are there any resources regarding BIOS modification for the clock speed? I should really dump my BIOS and compare it to the QDI BIOS on VogonsDrivers.

F2bnp wrote:

How fast is a V2200 on a later CPU in D3D games? Is it faster than a Voodoo 1?

I've no idea, but apparently the drivers vary quite a lot between ones released and the final 3.0 b5, which was apparently a complete re-write. I should really benchmark the card more thoroughly, and would welcome some recommended benchmarks and games to test. From what I've read, the card will soundly beat the V1 but is no match for the Voodoo2, so it was too little too late. Swaaye will no doubt have the full story however.

It's quite interesting to see that the various acceleration cores for the card are literally ELF executables that run on the MIPS based RISC based chip, with discrete executables for GL, 2D, D3D, Redline, and Speedy3D modes. As this is the case, I imagine that with enough reverse engineering, the card could be trivial to emulate, or am I way off base here? Are there any contemporary equivalents, or is it different enough to not be easy to emulate?

I really don't remember anything about overclocking it aside from Powerstrip probably works. 😀 Haven't messed with the BIOSs beyond flashing a Stealth update.

It should be faster than a Voodoo but it has quirks. The beta drivers were interesting but problematic. Some games will work better on older drivers. The OpenGL isn't great, lacking per pixel mip mapping, which is a problem with say Half Life.

The claim that CPU utilization is lower was related to Voodoo1 using the CPU for some triangle setup and not using DMA transfers. I'm not sure either mattered in practice. Verite's DMA transfers often were troublesome because of the motherboards/chipsets of the time, and Voodoo1 is out of V1000's class anyway. Voodoo2 has full triangle setup and V2200 is no match for it.

Try running Unreal on it. Supposedly the OpenGL renderer was designed for V2200 to some degree. I can't remember trying it.

RichB93 wrote:

From what I've read, the card will soundly beat the V1...

Those sources ought to be exaggerating.

I have my V2100 in a 1GHz PIII. I haven't done any extensive testing, but I found the standard software-rendered DOS Quake (in a VESA mode) will wipe the floor with vQuake at the same resolution. The Rendition version has some nice graphical effects though.

Putas wrote:

RichB93 wrote:

From what I've read, the card will soundly beat the V1...

Those sources ought to be exaggerating.

This is what I found at http://vintage3d.org/verite2.php

I used it for a while before but I can't remember how well the card works! Still, for the widest range of proprietary APIs, this, along with a Voodoo and a PCX would make for a lovely setup.

xjas wrote:

I have my V2100 in a 1GHz PIII. I haven't done any extensive testing, but I found the standard software-rendered DOS Quake (in a VESA mode) will wipe the floor with vQuake at the same resolution. The Rendition version has some nice graphical effects though.

Yeah, vQuake on the V2x00 cards isn't much better than the V1000 cards for some reason. Other games do make better use of it.

-- OFF TOPIC --

Does anyone know where SquallStrife is? I have some bits to upload to Vogons Drivers but my message is still sitting in the outbox as his PM folder is full. I have a more complete set of Rendition RRedline demos.

Well then! I've thought a bit more about the BIOS stuff and have the following to share...

Firstly, I updated the BIOS to the latest QDI BIOS available. My card was running 1.40, and I tried 1.44. Not any difference, as to be expected. Secondly, I wanted to see if the Thriller 3D BIOS would work, because I believe this was one of the flagship V2200 cards you could get. I managed to untangle it from the Hercules BIOS flasher, and flashed it successfully... Rebooted and... it worked! Sorta. Luckily text mode DOS stuff worked fine, but the card crapped out as soon as it tried to initialise 3D.

Finally, having read that the final Stealth S220 BIOSes clocked the V2100 up to the top end of V2200 speeds (55MHz), I thought I would give that a try for the hell of it... Success! The card works perfectly, and there's a healthy speed boost too from the QDI bios, which I guess is capped at 50MHz(?). No idea what speed the QDI BIOS actually does run at (still need to check with PowerStrip!), but with the S220 BIOS I'm seeing a healthy speed boost across the board, so far of around 3fps in most scenarios. Not ground breaking, but worth a BIOS flash!

EDIT: As a bonus, this BIOS seems to fix the problems with pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL - before, doing this would hang the system, but it works gracefully now, which is good considering quitting vQuake causes the system to hang.

Now to edit the BIOS to remote the Diamond branding... This kills the card. Will have to wait until I can get back to my other rig to re-flash it... Stupid Compaq BIOSes not allowing you to force what card inits first!

RichB93 wrote:

EDIT: As a bonus, this BIOS seems to fix the problems with pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL - before, doing this would hang the system, but it works gracefully now, which is good considering quitting vQuake causes the system to hang.

I am not sure if this will help in your case, but Quake and some other newer DOS games used to hang for me when exiting, right before returning to the DOS prompt. I found out that using a newer version of the CWSDPMI extender solved this problem.
Download the binary distribution from this site: http://sandmann.dotster.com/cwsdpmi/ and replace the CWSDPMI.EXE file in the Quake directory with the version found in the "bin" folder

RichB93 wrote:

[...]

Finally, having read that the final Stealth S220 BIOSes clocked the V2100 up to the top end of V2200 speeds (55MHz), I thought I would give that a try for the hell of it... Success! The card works perfectly, and there's a healthy speed boost too from the QDI bios, which I guess is capped at 50MHz(?). No idea what speed the QDI BIOS actually does run at (still need to check with PowerStrip!), but with the S220 BIOS I'm seeing a healthy speed boost across the board, so far of around 3fps in most scenarios. Not ground breaking, but worth a BIOS flash!
[...]

interesting, I have this card and I always assumed it had the same clock speed as the other V2200 cards:

RichB93 wrote:

-- OFF TOPIC --

Does anyone know where SquallStrife is? I have some bits to upload to Vogons Drivers but my message is still sitting in the outbox as his PM folder is full. I have a more complete set of Rendition RRedline demos.

I'm guessing "Real Life" has reared its ugly head. This is a minor problem since he is the only admin at VOGONSDrivers. I'd recommend messaging someone else who has an account there I guess.

See this thread for a bit more of a status update from him, but he's posted several times since then: Still alive

keropi wrote:

interesting, I have this card and I always assumed it had the same clock speed as the other V2200 cards: […]
Show full quote

RichB93 wrote:

[...]

Finally, having read that the final Stealth S220 BIOSes clocked the V2100 up to the top end of V2200 speeds (55MHz), I thought I would give that a try for the hell of it... Success! The card works perfectly, and there's a healthy speed boost too from the QDI bios, which I guess is capped at 50MHz(?). No idea what speed the QDI BIOS actually does run at (still need to check with PowerStrip!), but with the S220 BIOS I'm seeing a healthy speed boost across the board, so far of around 3fps in most scenarios. Not ground breaking, but worth a BIOS flash!
[...]

interesting, I have this card and I always assumed it had the same clock speed as the other V2200 cards:

I too thought that all cards were created equal, but it appears that this isn't the case. The Hercules Thriller 3D is clocked at 62MHz and I assume has faster RAM to boot. My QDI card is clocked at 50MHz, (all BIOSes I tried), but the Stealth S220 BIOS boosted it nicely. Luckily I have another identical card, but just annoyed at myself for semi-bricking a card with no way to reflash it (at the moment).

Stiletto wrote:

RichB93 wrote:

-- OFF TOPIC --

Does anyone know where SquallStrife is? I have some bits to upload to Vogons Drivers but my message is still sitting in the outbox as his PM folder is full. I have a more complete set of Rendition RRedline demos.

I'm guessing "Real Life" has reared its ugly head. This is a minor problem since he is the only admin at VOGONSDrivers. I'd recommend messaging someone else who has an account there I guess.

See this thread for a bit more of a status update from him, but he's posted several times since then: Still alive

Indeed - would be good to get some more admins in on it. I have a few things to submit now, so I'll see who else has access and ask if they can upload on my behalf.

RichB93 wrote:

Putas wrote:

RichB93 wrote:

From what I've read, the card will soundly beat the V1...

Those sources ought to be exaggerating.

This is what I found at http://vintage3d.org/verite2.php

ave.jpg

I am glad. But soundly beating Voodoo Rush does not have to be enough to soundly beat Voodoo Graphics.

No idea if anyone is interested, but I've finally got back to my (t)rusty 440BX beast and managed to reflash the V2200 that I impressively borked. Luckily this machine will allow you to run a PCI card alongside a toasted AGP card, so it was just a case of using V2KPROM to reflash the card. I thought it may not pick up the address that the V2200 is at and I might have had to have found the information out, but despite the dead flash it picked the card right up and reflashed it without an issue, so the card is now rocking the 55MHz S220 BIOS. Now if only we could find out how it stores the clocks and try pushing it further 😎 😎