Unfortunately, outside of using a 3dfx card in OS 9, software rendering is the only mode that provides consistent frame rates in […]
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Unfortunately, outside of using a 3dfx card in OS 9, software rendering is the only mode that provides consistent frame rates in both OS 9 and OS X with both ATI and NVIDIA cards. I believe it wasn't the cards that were slow at loading and flushing textures, but it was more driver related. The game animation is all based on 25 fps, so anything above that is basically free time for your OS to process other things like sound and input, so you don't really need a consistent 60 fps. BTW, to check your frames per second, hit the return/enter key to open a chat window, type 'fps' without the '' and hit return/enter again. Your fps, ping, and rendering mode should appear at the top of the screen. If you're running a hardware accelerated mode and then switch to window mode you'll notice the game switches to software mode.
I've wasted many, many hours doing performance comparisons on various boards (V2, V3, V4, V5, Rage 128 Pro, Radeon AGP, Radeon PCI, Radeon 8500, Radeon 7500 Mobility, GeForce2MX). Since the engine is optimized for Glide performance, those ran the game perfectly in terms of framerates (occasional graphical glitches).
In OS 9, both RAVE and OpenGL can often times benchmark higher but when the screen gets really busy, frame rates can plummet and strange rendering effects can occur (missing head while standing still, missing legs while running, maybe a missing torso while swinging. Pretty funny actually) with RAVE getting the significant nod over OpenGL. One area in Diablo II that will kill OpenGL frame rates is at the Act V city gates. Ugh! Even with a 1.2 GHz processor, that part of the map can potentially drop the fps to around, oh, a frame ever couple of seconds. Another test I like to do is to go kill Shrek (Schenk), the unique mob at the too of the Bloody Foothills. If you run at him from the nearest WP, there's usually a spot near the base of the stairs where all the mobs get loaded. In RAVE and OpenGL there's typically a rather long pause (a few times it causes rendering issues until I quit). With software and Glide, the pause isn't nearly as long.
Software rendering keeps a rather low average, but it tends to stick around that average even in heavy traffic. OpenGL definitely has the worst performance out of the four rendering choices. When I play DII, I want to maintain a steady frame rate as often as possible so if I'm going to be playing for a while I boot into OS 9 and use my Voodoo5. If I just want a quickie in OS X, I use software rendering.
According to a Rob Barris, the Blizzard Mac engineer who's working on the Mac version of DII 1.10, they're going to be using similar techniques that Quartz extreme uses to improve texture loading and unloading, so you'll want a card that's either a Radeon or a GeForce card. I don't believe the performance boots will work with anything below those cards since they aren't Quartz Extreme compatible.