First post, by RetroFyre
Having trouble trying to sort this out because I'm really trying to put use to a Lacie Blue 22" I have that should be getting fed worthy frames. I'm trying to hit 100fps with all settings and AA enabled at 1600x1200 in some of the late 90s fps games that support A3D while using a Vortex 2. I've done quite a bit of searching but I can't exactly make heads or tails from the constraints here.
Some people mention that Windows XP IS okay for A3D as long as you don't upgrade to SP1. Others say it is an unstable driver. So this possibly further constrains the build to Win98SE, which I would honestly like to avoid if possible.
This also opens up the idea of VFIO. Since you can put a V5500 in a PCI-E slot now, could I pass it to a VM? Could I pass the Vortex 2?
I'm really trying to avoid building a separate fastest A3D machine and glide machine. After I run some real hardware and do some KVM testing against a dgVoodoo with a shader, I may abandon the V5500, but I sort of don't think that's going to happen. My experience with emulation in general has not been favorable. Over the years I've sort of found that real hardware always just seems to feel right, and emulation always seems to be off.
But it's been a long time and Intel ain't no slouch, so I'm open to ideas like using Vt-d and running either a WinXP or Win98SE guest with a hypervisor. But honestly, it seems like that's a pipedream.