AtTheGates wrote:

We don't need more e-waste!! :-/ Sell on eBay instead!" […]
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Baoran wrote:

I have 2 of these cards. I read some bad reviews about them online, so I have been considering throwing them away to have bit more space.
One of them is Compaq ELSA gloria+ and it has some kind of empty memory slot and the other one seems to be made by STB systems in 1998.

Permedia2.jpg

We don't need more e-waste!! 😒
Sell on eBay instead!"

As a Voodoo 1 class chip it holds up much better than people give it credit for. It has solid DirectX and OpenGL drivers (no Voodoo-esque headaches of the right driver for the right game). Performance is solid, and scales well with faster CPUs (no Voodoo 1 nonsense of refusing to work). And it has great 2D support onboard.

Give them a try before doing anything. You may be surprised.

Problem is that sending anything in my country is extremely expensive. Sending would cost much more than what the cards are worth.

When I ran gaming tests on the permedia 2, I found issues with thief 1, virtual sailor, starsiege tribes, and grand prix legends. That was out of about 15 games tested, so not the first pick for an allrounder. It did spin most of nehe's opengl samples.

AtTheGates wrote:

stamasd wrote:

I wish I could give thoughts on the Permedia2. I really wish that. I have one but it doesn't work. 🙁

Aw... 🙁

Nice poem btw! xD

Yup. Especially since it's a PCI one which I was hoping to use in a pre-AGP system. Replaced several capacitors but apparently it wasn't that because it still doesn't work.

vvbee wrote:

When I ran gaming tests on the permedia 2, I found issues with thief 1, virtual sailor, starsiege tribes, and grand prix legends. That was out of about 15 games tested, so not the first pick for an allrounder. It did spin most of nehe's opengl samples.

Thief I & II work fine for me with an 8MB Permedia 2V using the latest drivers. As does the Starsiege demo. What driver were you using? Some of the earliest drivers do have issues.

stamasd wrote:

AtTheGates wrote:

stamasd wrote:

I wish I could give thoughts on the Permedia2. I really wish that. I have one but it doesn't work. 🙁

Aw... 🙁

Nice poem btw! xD

Yup. Especially since it's a PCI one which I was hoping to use in a pre-AGP system. Replaced several capacitors but apparently it wasn't that because it still doesn't work.

Tell me about it. Even my Pentium III system is PCI only!!

Newest drivers. No textures in thief 1, no textures in starsiege tribes. Maybe all of their drivers have issues.

To be fair, when testing thief 1 on a fast cpu, confirm that you're not running the software renderer.

vvbee wrote:

Newest drivers. No textures in thief 1, no textures in starsiege tribes. Maybe all of their drivers have issues.

To be fair, when testing thief 1 on a fast cpu, confirm that you're not running the software renderer.

Wonder if it's a texture RAM issue. What size RAM is it?

Full ram on it. Not too surprising to see a card fail with thief 1, more notable when they don't.

That's likely less "no textures" and more "no blending functions". GLQuake and Quake2 already do have built-in alpha-blended lighting fallbacks for the Permedia hardware with that limitation in mind. It's a similar treatment to the PowerVR PCX1/2 and the S3 ViRGE.

Yeh, you find putas lamenting it in his review.

The g100 fails thief 1 but not starsiege tribes by the way. I assume the g100's visually correct 1 fps opengl graphics are a software fallback, but not sure at whose end, since even with the mystique you have texture-filtering in that mode.

Are you quite sure Thief is being rendered on the Permedia 2? I'm fairly certain that everywhere I've seen both of these two talked about, the consensus was that the card displays everything untextured.

leileilol wrote:

That's likely less "no textures" and more "no blending functions". GLQuake and Quake2 already do have built-in alpha-blended lighting fallbacks for the Permedia hardware with that limitation in mind. It's a similar treatment to the PowerVR PCX1/2 and the S3 ViRGE.

Virge is utter fucking trash.

F2bnp wrote:

Are you quite sure Thief is being rendered on the Permedia 2? I'm fairly certain that everywhere I've seen both of these two talked about, the consensus was that the card displays everything untextured.

I'll dig out a spare harddrive when I get enough spare time this week and retest the Permedia 2 settings. Last time there was filtering, so I don't see how it was software rendering.

AtTheGates wrote:

Virge is utter fucking trash.

Feel free to give 'em to me. Variable image quality (depends on the card), but DOS compatibility is pretty good.

gdjacobs wrote:

AtTheGates wrote:

Virge is utter fucking trash.

Feel free to give 'em to me. Variable image quality (depends on the card), but DOS compatibility is pretty good.

I meant for 3D! 😜

S3 ViRGE is great, I use mine to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 4K

oeuvre wrote:

S3 ViRGE is great, I use mine to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 4K

Rightttttt..... 😜

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2018-09-10, 19:35:

The 8MB version is quite a bit faster the 4MB, and the drivers are pretty solid.

It can't play even GLQuake at 640x480 smoothly, so it's kinda irrelevant.

I wanted to mention here that my Appian Graphics Jeronimo Pro (Permedia 2) runs GLQuake at 25.9 fps at 640x480 on a 533Mhz Mendocino Celeron in Windows 98. I think that's pretty smooth.

According to VGA Legacy, the Jeronimo Pro clocks the Permedia 2 at 100Mhz, versus the standard 83Mhz. Maybe this is what makes the difference.

OpenGL 1.1 seems to be okay. Direct3D 6 has a lot of errors though. Direct3D 5 might be alright. Incoming seems to run fine.

runs GLQuake at 25.9 fps at 640x480 on a 533Mhz Mendocino Celeron in Windows 98. I think that's pretty smooth.

Average 25.9 is extremely bad because:
Double buffering will create very jarring frame rate fluctuations.
Average 25 fps is still very low, because lowest frame could be easily in 10 fps range, even without double buffered Vsync issue.

It didn't feel like it fluctuated much. Usually there is noticable lag in the demo as it turns the corner and launches a grenade, but it was smooth.

I've seen lots of choppy timedemos, but this one was pretty smooth.