You're trying to run Unreal Tournament using Direct3D and on a very slow CPU.

First off, you'd want to use the Glide renderer with a Voodoo card, preferably a Voodoo 3. Then, I suggest raising the FSB to 100MHz and if the CPU is not stable at 600MHz, try going lower, I've found 550 to be an almost 100% guarantee on these chips.

You'd be much better off with a Coppermine and a Voodoo5 or UTGLR for GeForce cards (a much better OpenGL renderer).

I don't remember it being that demanding, but you are right - back in 1999 I was using a V2 SLI because GLIDE was just so much better.
Yet the UTGLR was a good idea so I can properly run UT on my main rig - thanks!

Hello there!
That game should be flying on your machine, it's quite strange to be getting such performance. I played it with a P2 450 Mhz, 256 SDRAM, Riva TNT at 1024x768 and everything at max!
Vsync some times kills the performance on Unreal Engine 1 games. My suggesting is to launch the game in troubleshoot mode, and run it in software mode. With that CPU it should run no problems (my first "Powerful" PC ran it only in this mode, P2 233 Mhz, 32 SDRAM, Ati Rage Pro 4 MB). If in software mode runs good, then the problem is in the graphic card.
May be you have AA activated on the nVidia control panel, or may be having a voodoo 1 affects the performance. May be even the sound cards! Even thou I don't think the sound cards should be making problems.
After writing all this, I realized that you solved your problem with UTGLR...
Regardless, the default Direct3D should be good enough, so your case will remain a mystery.
Cheers!

Best option. Get a Voodoo3 and put a PII as CPU-Support. Then the game WILL fly.

Alex Virata wrote:

Hello there! That game should be flying on your machine, it's quite strange to be getting such performance. I played it with a […]
Show full quote

Hello there!
That game should be flying on your machine, it's quite strange to be getting such performance. I played it with a P2 450 Mhz, 256 SDRAM, Riva TNT at 1024x768 and everything at max!
Vsync some times kills the performance on Unreal Engine 1 games. My suggesting is to launch the game in troubleshoot mode, and run it in software mode. With that CPU it should run no problems (my first "Powerful" PC ran it only in this mode, P2 233 Mhz, 32 SDRAM, Ati Rage Pro 4 MB). If in software mode runs good, then the problem is in the graphic card.
May be you have AA activated on the nVidia control panel, or may be having a voodoo 1 affects the performance. May be even the sound cards! Even thou I don't think the sound cards should be making problems.
After writing all this, I realized that you solved your problem with UTGLR...
Regardless, the default Direct3D should be good enough, so your case will remain a mystery.
Cheers!

Your memory must be fooling you, unless you enjoy playing the game at ~30fps with framerate dips. UE1 is insanely CPU intensive and a P2 450 is way faster than a K6-III+ 400. It's faster than a K6-III+ 600 even. On top of that, Direct 3D support in UE1 games is always rather terrible, glitchy and slow.

If you want a consistent 60fps, I'm not sure that even a Coppermine 1GHz will suffice, although it should be for the most part.

Unreal (not UT) should be getting around 40 - 50 fps with a V2 and that processor. UT might be a bit more demanding though. Also, this is just the time-demo, which could be less demanding as well.

I just tested this on my PII-333/V3-3000. I get between 30-50FPS during gameplay. Sometimes it goes down to 17-20 but it stays playable.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Unreal (not UT) should be getting around 40 - 50 fps with a V2 and that processor. UT might be a bit more demanding though. Also, this is just the time-demo, which could be less demanding as well.

Yes, UT is certainly more demanding than Unreal, although I don't think I've ever seen this substantiated by anyone, it could be a cool project to work on.

F2bnp wrote:

Alex Virata wrote:

Hello there! That game should be flying on your machine, it's quite strange to be getting such performance. I played it with a […]
Show full quote

Hello there!
That game should be flying on your machine, it's quite strange to be getting such performance. I played it with a P2 450 Mhz, 256 SDRAM, Riva TNT at 1024x768 and everything at max!
Vsync some times kills the performance on Unreal Engine 1 games. My suggesting is to launch the game in troubleshoot mode, and run it in software mode. With that CPU it should run no problems (my first "Powerful" PC ran it only in this mode, P2 233 Mhz, 32 SDRAM, Ati Rage Pro 4 MB). If in software mode runs good, then the problem is in the graphic card.
May be you have AA activated on the nVidia control panel, or may be having a voodoo 1 affects the performance. May be even the sound cards! Even thou I don't think the sound cards should be making problems.
After writing all this, I realized that you solved your problem with UTGLR...
Regardless, the default Direct3D should be good enough, so your case will remain a mystery.
Cheers!

Your memory must be fooling you, unless you enjoy playing the game at ~30fps with framerate dips. UE1 is insanely CPU intensive and a P2 450 is way faster than a K6-III+ 400. It's faster than a K6-III+ 600 even. On top of that, Direct 3D support in UE1 games is always rather terrible, glitchy and slow.

If you want a consistent 60fps, I'm not sure that even a Coppermine 1GHz will suffice, although it should be for the most part.

At the time, I didn't know what "Frames Per Seconds" were, for me it was either playable or not.
However, I do remember finishing the first tournament with that PC and those settings.

Your claim that D3D on UE1 is terrible, glitchy and slow, is bit shocking to me. Today it is terrible, I admit, but on a Win98 or even WinXP it was butter smooth, and waaay better than that not finished OpenGl render, or any other render for that matter (I'm talking about the renders that came with the game).

Now, I looked on the net for more info about it, and it seems that you are right, BUT! My memory isn't failing me. Anantech and tomshardware are wrong! And I'll prove it. I'll undust few of my notebooks and run some benchmarks.

Until then, cheers!

I didn't mean to offend you on the memory part. In all honesty, whatever's good enough for you. As long as I have the option, I will always opt for faster framerates and I don't consider 20-30 fps optimal in any way, playable maybe but it really depends on the game.

The truth of the matter is that UE1 created with mostly software rendering in mind and later on 3Dfx's Glide API. When Unreal (the first UE1 game) was first shipped it didn't offer support for Direct3D or OpenGL. These were added later on with patches and gradually improved upon, but even by mid 2000 with Deus Ex, you could see Voodoo 3 cards perform about as well as GeForce2 cards in UE1 games and Voodoo5 vastly surpassing such cards.
It is thanks to the efforts of gifted individuals that UE1 games can now be properly enjoyed without having to sacrifice IQ or performance, through the likes of UTGLR.

Ignoring the fact the CPU (PII 450) isn't terribly fast for UT to begin with, the TNT is just too slow to provide "butter smooth" performance at 1024x768 and with every details set at maximum. We're talking about a card that performance wise is closely matched with a single Voodoo2. A couple of Voodoo2 cards certainly isn't butter smooth for UT, although they're not half bad at all.
A Voodoo3 is much better overall with much better performance, especially when it comes to stuttering.

Again, I'm not saying you should have the best gear available to enjoy a game.
I just feel that since:
a)this is a game that you can play on your modern PC optimally with UTGLR or
b)you are going out of your way to buy vintage hardware with playing old videogames in mind

should you not strive to achieve the ultimate experience? In the second case, should you not go for the superior hardware, such as a Pentium III 733-1GHz (or even Tualatin if you can) + Voodoo3/5 or GeForce2/3/4/FX ?

Is there UTGLR for Win9x also?
I am running UT now at my C2Q with UTGLR on Windows 8.1 x64 and it works very nice, however I experience random keyboard and mouse lockups 🙁

That's weird, are you using wireless keyboard/mouse? They can be a pain sometimes!

UTGLR works on Win9x, just use an older version.

I switched bus frequency to 100MHz and the K6 seems to run stable at 450MHz.
With 500MHz it won't even boot into DOS...

However I am running into stability problems regarding RAM with my 2x256MB configuration, they disappear if I only use 1x256MB.
Any suggestions?

PS: Haven't found a UTGLR for Win9x yet 🙁

The K6-III+ was a nice project for me too, but after all a pentium-II is the better option.

dr.zeissler wrote:

I just tested this on my PII-333/V3-3000. I get between 30-50FPS during gameplay. Sometimes it goes down to 17-20 but it stays playable.

i forgot to mention that these frames are for 1024x768 and everything set to high.

schlang wrote:

PS: Haven't found a UTGLR for Win9x yet 🙁

There isn't a specific Win9x version. You just need to dig up an older version than the latest. I think 3.4 works.

It's downloadable in his news archive:
http://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/newsarchive.html

thx, with UTGLR 3.4 I get avg. 40fps with my GF4600 which is not that bad at all