What OS are you running and how much ram?

larbob wrote on 2020-06-20, 21:49:

Hey, I put a Rage 128 Pro Ultra card into a Pentium 3 500 MHz system and am getting performance different than I'd expect. The Rage 128 Pro Ultra is basically just a late OEM version of the 128 Pro as far as I know, so I forced the "Rage 128 Pro 4XL" drivers on to it. In retail Half-Life 1 (OpenGL, 640x480) I get ~50-100 FPS, but in active deathmatches it consistently dips to around ~20-25. I've also tried the Steam version on XP with around the same results.

What all should I be checking to see why this performance is so bad? Thanks.

The numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark as in this review on a PII 400MHz .
What were you expecting to get ?

https://images.anandtech.com/old/video/ati/ra … 0-hlblowout.gif

EDIT: Granted, you have the Pro version, but still.
EDIT2: Having a 64-bit memory bus probably does not help .
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/?archit … sort=generation

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:26:

What OS are you running and how much ram?

XP with 512 MB of RAM.

darry wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:38:

The numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark as in this review on a PII 400MHz . What were you expecting to get ? […]
Show full quote

The numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark as in this review on a PII 400MHz .
What were you expecting to get ?

https://images.anandtech.com/old/video/ati/ra … 0-hlblowout.gif

EDIT: Granted, you have the Pro version, but still.
EDIT2: Having a 64-bit memory bus probably does not help .
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/?archit … sort=generation

Ah, that's fair. I'm more of a retro *nix guy rather than the PC side of things so I kind of just assumed the Rage 128 Pro would be good for goldsrc as it was a mid- to high- end card from the era. Any cards you would recommend?

larbob wrote on 2020-06-20, 23:20:

XP with 512 MB of RAM. […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:26:

What OS are you running and how much ram?

XP with 512 MB of RAM.

darry wrote on 2020-06-20, 22:38:

The numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark as in this review on a PII 400MHz . What were you expecting to get ? […]
Show full quote

The numbers you are getting are in the same ballpark as in this review on a PII 400MHz .
What were you expecting to get ?

https://images.anandtech.com/old/video/ati/ra … 0-hlblowout.gif

EDIT: Granted, you have the Pro version, but still.
EDIT2: Having a 64-bit memory bus probably does not help .
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/?archit … sort=generation

Ah, that's fair. I'm more of a retro *nix guy rather than the PC side of things so I kind of just assumed the Rage 128 Pro would be good for goldsrc as it was a mid- to high- end card from the era. Any cards you would recommend?

I may not be the best person to ask, as I tend to want to max things out .

Keeping that in mind, I would consider a Geforce 3 variant, a Geforce 4 4200 (or 4600) or a Geforce FX 5700 or even a Geforce Fx 5900, depending on your budget and availability in your region . I would also consider upgrading the CPU to the fastest your board can support, again within the scope of your budget and regional availability , as according to these benchmarks, your CPU is also a limiting factor .

https://www.anandtech.com/show/205/5

EDIT: Just to be clear, all these cards are overkill for a Pentium 2 at 350 MHz and will be bottle-necked by it and the FX 5900 is overkill for any Pentium 2/3 CPU, but may still be worth it if found less expensively than the others. I see no harm in having an over-specced video card, as long as backward compatibility is good, and for those cards suggested, it is . If you intend to keep your current CPU, aiming lower, like a Geforce 2 MX or MX400 (MX100 and MX200 are crap), Geforce 4 MX440 or Geforce 2 GTS are also options .
All of them should work fine in a Slot 1 motherboard, but make sure the PSU is up to the task .

darry wrote on 2020-06-20, 23:52:

EDIT: Just to be clear, all these cards are overkill for a Pentium 2 at 350 MHz and will be bottle-necked by it and the FX 5900 is overkill for any Pentium 2/3 CPU, but may still be worth it if found less expensively than the others. I see no harm in having an over-specced video card, as long as backward compatibility is good, and for those cards suggested, it is . If you intend to keep your current CPU, aiming lower, like a Geforce 2 MX or MX400 (MX100 and MX200 are crap), Geforce 4 MX440 or Geforce 2 GTS are also options .
All of them should work fine in a Slot 1 motherboard, but make sure the PSU is up to the task .

I'm using a Pentium 3 500 MHz CPU right now. Thanks for the info!

larbob wrote on 2020-06-21, 02:45:

darry wrote on 2020-06-20, 23:52:

EDIT: Just to be clear, all these cards are overkill for a Pentium 2 at 350 MHz and will be bottle-necked by it and the FX 5900 is overkill for any Pentium 2/3 CPU, but may still be worth it if found less expensively than the others. I see no harm in having an over-specced video card, as long as backward compatibility is good, and for those cards suggested, it is . If you intend to keep your current CPU, aiming lower, like a Geforce 2 MX or MX400 (MX100 and MX200 are crap), Geforce 4 MX440 or Geforce 2 GTS are also options .
All of them should work fine in a Slot 1 motherboard, but make sure the PSU is up to the task .

I'm using a Pentium 3 500 MHz CPU right now. Thanks for the info!

Sorry, I misread Pentium 3 500 as Pentium 2 350 .

They are bad cards, 64bit memory bus hurts an already terrible card

darry wrote on 2020-06-21, 03:02:

Sorry, I misread Pentium 3 500 as Pentium 2 350 .

No problem! So I actually found an MX 400 for pretty cheap and scooped it up. It seems to work, however if I don't have it in 32-bit color mode things really slow down. In Half-Life, I'm only able to choose OpenGL and not DirectX with the card, and in 32-bit color mode (the only actually usable mode) the skyboxes are grayscale. I couldn't find anything about this online; do I need to go to an older driver or something? I'm on the latest XP driver from Nvidia's site.

EDIT: The retail version shows skyboxes fine and lets me choose DirectX but the DirectX performance is abysmal and it seemed like the OpenGL performance was worse as well.

EDIT2: I've tried a ton of different driver versions as well as HL launch options (e.g. -nofbo) to no avail.