I didn't specify the resolution, mate. If I had id've said 320x200 software mode (i.e., vid_mode 0).

Oh and my box has no L2 cache, it would seem.. all the more surprising that it runs this so well. I also managed to get it up to 13FPS by using HyperRAM to raise the refresh rate of my RAM very slightly and free up a few CPU cycles.

I was unaware you could call timedemo yourself and get an FPS readout, perhaps I'll switch to that.

Edit: Using timedemo demo1 I get 10.3fps. I suppose with a much longer sampling and much more varied, it's giving me a better representation. I'd like to get my FPS up to 13-15 without dipping below 13 ever.. guess that'll have to wait until I get Quake to compile and can make a 486-friendly build.

Hi! (:

Perhaps you're just testing in a more intensive spot, I don't know - could you take a measurement there?

You should avoid using timerefresh as a benchmark because this is very inaccurate benchmark.

I'd think that the 180Mhz chip with higher FSB would provide enough of a boost to run at 17FPS or so all by itself - not to mention the video card you're using should be quite superior..

Firstly, I tested my system in the way mentioned by leileilol. This is the main reason why my results are not impressive. (: Secondly my CPU ran with FSB set to 60MHz but PCI was set to 30MHz and I had to use slowest cache settings to obtain full stability.

Edit: Using timedemo demo1 I get 10.3fps. I suppose with a much longer sampling and much more varied, it's giving me a better representation. I'd like to get my FPS up to 13-15 without dipping below 13 ever.. guess that'll have to wait until I get Quake to compile and can make a 486-friendly build.

You can also gain significant improvement in Quake by using Voodoo accelerator. I have made some tests:

Quake
resolution Voodoo1 [fps] | Voodoo 2[fps]
512x384 23,1 | 27,0
640x480 21,5 | 26,7
800x600 - | 26,3

Quake 2
resolution resolution Voodoo1 [fps] | Voodoo 2[fps]
512x384 9,2 | 10,3
640x480 9,1 | 10,3
800x600 - | 10,3

CPU: AMD5x86@180MHz
Motherboard: Shuttle HOT-433
Ram: 64MB EDO
OS: WIN95
sound card: -
VGA: Tseng ET6000
drivers: Voodoo1:V2.16
Voodoo2:V3.01.00

If you are interested in 486 tuning I recommend you to read topics written by rg100:
486 mobo + 586 chip
UMC chipset PCI 486 mobo. AMD P90 CPU options?
He is currently the King of the hill. (:

Regards!

Can't put a Voodoo card in an ISA-only system, unfortunately (proprietary motherboard, too, can't swap, and can't change video card).

I've since discovered that P24T overdrives work in Socket 1, so I'm now getting 4FPS more than before, as I've switched to a P24T 84Mhz (I know it's rated 83, but it runs at 84... I'm not complaining, 🤣).

Thanks for the links - I always enjoy reading about 486 testing/improvement/tweaks/etc.

Voodoos are only super effective in 486s when you're playing games with not alot of floating point vertex transforming going on. Some games in particular work very well on 486s with Voodoos:
- Battlezone
- GLQuake
- GZDoom (!) (Make sure you lower sound settings asap as fmodex is an overrated piece of crap)
- Outlaws

What would be cool is if someone found a way to emulate FPU instructions on a Voodoo GPU. 🤣

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

What would be cool is if someone found a way to emulate FPU instructions on a Voodoo GPU. 🤣

I don't think that's gonna happen. Graphics chips weren't very programmable in those days, unfortunately.

From my limited understanding I don't think that's possible- early video cards are fixed function and not programmable like modern cards with vertex and pixel shaders.

In fact the Voodoo isn't a GPU at all, the term GPU is just marketing fluff coined by nVidia. I think one of the first Geforce cards was named a GPU because of its hardware T&L features which were the precursor to programmable shaders. I remember reading about it in a magazine back around the turn of the century, they were hyping up their newfangled GPU. Personally I still just call them video cards 😜

edit: tetrium beat me to the punch 😜 🤣

DonutKing wrote:

From my limited understanding I don't think that's possible- early video cards are fixed function and not programmable like modern cards with vertex and pixel shaders.

In fact the Voodoo isn't a GPU at all, the term GPU is just marketing fluff coined by nVidia. I think one of the first Geforce cards was named a GPU because of its hardware T&L features which were the precursor to programmable shaders. I remember reading about it in a magazine back around the turn of the century, they were hyping up their newfangled GPU. Personally I still just call them video cards 😜

edit: tetrium beat me to the punch 😜 🤣

I see. At first, I thought the only reason why nobody bothered to attempt it was because they would have to reverse-engineer the Voodoo's architecture to program it "on the bare metal", so to speak.

I really just don't get why they made Quake and other Pentium-era apps so FPU heavy in the first place. Were they in bed with Intel and wanted to help them sell more Pentium boxes? It stands to reason that a copy of Quake (as an example, other games are guilty too) costs less than a new computer at that time, by far. That means that ID lost TONS of money in sales to high-end 486 owners who couldn't tolerate low framerates or assumed it wouldn't run playably (and couldn't afford to buy a new machine for games) where if it had just let up on the floating point math in favor of integer math, the performance would have been much more acceptable..

They could have made the game go "hrm, this is a Pentium - turn on the good shit!" and if it was a 486, it could disable or reduce particles, dynamic lighting, and other features like this. I've read through lists of console variables for the DOS version of Quake and it seems that while there's a command to enable flat lighting, there's no command to disable the dynamic lighting - all that does is end up making it brighter and worse looking without the performance boost... There's also NO variables dealing with particles at all.

It would be nice if there were a way to have enemies rendered as sprites instead of 3D models, but I don't blame the developers for not including that - it would be a lot of largely unjustified work.

I've got a Pentium Overdrive in there now, and the performance is still rather bad - I blame my graphics card for this part of the fail, however - 512K VRAM on ISA isn't the best, heh. I'm still racking my brain trying to figure out ways to make it work better, but unfortunately I can't get the game to compile (I've tried under an XP VM, and under my actual DOS machine, both the original source and QIP source) so source modifications are currently barred from my list of options.

My latest thoughts are that according to tests by linuxlove (a friend on another forum) the Windows version runs just as well as the DOS version - somehow. The benefit of WinQuake vs DOSQuake, though, is that it may allow for an expanded list of console variables to be available, as well as command line parameters..

@Yushatak
I'm not sure what is the answer to your question. Maybe this was just the sign of time. 3D games became popular and there was no chance to sell at a good price game without 3D engine. The same happened after Pixel and Vertex shader introduction.

As you know (or not) I'm trying to obtain best possible result in overclocking AM5x86. For a long time I wasn't able to overcome 180MHz barrier. This morning I wrote in this topic:
486 mobo + 586 chip
that I have overclocked CPU to 200MHz but without L1 cache enabled - what does not make sense because performance is terrible. After this defeat I decided to test Cx5x86 100MHz on ga-486am/s motherboard. I started from 133MHz settings which I had tested before on um8810 motherboard. Then I checked 150 MHz and I was very suprised because it worked correctly and booted to DOS! (:

Here you are screens:

Now I wonder why this CPU is not as fast as I expected. Do you think that this can be caused by FPM memory which I used instead EDO?
Speedsys result is a little bit worse than my first test at the begining of this topic. 3Dbench 2 result 98,3 is much worse than I expected because Cyrix has more modern FPU than am5x86. I omitted incorrect CPU clock detection by speedsys (136MHz) and chkcpu (126MHz). (:

Regards!

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

What would be cool is if someone found a way to emulate FPU instructions on a Voodoo GPU. 🤣

Heh unfortunately there's no hardware in a Voodoo that is going to execute x87 code. 😉

Use a Voodoo 2 or later instead of Voodoo1 because Voodoo1 only has partial triangle setup offload. Might give a slight speed boost.

Yushatak wrote:

I really just don't get why they made Quake and other Pentium-era apps so FPU heavy in the first place. Were they in bed with Intel and wanted to help them sell more Pentium boxes?

The reasoning was that the Pentium was going to be the mass market leader, and obviously it was. id wanted to make a visual treat and make sure it ran as well as possible on the hardware most of their customers would probably have.

Pentium was the first superscalar x86 CPU meaning that it could potentially run more than a single instruction per clock if you programmed for it properly. If you pull this off, a Pentium can be more than twice as fast as a 486 at the same clock speed. Quake is basically 100% optimized for a Pentium CPU. There is incredibly smart assembly code in the engine that targets the Pentium specifically, utilizing all of the strengths and quirks of the design. It's not just the FPU that outclasses 486 and Cx5x86.

@udam_u
From where i can download MDK DOS Benchmark?

I put a link to this benchmark in one of my earlier posts, however it seems not to work anymore. Here you are a new link to package containing mdk benchmark: mdk_bench.zip

Thanks, and how overclock the Cx 5x86

I described my overclocking procedure here(the sixth post from the bottom) :
UMC chipset PCI 486 mobo. AMD P90 CPU options?

Regards! (;

udam_u wrote:

I described my overclocking procedure here(the sixth post from the bottom) :
UMC chipset PCI 486 mobo. AMD P90 CPU options?

Regards! (;

PS.
Do at your own risk. ^^

from where i can download pcpbench?

sebaz_ri wrote:

Thanks, and how overclock the Cx 5x86

I wouldn't overclock that chip just yet until you talk to feipoa. I don't think you get much wiggle room with the clocks on the Cyrix chips and you don't want to burn it up. Cyrix 5x86 chips are pretty hard to come by so you don't want to have to replace one because you overclocked it too much.

sliderider wrote:

sebaz_ri wrote:

Thanks, and how overclock the Cx 5x86

I wouldn't overclock that chip just yet until you talk to feipoa. I don't think you get much wiggle room with the clocks on the Cyrix chips and you don't want to burn it up. Cyrix 5x86 chips are pretty hard to come by so you don't want to have to replace one because you overclocked it too much.

Yup 😁

Better practice with the AMD 5x86 first 😁