First post, by Namrok
So I have one of those seemingly ubiquitous K6-2+ time machine builds. Full specs are
K6-2+ 500
PC Partner MVP3 motherboard
256MB PC100 SDRAM
AWE 64 CT4500 (Disabled in windows)
SB Live 4780
Geforce 2 MX 400 (Running 8.05 drivers)
So kind of a budget 1999 build. It's running Win98SE, and I updated Blood 2 to version 2.1.
This machine makes short work of Quake 2 getting about 60 fps time demo1 at 1280x960. And I just finished up Shogo on a P233 MMX equipped with a humble Riva128 that got about 20-30 fps at low settings and 640x480. So I was expected good things from Blood 2, another Lithtech 1.0 game, on this marginally beefier machine. After it all, it easily doubles the Quake 2 FPS I get on that weaker machine, at much higher quality and resolution to boot! Heck, I just benchmarked Quake 3 and Demo0001 got 40 fps at 800x600 high detail.
But nope. Blood 2 consistently runs at between 15-25 FPS, even at 640x480 and the lowest settings. It makes zero sense to me. I've disabled sound, music, movies, and joystick. I've toggled nearly all the engine level disables. I've turned on optimized textures, triple buffering and single pass multi texturing. Nothing makes it budge. It's like it's CPU limited horribly. Which I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around. I know the K6-2+'s had poor FPU performance compared to a Pentium II, but this simply isn't squaring with performance in other games, or my own memories of playing it on a P233MMX with a Riva TNT back in 1998.
Are my expectations, and memories, just totally off on this one? The only nagging thing that occurs to me is that I have DirectX 8 installed and this is a DirectX 6 game.
Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS