I was under the impession that the Voodoo 3 needed to run that game at lower resolutions. I remember mine being slow on Unreal Tournament and I had to run it at 800x600 or 640x480. My Voodoo 1 can't even do that and needs to be at 500something to be playable.

I could be wrong and mis-remembering of course.

I moved your thread to the proper subforum.

Thanks for moving the thread.

Lowering the resolution doesn't impact the frame rate very much, if at all. I get about 20 fps at 800x600.

What about other Glide games. How do they perform?

What happens if you lower the CPU speed?

How about if the motherboard cache is disabled in BIOS?

What is the PCI latency set to in BIOS?

What is your V3 bios? What does 3dfx tools say about clock speed? Which V3 driver? Where did you measure the FPS?

I'm asking this because I once flashed my V3 3500 to a 166 mhz version instead of 183 and discovered years later that it was running too slow.

Try patching Unreal and install latest 3dfx drivers, don't bother with unofficial ones. Like cyclone3d says try some other games.

And yeah it should be performing a lot better! 20 fps is garbage.

What version of the game are you running? The GOG version probably comes with a glide wrapper, make sure you delete any glide2x.dll files in the unreal/system folder.

It's probably a driver issue, do a complete driver wipe and install older drivers from dx6.1 era. I've always used early drivers from original CD to play games on PCs with weak CPUs, just because it provided a better performace than newer drivers.

The only other thing I can run at the moment is the MDK2 benchmark. It's also very slow with the AGP Voodoo3 and runs reasonably well with the PCI Radeon 7000.

I have tried lowering the CPU multiplier to 5x, but it didn't change the framerate with the Voodoo.

Disabling the external cache yields 19fps.

Do the PCI setting affect an AGP card? I don't see any setting for timing or latency.
The AGP is set to 64mb memory share and 2x speed.

Justin1091 wrote:

What is your V3 bios? What does 3dfx tools say about clock speed? Which V3 driver? Where did you measure the FPS? […]
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What is your V3 bios? What does 3dfx tools say about clock speed? Which V3 driver? Where did you measure the FPS?

I'm asking this because I once flashed my V3 3500 to a 166 mhz version instead of 183 and discovered years later that it was running too slow.

Try patching Unreal and install latest 3dfx drivers, don't bother with unofficial ones. Like cyclone3d says try some other games.

And yeah it should be performing a lot better! 20 fps is garbage.

On boot it says 1.00.01
Driver is 4.12.01.0666

3dfx tool says 166mhz.

I think Unreal is current. It's the Gold release.

I hope you're actually running with the Glide renderer and not with Direct3D (which would work with the V3 but slower). That's all I can really think of. It should definitely run faster than 20.

leileilol wrote:

I hope you're actually running with the Glide renderer and not with Direct3D (which would work with the V3 but slower). That's all I can really think of. It should definitely run faster than 20.

It is set to use Glide.

I tried a PCI GeForce 5200 and it performs similarly, around 20fps. I happen to have the same card in AGP, but it completely stalls on games.

Which version of the chipset drivers do you have installed?

If I remember correctly, there is a specific version that actually works like it should.

Which version of Unreal are you running? I know 226 works well with 3dfx cards, while 227 can cripple performance.

mikeyp wrote:

I was under the impession that the Voodoo 3 needed to run that game at lower resolutions. I remember mine being slow on Unreal Tournament and I had to run it at 800x600 or 640x480. My Voodoo 1 can't even do that and needs to be at 500something to be playable.

I could be wrong and mis-remembering of course.

according to this
https://www.anandtech.com/show/647/12
V3 3000 + k6 3 450 can deliver 37FPS at 1024x768 and 26FPS wit ha k6 2 300

so there is something wrong with the OP software/configuration, unless their testing scene is extremely different.

Probably the wonders of MVP3 working their way up. Make sure you install the proper drivers for the chipset, I suggest version 4.35 and earlier per this post. Ali Aladdin V also has some serious issues with the way write combining works, you can get a massive performance uplift with just a few tweaks using the AGP utility for that chipset.
There was a thread about that a few months ago, but it won't work in your case since you have an MVP3 board.

Garrett W wrote:

Probably the wonders of MVP3 working their way up. Make sure you install the proper drivers for the chipset, I suggest version 4.35 and earlier per this post. Ali Aladdin V also has some serious issues with the way write combining works, you can get a massive performance uplift with just a few tweaks using the AGP utility for that chipset.
There was a thread about that a few months ago, but it won't work in your case since you have an MVP3 board.

Ok. I did a clean install of 98SE along with the same drivers: Via 4-in-1 4.35 and Voodoo 4.12.01.0666. I had a CD for an older version of Unreal, so I ended up with 222r.
It now runs at 38fps in 1024x768! Woo!

Are there any BIOS setting, other tricks, etc to get more performance out of it? I guess I'll try cooling and overclocking the VD3 3000.

Thanks everyone

Higher bus speed and memory clocks help a little. The high performance approach with Super 7 was disabled motherboard cache and trying to get to 133MHz FSB. The Voodoo3 isnt really the bottleneck unless you play at high resolution.

swaaye wrote:

More bus speed and memory bandwidth help a little. The Voodoo3 isnt really the bottleneck unless you play at high resolution.

Yeah, you're right. I tried the overclocking and it only got me a couple fps.

I might throw the Voodoo in my Athlon XP rig, just for kicks.

Thanks

Skidlz wrote:

I had a CD for an older version of Unreal, so I ended up with 222r.
It now runs at 38fps in 1024x768! Woo!

For what it's worth, that's the exact version Voodoo3 3000s comes with 😀