my 486 quake experience then (96-97) was an am5x86 clocked from 120mhz to 160mhz with a s3 trio64v+. Framerates were fine as long as you aren't nailgun happy, as lightmap changes to the surfacecache hurt it the most frequently.

I should also note the 3dfx Voodoo2 can benefit the most for GLQuake on a 486. "but your holdin the God VooDoo II card back with an Shit CPU!!! Use Virge Im Retro Graphic Expert, Save Rare VooDoo II for Pentium III Taltines Dont Waste Them" STFU multitexturing+low overhead helps

Any gfx card will work well - VLB or PCI as the frames drawn will be very low.
I would go for the one with the best picture quality e.g. a Matrox Mystique 220, Matrox Millenium II, RivaTNT...

leileilol wrote on 2024-11-30, 01:11:

my 486 quake experience then (96-97) was an am5x86 clocked from 120mhz to 160mhz with a s3 trio64v+. Framerates were fine as long as you aren't nailgun happy, as lightmap changes to the surfacecache hurt it the most frequently.

I should also note the 3dfx Voodoo2 can benefit the most for GLQuake on a 486. "but your holdin the God VooDoo II card back with an Shit CPU!!! Use Virge Im Retro Graphic Expert, Save Rare VooDoo II for Pentium III Taltines Dont Waste Them" STFU multitexturing+low overhead helps

Good point on the Voodoo II. I'm sure there are other options, anything on PCI with a good triangle setup engine and decently low overhead drivers. Maybe a TNT?

DrAnthony wrote on 2024-11-29, 00:54:

You may want to limit your expectations, even the absolute fastest 486 setups out there are going to struggle to hit much more than 15 fps and a more garden variety setup, like say a DX4 100 will be around 10 fps. There are plenty of great games that a 486 will absolutely handle, like say Doom or Doom II, but for Quake, a (Super) Socket 7 build with either a Pentium MMX or better yet a K6-2/K6-3 (which are widely available and cheap) would be far better suited.

I will take your socket 7 advice and switch from a 486 to some kind of Pentium mmx. I want nostalgia but I also don't want to be limited on what does games I can play with decent frame rate

Speaking of nostalgia, 3D accelerated Quake, at least to me, isn't. GLQuake rendered certain things (e.g. fullbright textures, overbright lightmaps, texture filtering depending on the card) entirely different, it just felt... well not totally wrong, but different, not quite right (at least until mods started being developed specifically for GL). Even when using a modern source port, I'll still disable the filtering.
And for the classic software renderer you want a decent CPU, especially when upping the resolution (unless not being able to make anything out is part of your nostalgia) - so good choice with the switching.

Pentium MMX is a good choice for Quake 1, 2 and 3. However if you just want to play these games, a simpler solution is to run RetroPie https://retropie.org.uk/ on a Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4. The Pi 4 2GB is available new for $45, while you can Pi 3 used for about $25 on eBay. Don’t forget to buy a power supply and case for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi boots from a microSD card, imaged from a PC or Mac. Here’s a YouTube https://youtu.be/tfbBDARr9aI?si=HhJeXSiUiBFqOMbi showing Quake 3 running on a Raspberry Pi 1 and 3.

I still don't know why you don't just run it on your main box.
It still runs

note, if you see someone wanting to play quake on their 486, it's not an opportunity to sell your shit or alternatives. They've already locked onto their target. Please remember what this forum category is about.

(yeah like running some linux install script off someone's git to snag and grab a bloated emulationstation frontend to get a source port for playing on a sbc is "simpler". Also the Pi4 hadn't been new for years)

The Pi 4 is widely available for sale new, though the video I linked to above shows a Pi 3 will give an average of 90 fps on Quake 3.

Sure, you can play the game, but the overall experience most people on forums like this one are looking for will be lacking. For many, a huge part of the nostalgia is going through the motions with the proper OS before even going in-game. Or they might want to have the hard drive sounds. Or use the exact serial ball mouse they kept from their childhood. A Pi setup doesn't give you any of that. Please, stop trying to "upsell" us - we're not the right target audience.

elszgensa wrote on 2024-12-07, 11:18:

Sure, you can play the game, but the overall experience most people on forums like this one are looking for will be lacking. For many, a huge part of the nostalgia is going through the motions with the proper OS before even going in-game. Or they might want to have the hard drive sounds. Or use the exact serial ball mouse they kept from their childhood. A Pi setup doesn't give you any of that. Please, stop trying to "upsell" us - we're not the right target audience.

Yes it's not just about the game. I bought a PC off eBay socket 3 AMD dx 2, Isa slot cl5434 video card with it's ram upgraded to 2MB. It came with a etherlink 3. I figured I'd like to be able to say I could play more or less all the latest 90s does games,hence quake 1. But i read somewhere that quake won't run good without at least a Pentium and a 3d graphics card. So I bought a socket 7 but it's a cyrix 6x86 100mhz. Anyways is like to be able to say I did a Google search on a 486 than I'll move on to the socket 7.

Btw would this be a good graphics card: ATI 3D RAGE LT PRO 8MB PCI 109-54100-00 VIDEO CARD

brother wrote on 2024-12-08, 02:18:

Btw would this be a good graphics card: ATI 3D RAGE LT PRO 8MB PCI 109-54100-00 VIDEO CARD

Indeed !!!
I was surprised that how good can work that ATI 3d Rage in GLQuake using ATIQUAKE miniGL:
"ATIQuake" miniGL for Q1 & Q2 on Rage Pro

brother wrote on 2024-12-08, 02:17:

So I bought a socket 7 but it's a cyrix 6x86 100mhz. Anyways is like to be able to say I did a Google search on a 486 than I'll move on to the socket 7.

It’s a common tech tale that Quake killed off Cyrix CPUs because they had a relatively weak FPU.

You will get better FPS than a 486/POD, but not much. Matching with a 3D card and running glquake will help.

My Rage XL (Rage Pro) 8MB AGP with faster CPU and Quake results, PCI version is bit weaker than AGP.
Quake1 timedemo demo1 640x480x16 68.2fps bilinear and multitexture disabled RageXL AGP OGL 1073
Quake2 timedemo 1 map demo1 640x480x16 54.2 bilinear and multitexture disabled RageXL AGP OGL 1073

Rage3 (Rage Pro) has settings for OpenGL and i would try OpenGL 4.11.11073 first. There are more OpenGL settings, start with these.

Copy or edit atidbg.ini @ C:\WINDOWS\atidbg.ini

Multitexture+Bilinear filtering disabled-Max fps
[OPENGL]
EnableMTSGI=0
EnableMTARB=0
BreakPageFlipping=1

[Kelvin]
Bilinear=0
Alpha=1
TexMap=1

[Performance]
SkipFlipWaitIdle=0

Multitexture + Bilinear filtering enabled-Fast fps
[OPENGL]
EnableMTSGI=1
EnableMTARB=1
BreakPageFlipping=1

[Kelvin]
Bilinear=1
Alpha=1
TexMap=1

[Performance]
SkipFlipWaitIdle=0

Doesn't ATI Rage OpenGL rely more on MMX or some other CPU muscle to handle their alpha blending? 486s don't have either...

leileilol wrote on 2024-12-21, 03:18:

Doesn't ATI Rage OpenGL rely more on MMX or some other CPU muscle to handle their alpha blending? 486s don't have either...

Slowest i have used Rage XL was S7 K5 PR166 (117MHz) and that has no MMX/ 3DNOW /SSE in it. It worked, just dont remember how well.