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First post, by clueless1

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I don't know if there are many DOS games out there with framerate displays, so I wanted to start this thread to see if we can pool together our collective knowledge into one list. If there's already such a list somewhere, link to it and we'll call it good. 😉

I suppose we can do separate lists for games that give you an average from a demo vs ones that just display the current framerate. Here are the ones I'm aware of:
Duke Nukem 3D (type DNRATE while in-game)--shows current FPS in upper left corner
Quake I (while in the console type TIMEDEMO DEMO1(DEMO2, DEMO3)) runs through demos and calculates average framerate
Doom (not sure of the actual command as I just use Phil's batch file)

Any others out there?

EDIT: Here's a summary of this thread:

games that have an in-game framerate indicator:

Duke Nukem 3D - DNRATE
Descent 2 - FRAMETIME
Terminal Velocity - TRFRAME
Pacific Strike - SHIFT-F
Wing Commander 3 - CTRL-F
Blood - hit T, type RATE, press <enter>
Shadow Warrior - hit T, type SWLOC, press <enter>
Battle Arena Toshinden - accessed from Pause Menu (untested, vetz posts this above)
Eradicator - \FRAME

games that have a built-in timedemo that runs through a demo and provides an average framerate:
Doom I
Quake I
Wolfenstein 3D (modded in)

Last edited by clueless1 on 2020-10-07, 00:40. Edited 3 times in total.

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Reply 4 of 44, by clueless1

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leileilol wrote:

Terminal Velocity has a little benchmark thing by pressing Z at the main menu. This also exists in Fury3

Cool, I'll have to check if it works in the shareware version.

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Reply 6 of 44, by idspispopd

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leileilol wrote:

Terminal Velocity has a little benchmark thing by pressing Z at the main menu. This also exists in Fury3

You can also type TRIFRAME in-game to display the current FPS.
@clueless1: Quake I also has the TIMEREFRESH command which is probably not as useful as a benchmark as TIMEDEMO.

Reply 7 of 44, by Lo Wang

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clueless1 wrote:

Doom (not sure of the actual command as I just use Phil's batch file)

Doom had -devparm, but that wasn't what you'd call a conventional framerate display.

Shadow Warrior = SWLOC

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Reply 8 of 44, by Gamecollector

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Maybe I'm wrong but IIRC Descent and Descent 2 have the FPS meter.

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Reply 9 of 44, by Lo Wang

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No idea about Descent 2, but not long ago I went looking for the FPS meter in Descent so that I could slow things down to about 70fps, but couldn't find it.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" - Romans 10:9

Reply 10 of 44, by clueless1

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idspispopd wrote:
leileilol wrote:

Terminal Velocity has a little benchmark thing by pressing Z at the main menu. This also exists in Fury3

You can also type TRIFRAME in-game to display the current FPS.
@clueless1: Quake I also has the TIMEREFRESH command which is probably not as useful as a benchmark as TIMEDEMO.

This doesn't seem to work with the shareware version. 🙁

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OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 11 of 44, by Gamecollector

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Descent 2 - type FRAMETIME to see FPS.

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Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
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Reply 12 of 44, by clueless1

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Gamecollector wrote:

Descent 2 - type FRAMETIME to see FPS.

Nice! My P133 Voodoo3 combo gets between 18-24 FPS in 640x480 cockpit mode. 800x600 is a bit sluggish in the low to mid teens.

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OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 13 of 44, by Tertz

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MDK - has some benchmark in the menu
Wolf3D mod - After sources were published someone have made its mod with fps meter.
World Circuit - has not fps, but other performance numbers.

There are also not games, but benchmarks similar to them like 3D demos:
3DBench
3D Space
Morph3D
Chris' 3d Benchmark
PC Player Benchmark
Skull Benchmark

DOSBox CPU Benchmark
Yamaha YMF7x4 Guide

Reply 14 of 44, by Iris030380

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Timerefresh for Quake certainly, although it didn't give an accurate reading of the average FPS while playing, only what was being drawn on screen at that particular point in time. There was a console command in Quake which drew a log of each frame but I can't remember it, and I can't remember if it was an actual FPS reading or something else. Nor can I remember the console command... 😠

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Reply 16 of 44, by Azarien

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Iris030380 wrote:

Timerefresh for Quake certainly, although it didn't give an accurate reading of the average FPS while playing, only what was being drawn on screen at that particular point in time.

Well, source is available so a DOS Quake with FPS display is within reach 😀

Reply 18 of 44, by clueless1

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Pacific Strike from Origin - hit SHIFT-F in-game and a framerate display pops up in upper left corner. I think it's capped at around 30 fps (which doesn't matter since the game is such a slug you'll never reach that on a period correct system 😉 )

Also, Terminal Velocity - type TRFRAME in-game, not TRIFRAME as someone posted above.

Summary/breakdown:
games that have an in-game framerate indicator:

Duke Nukem 3D - DNRATE
Descent 2 - FRAMETIME
Terminal Velocity - TRFRAME
Pacific Strike - SHIFT-F
Wing Commander 3 - CTRL-F
Blood - hit T, type RATE, press <enter>
Shadow Warrior - hit T, type SWLOC, press <enter>
Battle Arena Toshinden - accessed from Pause Menu (untested, vetz posts this above)
Eradicator - \FRAME

games that have a built-in timedemo that runs through a demo and provides an average framerate:
Doom I
Quake I
Wolfenstein 3D (modded in)

Last edited by clueless1 on 2020-10-24, 14:47. Edited 3 times in total.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks