Sounds like your above the curve on specs.

Are you using Via 4.43 drivers?

Also try a 4x.xx nvidia driver as I heard they were some of the best. Not saying these are the best but in my nvidia videocard folder I have 44.03 and 45.23 listed and probably found those recommended from another forum.

Via chipsets had issues using AGP4x hence the AGP 2x mode. You can use Rivatuner to try an enable 4x but not worth the effort as test show 4x not show any real improvement.

make sure all drivers are cleaned out when uninstalling. I use DriverCleaner 2 when possible after an uninstall. search for DC2Setup_27.

try using the enhanced opengl renderer for deus ex
Version 2.0 for Deus Ex (works with Deus Ex version 1112fm): dxglr20.zip (110 KB).
http://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/

I had a Winfast GF2 that developed a leaking cap once. Check if yours is also the one with a single cap (even though you already mentioned the GF2MX has the same performance).

And welcome aboard! 😉
You should post topics of all your rigs! 😁

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Not saying these are the best but in my nvidia videocard folder I have 44.03 and 45.23 listed and probably found those recommended from another forum.

Where could I find these?

Tetrium wrote:

And welcome aboard! 😉
You should post topics of all your rigs! 😁

Agreed

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Not saying these are the best but in my nvidia videocard folder I have 44.03 and 45.23 listed and probably found those recommended from another forum.

Where could I find these?[/quote]

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/

Deus Ex will probably run best through Glide on old hardware. However I do think the game is fairly demanding. My EeePC with GMA 900 and Celeron M 900 that runs JK2 great runs DX poorly.

A 1GHz P3 isn't far off the mark for the time but that doesn't mean it's ideal. UE1 is very CPU intensive due to design issues (hence sad polycount) and DX has some relatively large and complex maps.

RogueTrip2012 wrote:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/

Thanks! Odd these downloads were listed only 2 days ago?

from the readme of patch 1.112f
"If you are experiencing slow Direct3D performance, you may want to try using OpenGL as your rendering device. OpenGL in Deus Ex is unsupported, but has shown significant performance gains under certain circumstances (particularly on Nvidia chipsets such as the GeForce)"

ps:

System Requirements
Minimum Specifications: 300 Mhz Pentium II or equivalent
Windows 95/98
64 MB RAM
DirectX 7.0a compliant 3D accelerated video card
DirectX 7.0a compliant sound card
DirectX 7.0a or higher (included)
4X CD-ROM Drive
150 MB uncompressed hard drive space
Keyboard and Mouse

Recommended Specifications:
AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III processor
128 MB RAM
3D accelerator with 16 MB VRAM
8X CD-ROM Drive
750 MB uncompressed hard drive space
EAX or A3D compliant audio card

Thanks so much for the responses guys, I'll give your suggestions a try and let you know how it goes.

I will post some pics of my rigs when I get a moment; I can't tell you how exciting it is that someone else is interested in them. My wife has nothing but contempt for my beautiful beige boxes - I caught her resting a drink on one the other day?! Outrageous.

Sounds to me like driver issues - try using an older driver from the 2x.xx line. Later drivers have no issues with Win XP/2000 but don't work well with Win98.

And welcome!

Those Vortexes 'sound' like trouble, judging from reading user experiences here.

OK I've invalidated my test results a bit because a Geforce2 Ultra I'd ordered has shown up in the mean time and I've replaced the GTS with it, but:

- clean install of Win98 SE
- 4.43 VIA drivers (I was already using those)
- ver. 45.23 of the nVidia drivers

The geforce is reported as 4x AGP now (a symbolic victory I know but I get a bee in my bonnet about such things) and the performance is much more like I'd hoped it would be.

Deus Ex still lags a bit a higher resolutions & 32bit but at now I can turn the resolution down a see a performance improvement, instead of poor performance across the board. So it was definitely a driver issue, I think.

That's all in DirectX too BTW, I'll try the enhanced opengl renderer at some stage too.

Well that's my PIII pretty much finished now, I guess it's time to sit down and use it... or maybe I need a P4...

Thank you all for your input.

We want pics! We want pics! 😜 😜 😜
You'll only need a P4 (or Athlon XP) if you want to play more demanding games btw. Many of us Vogoners have more then 1 rig to better suit their needs 😉

Deus Ex is not THAT demanding. A 1GHz Pentium 3 should be more than enough for it.
The Via AGP is to blame here, if I were you I'd go for even older drivers. Last time I tried, I found that drivers released close to the time frame of the motherboard generally worked best.

F2bnp wrote:

Deus Ex is not THAT demanding. A 1GHz Pentium 3 should be more than enough for it.
The Via AGP is to blame here, if I were you I'd go for even older drivers. Last time I tried, I found that drivers released close to the time frame of the motherboard generally worked best.

The 1ghz P3 + GF2 should burn through that game. I do share your view that earlier drivers would work better- I've had the best results from driver ver 2x.xx using Win98SE/ VIA Apollo Pro/ GF 256/2/3/4 / PIII combos.

Burn through as in 20fps? 😀
http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … s+ex+1ghz&pli=1

But there is no doubt that VIA AGP affects performance. The VIA memory controller just might as well.

swaaye wrote:

Burn through as in 20fps? :) http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false http://groups.google.com/group/c […]
Show full quote

Burn through as in 20fps? 😀
http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … s+ex+1ghz&pli=1

But there is no doubt that VIA AGP affects performance. The VIA memory controller just might as well.

It looks like Deus was the Crysis of it's day, bringing even brand new, fast systems to their knees.

Not running the game with all the bells and whistles turned on should help. That's probably the biggest reason why the older, slower Voodoo 5 ran it faster than the GF2 GTS. 32-bit color gave a big performance hit using the video cards of those days. Lowering the settings or using a newer video card that doesn't take such a big hit with 32-bit color turned on should plow through that game.

The game ran great on my GeForce 2 Ti and 1GHz Pentium III on an i815.
That is 30fps+.
I was probably playing using UTGLR though. Can't be quite sure.

swaaye wrote:

Burn through as in 20fps? :) http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false http://groups.google.com/group/c […]
Show full quote

Burn through as in 20fps? 😀
http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … s+ex+1ghz&pli=1

But there is no doubt that VIA AGP affects performance. The VIA memory controller just might as well.

Egads! Reading a bit looks like this game has some massive problems with D3D implementation.
I should do some testing of my own- I have the game though it's a relatively recent addition to my collection and as yet I haven't found the time to play it- and all the required hardware- P3 1ghz, various VIA s370 boards and old GF cards.

sgt76 wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Burn through as in 20fps? :) http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false http://groups.google.com/group/c […]
Show full quote

Burn through as in 20fps? 😀
http://books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ … %201ghz&f=false
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.p … s+ex+1ghz&pli=1

But there is no doubt that VIA AGP affects performance. The VIA memory controller just might as well.

Egads! Reading a bit looks like this game has some massive problems with D3D implementation.
I should do some testing of my own- I have the game though it's a relatively recent addition to my collection and as yet I haven't found the time to play it- and all the required hardware- P3 1ghz, various VIA s370 boards and old GF cards.

That appears to be the case

http://pc.ign.com/articles/081/081880p1.html

Apparently there's a patch floating around out there that improves D3D performance. The link in the article is dead now, though, so anyone needing it is going to have to hunt for it.