I don't think dos is using on board video. Dos quake 1 uses software rendering which means that cpu speed is the most important thing. I think you get horrible frame rates with that cpu at higher resolutions no matter what video card you have in that system.

So you’re saying that a P233 MMX is a bad CPU for that game or in general? I’ve never heard of that so I am curious where it’s coming from.

Thanks!

jtelep wrote:

So I’ve built a P233 MMX for Win95 gaming and it’s also my only system that has an 8MB 3DFX Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 which I have linked to an ATI Xpert@Play98. Now this system also has onboard video (ATI Mach 64). In Win95 I can disable this card and use the Xpert@Play98 however in DOS that doesn’t seem to be an option as there is nothing in the BIOS to do this. My question is how in the world when the monitor is plugged into the 3DFX card is DOS still utilizing the onboard video? I am relatively sure it is as I have installed and run Quake 1 on this host multiple times and always get horrible frame rates when I try any resolution past 320x200 and I know it’s not the Xpert@Play98 card as it performs beautiful in Win95 for games like Forsaken.

Check whether the motherboard has a jumper to disable the onboard video. It could also be that the system auto-disables the onboard video if another video card is plugged into a specific slot.

As for the CPU, it likely is fine, but you may have to finetune your DOS video driver settings and/or Quake's settings. Or try another video card that Quake supports better.

any socket7 cpu is bad for software Quake above VGA
quake cant use 3dfx in DOS, you need to run windows GLQuake for silky smooth ~50fps in 800x600

Perhaps a newer version of the BIOS has this option.

I have honestly never seen a BIOS that doesn’t have an option to select the primary video card, if there is reason to have to do that (having both AGP and PCI slots, having onboard video, etc). It’s one of those things that I never have had to use but it is conspicuous in its presence.

jtelep wrote:

So I’ve built a P233 MMX for Win95 gaming and it’s also my only system that has an 8MB 3DFX Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 which I have linked to an ATI Xpert@Play98. Now this system also has onboard video (ATI Mach 64). In Win95 I can disable this card and use the Xpert@Play98 however in DOS that doesn’t seem to be an option as there is nothing in the BIOS to do this. My question is how in the world when the monitor is plugged into the 3DFX card is DOS still utilizing the onboard video? I am relatively sure it is as I have installed and run Quake 1 on this host multiple times and always get horrible frame rates when I try any resolution past 320x200 and I know it’s not the Xpert@Play98 card as it performs beautiful in Win95 for games like Forsaken.

Now I have no way of knowing for sure but whether I use exit to DOS or just MS-DOS mode it’s the same thing however on a P100 with a 4MB S3 card in DOS 6.22 I get great frame rates even at 1024x768 so this is the only conclusion I can draw. If anyone has any ideas on how to fix this I would greatly appreciate it as I really want to play an OpenGL version of Descent 2 which depends on that 3DFX card.

Thanks!

If there's no physical connection through the onboard Mach64, then it can't be in use. As others have said, software Quake in SVGA is very slow and needs much more cpu power (400ish Mhz) to run smoothly. My P200MMX in 640x480 DOS gets the following Quake framerates for these video cards:
ARK2000PV 1MB SDD53A..........13.3
ATI Rage 128 GL 16MB............12.7
CL-GD5430 2MB SDD53A...........8.6
CL-GD5446 1MB SDD53A..........12.7
MILLENNIUM II 4MB................14.2
S3 Trio64 V2/DX 2MB S3VBE......14.2
S3 Trio64V+ 1MB S3VBE...........12.7
S3 Virge 325 2MB S3VBE..........14.1
S3 Virge GX 2MB S3VBE...........14.2
TNT2 M64 32MB...................15.2
VOODOO3 2000 16MB.............14.2

If you really want to be sure, pull out the Voodoo and Xpert, benchmark the Mach64, then plug the Xpert in and benchmark it. Compare results. Good luck, man!

keenmaster486 wrote:

Perhaps a newer version of the BIOS has this option.

I have honestly never seen a BIOS that doesn’t have an option to select the primary video card, if there is reason to have to do that (having both AGP and PCI slots, having onboard video, etc). It’s one of those things that I never have had to use but it is conspicuous in its presence.

They exist, but normally you then have a jumper to disable onboad video. I also have a board that will auto-detect the presence of another video card and disable the onboard video if it finds one (but it lacks physical AGP ports for other video cards while the onboard video goed through the AGP bus, so... 🤣 )