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Voodoo 1 vs. Voodoo 2 on a 486

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First post, by feipoa

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Has anyone benchmarked the difference between a Voodoo 1 and a Voodoo 2 on a fast 486,e.g. Cx5x86-120+ or Am5x86-160? Which reference driver versions did you use? I was thinking of running a quick comparison on my Cx5x86-133 system which normally sports a Voodoo 2.

There were some general posts on Voodoo1 vs. Voodoo2, however they were targeting faster systems. For example these threads: 3dfx Voodoo vs. Voodoo 2 - This might help you make a choice! and 3DFX Voodoo2 vs Voodoo1 in Lower-End Pentiums - A Measure of Smoothness?

EDIT: I have finished this comparison and am enclosing this chart. As an average over all the games tested, the Voodoo2 had a 13% improvement over the Voodoo1 when Vsync was enabled, or a 11% improvement over the Voodoo1 when Vsync was disabled.

There are more charts and discussion on page 2 of this thread, Re: Voodoo 1 vs. Voodoo 2 on a 486

Voodoo2-vs-Voodoo1_on_a_486_Vsync_disabled.png
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EDIT: CPU comparison charts for each game can be found on page 4 of this thread, Re: Voodoo 1 vs. Voodoo 2 on a 486
An averaged summary is provided here for convenience,

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Last edited by feipoa on 2018-09-09, 12:28. Edited 4 times in total.

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Reply 1 of 124, by leileilol

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I don't have a Voodoo Graphics but i'd theorize V2 would be faster for the multitexturing alone for some games, sending less passes of polygons over the bus (i.e. later GLQuakes, Quake2, etc). A V2 was fine with my 5x86 @160mhz (yes with the slower PCI it was fine). I always use the last official driver.

(last tried was 10 years ago though! This was during a time when it was generally frowned upon/shameful putting The Mighty 3dFx VooDoo^2-1000 in anything less than a Pentium II/K6-3+)

Last edited by leileilol on 2018-08-08, 00:18. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 124, by feipoa

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I hope to quantify how much faster the V2 is. I have slight reservations though, as I'm concerned I might mess up my finely tuned system with uninstalling V2 drivers, installing V1. Then it seems like I've had to do some messing around to get some games working with the V2, but now I'm sticking in the V1. I think I will make a Norton Ghost backup image of my HDD first. Then it will probably take a day or two to determine which games to benchmark. I recall Turok crashing on my system shortly after starting the game. I'm hoping the V1 will fix this.

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Reply 3 of 124, by derSammler

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Multitexturing happens on the Voodoo card, it doesn't matter for the CPU or the bus. The Voodoo 1 needs 2 passes for multitexturing, while the Voodoo 2 only needs one pass. While, in theory, you could get more frames in games that use multitexturing, in reality it won't happen since a slow CPU isn't able to provide enough additional geometry data for more fps. On a 486/5x86 the CPU is the limit, not the Voodoo card. Only something like hardware T&L would help.

If there are any differences with a Voodoo 2, it's probably because it is clocked higher with faster RAM and uploading the geometry data takes less time, freeing some cycles from the CPU. But this is in the range of 1-2%, if at all.

To tweak performance, your chances are better by trying different Glide drivers. Some versions may be optimized for later CPUs and perform worse on a 486 class machine - while others perform better.

Reply 4 of 124, by appiah4

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Voodoo 2 would probably allow gaming at 800x600 with no penalty to FPS but nothing more.

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Reply 5 of 124, by Scali

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derSammler wrote:

While, in theory, you could get more frames in games that use multitexturing, in reality it won't happen since a slow CPU isn't able to provide enough additional geometry data for more fps.

I'm not sure about that, because a second render pass means that the CPU needs to push all the triangles to the video card a second time.
Since the CPU is already the bottleneck there, this bottleneck hits twice as hard if you don't have multitexturing.

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Reply 6 of 124, by feipoa

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appiah4 wrote:

Voodoo 2 would probably allow gaming at 800x600 with no penalty to FPS but nothing more.

Yes, I have noticed that with the Voodoo2, you can get the extra resolution for no frame rate penalty, or sometimes just a tad less. To be fair, though, I'd bench them both at 640x480. Just starting getting games tested to see what I can do about frame rate tests. Many games have a frame rate counter, but I need to determine a common point to record the instantaneous value, e.g. once game loads, sitting idle, or turning in a circle. Obviously this isn't much, but it is something. I had wanted to bench DoomGL, but the timedemo doesn't seem to work.

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Reply 11 of 124, by swaaye

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How about Descent 2 3dfx? Apparently Descent 2 will give you a frame rate if you type FRAMETIME somewhere in it. Should run at a reasonable rate on a 486 too.

Reply 12 of 124, by feipoa

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Swaaye - Descent II works well in 3dfx mode, that is for sure, but it seems to idle at 60 fps, which I suspect is being limited by the video sync/refresh rate? I didn't see an option in the Voodoo2's driver to disable vsync. Is there some add-on software product for this?

I'm still getting my games list together for this. So far I have on my list, for games which work in 3dfx glide or 3dfx d3d accelerated modes, I'm planning on:

Descent 1
Descent 2 if idle frame rates can be less than 60 fps
GLQuake
Tomb Raider (original)
Tomb Raider (unfinished business)
Outlaws (glide patch)
Incoming (a bit slow to be of interest, but more games the better)
Forsaken (this runs surprisingly well for the amount of effects this games has. Feels a lot like an advanced Descent)
Dark Forces 2 (I noted a means to display the frame rate on DF2, but didn't write anything down for DF1. Can it not display frame rates?)
Unreal Classic (A bit slow, but at least it has a full on timedemo)
Turok Dinosaur Hunter
Turok 2
Hexen 2
Battlezone stopped working on my computer for some unknown reason, so not this game. Its better with D3D-native cards anyway.

I've tested many other early 3D games which work fine on a fast 486, e.g. 3dfx patch of Carmegeddon, Mech2, or NFS/NFS2, but trying to figure out how to display the frame rate often takes many days of online searching. If there are any other games which you know of which have glide or D3D acceleration AND can display the frame rate, please let me know.

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Reply 14 of 124, by feipoa

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Yeah, I think you're right.

I've jotted down results for all the above mentioned games w/Voodoo2. The issue I'm having is that the GLQuake results from recent are very different than what I've always recorded for this system. I always used to get between 29 fps in timedemo1. I'm getting 25.7 fps now. I spent 2 hours messing around with settings I could have changed, but the result is the same. I'm going to see if I have a ghost copy of this HDD and test an old installation. All the other benchmark results are the same as before, so the hardware doesn't seem to be the issue.

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Reply 15 of 124, by appiah4

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swaaye wrote:

Dark Forces 1 doesn't have any 3D acceleration support.

Yet it looks amazingly clean for a 2.5D game, I remember playing Dark Forces for the first time and thinking it was almost photorealistic. Of course, it wasn't. But the pallette chosen for the game, and the art direction, was flawless. It made Doom look like a cartoon.

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Reply 17 of 124, by swaaye

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

So are there any benefits for a Voodoo PCI card on a 486 running DOS or Win3x ?
Or can you get away with an S3 trio 2mb ?

Not really. Those games that run on Voodoo, and games from 1996 onward in general, are really built for Pentiums or better.

Reply 18 of 124, by feipoa

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

So are there any benefits for a Voodoo PCI card on a 486 running DOS or Win3x ?

The answer to this depends on what you consider a desirable or acceptable frame rate is. Obviously, running the same games on a Pentium 133 with a Voodoo1 will yield faster frame rates than on a Cx5x86-133. I personally do not mind games running in the 18-30 fps range, as it seems this was common place in the days of early 3D. If you've been spoiled by 60+ fps, then you might think that 30 fps is unbearable. I have played many hours of GLQuake on my system (when the timedemo yielded 29.3 fps) and I cannot imagine the desire for greater fps.

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Reply 19 of 124, by feipoa

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Intel486dx33 wrote:

Or can you get away with an S3 trio 2mb ?

S3 Trio is fine for running most early 2D software mode games. Should also be fine for games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Raptor, and Duke3D. Duke3D, I do not believe, has any accelerated option, so if you want to play it at 640x480 (software mode), you'd want an Am5x86-160 or faster.

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