VOGONS


TNT2 Pro... blems

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First post, by Feanor_twh

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Everything works fine now, I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to share my experience in case it's helpful to someone.

In my MVP3 K6-III 400 128MB, I originally installed a TNT2 Pro AGP, considering it a suitable GPU for that system.
The performance was quite poor. Diablo II playable, but stuttering when many enemies appeared on screen. Unreal Tournament was a slideshow at any resolution, Half-Life also became a slideshow in complex scenarios and I simply couldn't run Unreal (1998)
With drivers 3.68, Diablo II never started, with 6.31 everything worked more or less okay. No driver made Unreal 1 work.
Only Quake II worked without any problems.

I was frustrated with the performance of this machine. I know the limitations of the K6-III's FPU for 3D, but it was pathetic that games like Unreal or Half-Life weren't even playable.

So... I decided to try 3dfx. I'd never used one before, but I'd read that they reduced the processor's load, exactly what I was looking for, in addition to testing the native Glide API in some of the games I play. I got a Voodoo3 2000 AGP.

That was the key.
Diablo II in Glide mode runs 100% smoothly. Unreal (1998) now runs like Quake II. Unreal Tournament is also perfectly playable. Even Quake II, which doesn't use Glide but OpenGL, now runs at higher FPS. I haven't tried Half Life yet, but I expect improvements here too.

It was like night and day. The definitive solution for this machine, and I'm happier with it than ever. Now it finally works the way I think it should.

The attachment WhatsApp Image 2026-09-11 at 9.17.38 PM.jpeg is no longer available

DOS - Amstrad PC1512 NEC V30 640kb 128mb CF XTIDE
Win3.1 - IBM PS/ValuePoint 486DX2 8mb Tseng ET4000 2gb CF
Win98 - AT 386 case K6-III 400 128mb Voodoo3 2000 20gb SSD
WinME - Intel Dot Station (Paquito) PIII 750 256mb FX5200 128gb SSD
Wrong setup? Lmk plz

Reply 1 of 3, by MadMac_5

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You're right, the TNT2 does indeed need a speedy CPU to perform well. But, Unreal Tournament in particular needs as much CPU as you can throw at it too; I've run it in Glide on a Voodoo 2, and on a PIII-550 it still struggles to exceed 35 FPS. I see similar performance with a GeForce 2 Pro 64 MB in D3D or OpenGL and that CPU, and the same GeForce 2 will give me over 100 FPS at 1024x768 on a P4 2.0 GHz. The bots in particular are a big drain on CPU resources from what I've found; capping the number of bots at 4 in a deathmatch seems to help on slower CPUs.

Reply 2 of 3, by Feanor_twh

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Well, to be honest, I didn't really try Unreal Tournament in depth, only the first level, because I didn't have my savegame near.
Maybe the problems will come later, with more bots.

In any case, finally seeing the legendary Unreal 1 intro finally running smoothly and with good sound was an unforgettable experience.

Anyway, it seems strange that a Pentium III 550 would be struggling in UT99.

I'll test it further and comment.

DOS - Amstrad PC1512 NEC V30 640kb 128mb CF XTIDE
Win3.1 - IBM PS/ValuePoint 486DX2 8mb Tseng ET4000 2gb CF
Win98 - AT 386 case K6-III 400 128mb Voodoo3 2000 20gb SSD
WinME - Intel Dot Station (Paquito) PIII 750 256mb FX5200 128gb SSD
Wrong setup? Lmk plz

Reply 3 of 3, by swaaye

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Yeah with Unreal Engine you need to get up to something like an Athlon XP to clear up the edge cases of slowdown. Setting the model skin detail in-game to a setting below "high" helps too. P3 550 is pretty good for the game but it's not saturating it.

Glide has a lot less CPU overhead compared to D3D which helps get more performance from the same CPU. If you were to have a GeForce 256 or newer then I would suggest using UTGLR (OpenGL renderer) but I don't think it works with TNT. Direct3D 6/7 was still a very immature stage for D3D and it's not very efficient.