What settings did you use in Q3? Maybe you need to turn up the quality/resolution to go past the 2mb.

Second from highest texture resolution. I guess I need to try timedemos for different texture settings at 2 and 4MB

It is an interesting question because depending on texture V2 -> V3 -> V4 makes a big difference in Quake 3 (based on my testing). So I would have expected the same for memory increase in V1.

It'd probably be more stuck at the fill before the thrash, though that 2 TMU readout is strange. To see if it's actually using the "second TMU" in that case, type 'imagelist' in the console and check for any 1's, because that's where the other 2MB would be. Also compare framerates with r_ext_multitexture 0

The data for sli voodoo 1s isn’t mine, it was from a video I saw on YouTube. So I just have a voodoo 1 6MB with the one TMU.

Slightly interestingly I dropped the texture quality from second highest to second lowest and there was zero change in framerate with either stock 4MB or with 2MB disabled in the graphics card settings. This evening I’ll try increasing texture res to maximum and see what happens there.

Maybe the P166MMX (which is already below the minimum specs of MMX 233) plus the fillrate on the V1 is already too much of a bottleneck for the extra texture memory to make a difference.

I'd try it on something faster, say Pentium II 300/350.

I don't want to be a nagger here, but this is really trying to go from unplayable framerates to still uplayable. Your cpu is giving a rough 70% of your minimum system requirements and with this card you aren't even getting close to the requirement of a pentium2 266.

I have a pentium 2 350 at home running with a voodoo 2 12mb and a diamond viper v550, even then I dont bother installing the game.

Please go with a pentium 450 at the least. And a voodoo 3 or voodoo2 sli, or go tnt2 or faster.

Byt thats just my opinion

And for the sake of your question, to just make it run at all a bit better:
I am interested to see the answer, since I remember that it should be possible to change this.

Like others mentioned before, Quake 3 really needs a strong P2 or a Pentium 3.

Yeah I did wonder if the fps might be bottlenecked and the voodoo would be worth a few more fps under a better cpu, so any difference between MB is being masked

Having said that, Unreal shows a significant average fps and fps lows when moving from a 4MB to 6MB V1 with the same slow cpu , and this game’s performance is definitely cpu dependant, so I do think there is headroom in a Voodoo in some ram/texture-related circumstances.

Aebtdom wrote on 2023-04-06, 11:28:

I don't want to be a nagger here, but this is really trying to go from unplayable framerates to still uplayable. Your cpu is giv […]
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I don't want to be a nagger here, but this is really trying to go from unplayable framerates to still uplayable. Your cpu is giving a rough 70% of your minimum system requirements and with this card you aren't even getting close to the requirement of a pentium2 266.

I have a pentium 2 350 at home running with a voodoo 2 12mb and a diamond viper v550, even then I dont bother installing the game.

Please go with a pentium 450 at the least. And a voodoo 3 or voodoo2 sli, or go tnt2 or faster.

Byt thats just my opinion

Thanks for your concerns, i do appreciate them. I have loads of old PCs, swapping in a new cpu isnt an issue, it's a matter of spending a bit of time to take things apart. similarly moving the V1 6MB into a machine with a faster cpu isnt an issue either. I have V3 and V2 SLI machines already set up, so i can play Q3 with plenty of fps.

I chose this machine initially because I wanted to see if 2 extra MB alone would bump the fps, like it does with Unreal. I wanted to see if Q3 benefitted from more ram to push the glass ceiling slightly higher. And I used to have this system back in 1998, and was interested to see whether if id had a 6MB V1 back then rather than a 4MB one i'd see any improvement. The answer is no, and I'm glad i moved to a Voodoo 2 and then later a PII.

Maybe other Glide-based GL ICDs might report and use more memory (i.e. WickedGL, MesaFX). Quake3 doesn't know how much VRAM a card has, all that texture management's handled by OpenGL itself. The MB reporting's part of the 3dfx GL ICD's string.

The best general optimization for Q3 on a V1 is turning on vertexlight (also saves CPU for not calculating dynamic lights), cg_draw3dicons 0, also r_texturemode GL_LINEAR to keep the mipmaps off the texture cache, which should help some thrashing

I wonder if there's a driver issue going on here.

FWIW, there's a youtuber trying all sorts of games on 6MB and 8MB Voodoo 1 configurations and they all seem to have been misses so far.

The channel is Bits and Bolts
https://www.youtube.com/@bitsundbolts

3Dfx_Aslinger did extensive testing 4 years ago with Miro 6MB and Skywell 8MB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmmSBFVeF3I

Thanks for the video links, I’d seen both of them before but they’re both very interesting.

I can confirm the fps boost for Unreal with the 6MB card, and I can’t see any boost with quake, quake 2 or Tomb Raider similar to what Bits and Bolts is showing.

Performance in Quake3 was my main interest.

3DMark99 - I saw a video of a guy with a 4MB V1 and P166MMX (same as me) getting 879 3d marks. I’m getting 937 (and the same cpu marks as him). So perhaps the extra 2MB is helping here?