First post, by AaronAsh
So I have a Super Socket 7 system I built for some mixed DOS/Win98 gaming, specs as follows:
Motherboard - PCChips M577
CPU - AMD K6-III+ 450 (overclocked to a stable 550 @ 2.1v)
RAM - 256mb (2x128mb)
Graphics #1 - Diamond Viper V770 32mb AGP (this is a rebranded TNT2 Pro IIRC)
Graphics #2 - SLI 12mb 100Mhz Voodoo2s
Sound - Yamaha YMF219
HDD - WD 160GB SATA drive formatted to 128GB via SATA to IDE converter
Network - PCI Intel 10/100 Ethernet card
So the system is generally well behaved, doesn't seem to suffer from any unexpected compatibility problems and is fun to tinker with.
However, with 3D games in Windows I seem to be getting significantly less performance than I expected, regardless of which graphics card I use. For example, in Quake 2 in 16 bit colour using timedemo on demo1.dm2 I get around 33 fps with the SLI Voodoo2s and around 40 fps with the TNT2. However I've seen benchmarks, older ones from places like Anandtech and TomsHardware and the newer ones PhilsComputerLab does, which suggest I should instead be expecting performance well into the 60 fps range with both of these cards in similar hardware configurations. Other games like Unreal seem to demonstrate similarly lower than expected performance. I have already applied things like the usual BIOS tweaks, different driver versions (including FastVoodoo) but at best these have improved things by a couple of fps.
So my question is - is there something else in my system that could be a bottleneck? Are there any unusual BIOS/Windows settings I should look to change, or any hidden graphics card driver options that might help with the SS7 motherboard? Any thoughts much appreciated.