I'm sure with enough tinkering you can get native hardware a3d working properly (definitely shouldn't be muffled or crackling). That is a nice card.

Wish I had a Vortex2... Used to have an MX300 soundcard a long time ago and didn't know they don't require emm386 for real mode dos sound blaster emulation, and that they have better sound blaster emulation. Had very clean sound and nice A3D in hardware too (remember playing A3d helicopter sound demo from install disc and Half Life on K6 400. Great stuff.). Only reason I ended up with Live! card in this day and age was for capturing laserdisc audio via standard 2 pin spdif and some form of sound blaster emulation (didn't even know it had nmi-ddma issues with modern mobos or I probably would've got a Vortex. That's why I have to use wdm drivers). Vortex 2 uses a non standard spdif input IIRC. Mx300 was the best soundcard I ever had (Philips GUS amd interwave soundcard was another really good one but only emulated soundblaster mono; really impressive midi (no ram) despite some repeating snare drum glitch (forgot how I fixed that), and worked great with awe64 as main soundcard, cleanest ISA soundcard I've ever heard as well (kills the awe64 in sound quality), but it's extremely rare).

I didn't pull that out of thin air, and it has also been confirmed by this person who tinkered enough with this stuff to manage to get it work on XP, which was thought of as impossible up to that point. Since the symptoms are same across games I really believe that A3D has some inherent flaws.

Ordered a Vortex2 (au8830a Dell card). Going to install when and if I receive it. Read some reviews and articles and it just seems like a better card vs the Live!. A3D1+2 (3?), multiband equalizer, and EAX 1.0 in hardware is pretty sweet. Even for Dos it's sweet and has to be one of the better ones when considering ISA cards (no emm386, no ddma needed, and native daughterboard with no hanging note bug); even if FM synthesis isn't good it still is sweet.

EDIT:
Card arrived today (Saturday afternoon). Installed latest drivers linked somewhere on these forums (hehe), and it works great! Don't have any crackling or popping whatsoever, but I'm on 98SE. I'm using A3D by itself in Half Life (EAX disabled), and have reverb engine set to highest quality in A3D control panel. Using studio headphones with speaker mode @ headphones, and It sounds better to my ears VS the EAX with Live! card (haven't double checked but who knows). It's very clean, realistic, things actually sound like they go behind you, and echo's nicely in hallways (@ the part where scientist hanging from elevator falls and you jump into elevator; can hear metal thumps and attacks go down entire elevator shaft with very creepy echo. Cool!). Despite setting equalizer to "ROCK" with treble slider bumped all the way, there's no clipping.

For the record I'm using an au8830A2 chipset (smaller 2 channel card with 8 pin SPDIF; SPDIF better allow input). Also have IOMMU enabled in mobo bios.

Have problem with card however which I'm very upset about right now (should put this in another thread). Cannot get DOS sound to work at all! Have no sound blaster emulation settings in Windows 98SE whatsoever (nothing in device manager either, supposedly there's supposed to be a SB emulation driver shown). Manually specified settings in au30dos.ini (set file to read-only since it always changes) and card does initialize in real-mode DOS (can hear audible thump) and au30dos.com shows resources (set low dma to default of 0x3). Despite having set blaster line, games will not detect card whatsoever (mortal kombat trilogy has auto-detect feature which works great but even that doesn't find it). Dos games don't work in Win 98SE DOS shell either (which sucks since A3D control panel lets me choose yamaha sw-70xg for DOS shell midi; wonder if it'd let me choose timidity with 1GB pat-set?!). I think this card absolutely hates my guts right now.

EDIT 2:
After reinstalling the 2048 driver, it complained about not being on the primary PCI slot. Didn't know the card had a mind of its own! So I moved the card to the primary slot (only two on my mobo; see sig), and now the game port, mpu401, sbpro emulator, and other thing showed up in device manager. Very nice! Perhaps it really knows what it's talking about. Unfortunately, sbpro in real-mode DOS still does not work despite matching sbpro IRQ/DMA values in device manager. I guess it's similar to nmi-ddma issue with the Live! card? Windows 98SE DOS shells do have terrific SBPro emulation however. It's a lot better than Live! WDM sbpro emulation (that has a stupid 0.20ms sound lag in some DOS games); Vortex2 with 2048 driver has no lag and appears to be absolutely perfect. Control panel even let's you choose software synthesizers you've installed, to use with 98SE DOS shell midi. Very nice indeed! 2048 driver also supports downloading soundfonts for the card to use as wavetable midi (in addition to DLS and something else; als?).

My only gripe is Linux support lags behind the Live! card. For some reason, only a wavetable daughterboard can be used when plugged into the card. Don't even know if that means an external midi module can be used with the gameport (sometimes cards have the wavetable header hardwired to the game port so I don't know). Onchip wavetable with soundfont and DLS support is completely null under Linux. That sucks!

Take back what I said about the Vortex being great for DOS (though I bet with better drivers that would change). It does indeed need something that my mobo doesn't provide (nmi-ddma?). Disabling IOMMU didn't help and changing PCI slots didn't either. This card clearly has a problem with my AM3+ mobo.

Come to the conclusion that the Vortex2 au8830a2 isn't the best legacy card for my mobo (see sig). When sbpro emulation finally worked in 98SE DOS shell, there was a lot of crackling. Turning down wave and master volumes did not help what so ever. Also, I had to disable Directsound acceleration in A3D control panel for software midi backends to work. On top of that, all midi played from DOS shell started glitchy; had to wait for new midi track to play to be normal. Onchip wavetable didn't do any better, and soundfont support was a joke (many drums repeated endlessly and just sounded broken). Converting soundfonts to DLS helped, but samples went missing on some notes (great!). It still suffered 0.20ms sound lag on Mortal Kombat 1 DOS (Mk1+2 CD version). Overall, for legacy purposes on my mobo, the Live! is way better; DOS shell SFX are crystal clear and soundfont support is unbeatable (can load 1.6+gigabyte soundfonts in Linux with DMA patch). Both Live! and Vortex2 do not work in realmode DOS on my mobo despite initializing. Going back to Live! since it's just better on my mobo (it doesn't even care about not using the primary PCI slot).

Only A3D acceleration seemed great on the Vortex, but I'd rather have the Live! that does good with everything else while still having A3D support. Vortex2 is a great card probably, but it seriously needs new drivers for DOS, Linux,and 98 DOS shell.

I'm using A3D by itself in Half Life (EAX disabled), and have reverb engine set to highest quality in A3D control panel.

Is that what you are supposed to do? I thought you leave it per default and the game will adjust it? Maybe not?

Cannot get DOS sound to work at all! Have no sound blaster emulation settings in Windows 98SE whatsoever (nothing in device manager either, supposedly there's supposed to be a SB emulation driver shown).

There are two drivers doing the rounds. One without SB Emulation, which uses one less IRQ. Just make sure you grab the right one 😀

After reinstalling the 2048 driver, it complained about not being on the primary PCI slot.

This issue is known and documented. Before installing the drivers you need to edit a certain INI file and then the installation works flawless 😀

AM3 motherboard? Heck just run DOSBox 🤣

I see you have a PCIe GeForce FX. Would you be happy to help test out Splinter Cell on your machine:

YT Video: Building a retro gaming PC for Splinter Cell!

Lots of infos about the issue on this thread.

Yeah I got kind of pissed with this card (vortex). Heard claims it was flawless without nmi-ddma mobo but it's clearly not working on my end (sbpro works fine in 98 DOS shell).

You know, Mortal Kombat 1 CD actually runs better in Dosbox.

Might be able to test a Splinter Cell demo when I get a chance. Results won't be reliable however; PCX5750 in 98SE runs like it's on a 6mhz PCI slot on my mobo. Has anyone ported Linux drivers to Windows? I'm guessing you need WDDK for 9x drivers?

EDIT:
Received Riva 128 VR PCI and I'm actually stunned with how it runs Half Life. @ 1280x960 it manages 40-60+ fps most the time with opengl (I'm pretty sure it has a 64bit mem bus); even with the flashligh on. Runs smoother with no lag vs Pcx5750 (nvidia drivers suck with that card; only Linux was perfect in my case). Reminds me of a Voodoo 4 with this game. Driver has highest quality settings for opengl except vsync disabled. Wish I had Unreal to try.

On the other hand, it's got problems with Quake III; it runs slow no matter what (lowest settings+16bit all @640x480 manage 30fps). Doom64-TC Absolution also runs kinda bad; opengl 800x600 manages well but some small drops. FFvii reports palleted texture success, but game crashes at intro movie. Oh yeah, had to raise SBLive! PCI latency to 255 and make rage128vr PCI latency 32 (sound was getting crackly. Used these settings with Half Life too). Runs low res DOS games really good (they don't jump the gun being overly fast and unplayable). No screen corruption or glitches with Blood either (though it doesn't run fast over 640x480).

Overall the SBLive! and Rage 128Vr PCI is pretty good for legacy gaming IMO. Only problem is hunting down all the sound-video drivers scattered everywhere. Everything after Half Life seems to run on Windows 7 so yeah...

EDIT:
12-02-2000 Rage 128 drivers seem to work quite good. Quake 3 now runs 20-40+ FPS highest settings @ 640x480 32-bit (color and texture). However, I do need r_ignorefastpath 1, hunkmegs 128, and r_ext_compiled_vertex_array=0 (1 causes dynamic lighting glitch). That's very impressive for a 1998 GPU. IMO it blows away the Voodoo 3 considering 32-bit color is free (looks way better and causes at most 1-2fps speed hit). Even handles cg_shadows 3 without a hit (character stencil shadows). Paletted textures in FFVII work and antialiasing doesn't introduce artifacts. Overclocking memory causes a good jump in FPS; but only goes up to 140mhz without issue.

I read that patch 1.1.0.0 provides 1600x1200 support but I ran that patch against my Half Life GotY 1.0.0.9 and there is still no 1600x1200 option. Anyone know more?

One internet post mentions that 1600x1200 worked in opengl mode but not d3d nor software, in their specific configuration. Did you previously post your video card and driver version? I would guess that the issue is one of the two, whether the card has sufficient video memory (which it probably does) and that the driver version is compatible.

truth5678 wrote:

One internet post mentions that 1600x1200 worked in opengl mode but not d3d nor software, in their specific configuration. Did you previously post your video card and driver version? I would guess that the issue is one of the two, whether the card has sufficient video memory (which it probably does) and that the driver version is compatible.

I was using a GeForce 3 64MB on driver 28.32 while messing with the game. 1600x1200 didn't appear under D3D, OpenGL or Software. Windows and other apps seem to find high resolutions fine.

The maximum resolution it reports is 1280x960.

The game menu does say 1.1.0.0 so the patch did seem to apply.

Here is an unofficial patch for additional resolutions in opengl mode, given it is compatible with your installation (non-steam):
http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/download … r-won-half-life. It may be worth a try; in addition could try -32bpp before applying this "patch".

truth5678 wrote:

Here is an unofficial patch for additional resolutions in opengl mode, given it is compatible with your installation (non-steam):
http://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/download … r-won-half-life. It may be worth a try; in addition could try -32bpp before applying this "patch".

That sounds useful. I'll give it a try.

I checked and patch 1.1.1.0 brought 1600x1200 to OpenGL. That's the patch needed for the widescreen mod patch above.

Also, is there any way to get overbrights going with OpenGL? I found old info about gl_texsort "1" allowing gl_overbrights to work by disabling multitexturing but gl_texsort was removed at some point. D3D has overbrights but runs very poorly compared to GL and maxes out at 1280x960.

Sorry, I read the patch version wrongly.

truth5678 wrote:

Sorry, I read the patch version wrongly.

Actually you were helpful. What I meant was the 1.1.1.0 patch that is needed for the widescreen mod you linked works fine on its own for 1600x1200. That patch is newer than the 1.1.0.0 that I was using (the one which people said added 1600x1200). 1.1.1.0 does actually add 1600x1200, 1.1.0.0 does not.

The widescreen mod isn't needed unless you want widescreen. It contains several modified halflife.exe files with varying resolution support.

That's great! That version numbering system is difficult to read; I wonder if they bug fixed that minor version for some video cards. I think leilei will know about the overbrights function in opengl (WON version).

Edit: please try these settings (verified that these are not the defaults!):
gl_overbright 1
gl_texsort 1

This will turn off multitexturing (texsort=1) and therefore allow overbrights to turn on. It may be worthwhile to compare screens generated from these settings to the default settings where multitexturing is on but overbrights are off (texsort=0). Others know better on the innerworkings of these graphic pipelines, but other posts discuss that overbrights are specifically rendered along the non-multitexturing pipeline. I believe some screen comparisons would answer the question sufficiently as to the trade-off between the presumed two opengl pipelines, multitexturing on and the other off.

A post suggests that multitexturing has a very small effect on visual quality of half-life, not easily noticed except for a couple of water textures. In contrast, there are many posts showing the major effect of overbrights on. 😀

Also, if there are any problems changing the overall gamma in opengl mode, then possibly use a utility which accompanies (or works) with the video driver, or else try another tool, such as the easily installed Gamma Panel or else the PowerStrip software.

Edit2: edited above to show that texsort=1 turns off multitexturing.

Edited the above reply and confirmed the use of overbrights in half-life 1.0 (retail version). However, reading a changelog of the half-life patches (http://hl.loess.ru/?txt=changelog1110), it is very possible a relevant cvar is no longer available in versions 1.1.0.0 and higher:

1half-life patch v1.1.0.0
2- Removed GL renderer cvars that were being used for cheating.

If we have to choose between overbrights and 1600x1200, then one solution is to rollback to a version prior to 1.1.0.0 and test that overbrights still works. Then, hex edit the hl.exe binary to replace 800x600 with 1600x1200:

1Search for these hex values:
220 03 00 00 58 02 00 00
3
4Change to:
540 06 00 00 B0 04 00 00

HxD is a decent hex editor. I only confirmed that the resolution is replaced, but haven't tested whether it works in-game.

Yeah gl_texsort is an unknown variable in later versions. I don't remember if I tried it with 1.0.0.9 but it doesn't work with 1.1.0.0+.

gl_shadows got removed too and that's one seen in many older official HL screenshots 😀

also a little more farther back and obscure, r_mirroralpha was regressed somewhere between the Sep 97 alpha and the OEM day one release.

Thanks for the information. Confirmed that r_shadows=1 does activate shadows in half-life v1.0 (retail version); it works independent of the gl_texsort value. There are several internet posts discussing that the shadows function is unfinished and the appearance is unrealistic along with some errors. Confirmed that the shadows are not that visually appealing.

the shadows are a leftover from GLQuake actually, same with this mirror effect