VOGONS


First post, by Baoran

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

If I were to put voodoo 1 card in a 486 pc, how many of the dos games that support voodoo1 would be playable and would there be many that you would not be able to play?
I have a socket 5 pentium motherboard, so I could build pentium instead, but the motherboard is very limited when it comes to slowing down the pc for speed sensitive games, because it basically has 2 modes full speed or all caches disables. There is turbo but even that just disables all caches.

Reply 1 of 14, by leileilol

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Plenty. Inb4 "u need pentium! a 486 isult to VooDoo! use a rendition u looser" posts

A Voodoo2 also has an advantage in a 486 over V1 but that's mainly happening in Windows Glide games that can do multi-texture

Of all the supported DOS games, you'll still have to forget about Blood and Shadow Warrior though as they're still software renderers and are buggy as heck anyway, and probably Pyl/Dust as that came out pretty late. and maybe redguard.

"but it's not 60fps" some might say. 60fps wasn't even commonplace in 95-97!!! It was amazing to have even 20fps in 640x480 at the time, and for 486 performance, that's rather huge.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 3 of 14, by amadeus777999

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Overall a 486 is pretty slow, even on a good board, when compared to its successors.

I'll see if I can test a 100mhz Pentium(fsb 50mhz) against the already established scores tomorrow.

I had a i486(2x50 mhz - all settings max) running against a PII at 2x50mhz on an P2L97 and it only faired well in Doom...

iDX2-100 -- performance relative to a 100mhz PII
Doom(demo3) 95%
UDoom(demo4) 83%
Blood 70%
3DBench 51%
Quake 34%

Albeit above said is not directly related to your performance demands, a 3D accelerator still needs to be fed.

Reply 4 of 14, by Baoran

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
amadeus777999 wrote:
Overall a 486 is pretty slow, even on a good board, when compared to its successors. […]
Show full quote

Overall a 486 is pretty slow, even on a good board, when compared to its successors.

I'll see if I can test a 100mhz Pentium(fsb 50mhz) against the already established scores tomorrow.

I had a i486(2x50 mhz - all settings max) running against a PII at 2x50mhz on an P2L97 and it only faired well in Doom...

iDX2-100 -- performance relative to a 100mhz PII
Doom(demo3) 95%
UDoom(demo4) 83%
Blood 70%
3DBench 51%
Quake 34%

Albeit above said is not directly related to your performance demands, a 3D accelerator still needs to be fed.

100Mhz pentium 2?
I was more like wondering if a 100Mhz 486 might match 60Mhz pentium when pentium 60Mhz seems to be the minimum system requirements for most of those games that he mentioned that would not be playable on a 486.

Reply 5 of 14, by The Serpent Rider

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

pentium 60Mhz seems to be the minimum system requirements

More like Pentium 75, at least Quake mentioned this processor as the requirement and AMD used it as a measurement point for their late 486s. Personally I don't see any point running Voodoo I on anything slower than Pentium 100-133 outside of some benchies.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2019-01-20, 02:23. Edited 3 times in total.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 6 of 14, by pyrogx

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I have one of these P60 socket4 systems and paired it with a Voodoo1. It performs decently enough in pure DOS; Tomb Raider, Descent 2, Screamer 2 and Battle Arena Toshinden are well playable. Under Windows, however, this system just crawls, which might be due to the fact that the mainboard uses the slowest Pentium chipset on the whole planet (OPTi Premium)...
With a fast 486 on a decent mainboard, a Voodoo1 should also work well, at least in plain DOS.

Reply 7 of 14, by Unknown_K

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Most 3d games played on a Voodoo 1 needed a good FPU (Quake for example) since quite a bit of setup for the card was done in software. Any Pentium has a much better FPU then any 486 chip.

Early Windows didn't touch the FPU and only needed a simple 2d video card for scrolling so as long as you had a decent amount of RAM so you didn't need the swap drive raw CPU speed was all that mattered.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 8 of 14, by The Serpent Rider

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Windows relies quite heavily on chipset performance and much more snappy on 430HX even with P75.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 9 of 14, by amadeus777999

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Baoran wrote:
amadeus777999 wrote:
Overall a 486 is pretty slow, even on a good board, when compared to its successors. […]
Show full quote

Overall a 486 is pretty slow, even on a good board, when compared to its successors.

I'll see if I can test a 100mhz Pentium(fsb 50mhz) against the already established scores tomorrow.

I had a i486(2x50 mhz - all settings max) running against a PII at 2x50mhz on an P2L97 and it only faired well in Doom...

iDX2-100 -- performance relative to a 100mhz PII
Doom(demo3) 95%
UDoom(demo4) 83%
Blood 70%
3DBench 51%
Quake 34%

Albeit above said is not directly related to your performance demands, a 3D accelerator still needs to be fed.

100Mhz pentium 2?
I was more like wondering if a 100Mhz 486 might match 60Mhz pentium when pentium 60Mhz seems to be the minimum system requirements for most of those games that he mentioned that would not be playable on a 486.

It "matches" it unless the software is floating point oriented.

The Pentium66 that I measured against the DX2-100 was slightly slower in Doom - speed was around 95%(no matter if it was a "light" or "heavy" demo) whereas in Blood it reached 107% - both had a Matrox Mystique installed.

I have no 33mhz based 486 systems, but my guess is that a normal DX4@33mhz fsb is quite bit slower than the "pumped" DX2-100, which should further accentuate the Pentium's efficiency.

I also had a Pentium60 paired with a Voodoo2 but it was nothing more than a "dang, it works" project. GLQuake felt very laggy which was to be expected.

Update:
I tested a Tekram i430TX based board(+EDO ram and same MatroxMystique) @50fsb(+P55C@125mhz) and scaled the scores down to 100mhz. Compared to this setup the iDX2 100 is able to perform at...
85% in Ultimate Doom(demo4)
87% in DoomShareware(demo3)
58% in Blood

This board is a bit slower especially when compared to a SiS5591 based one, so the difference may be more pronounced there.

Last edited by amadeus777999 on 2018-11-21, 13:06. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 10 of 14, by Baoran

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

I did bit of testing. I did put voodoo 1 card to 33Mhz 486 and installed tomb raider. Without 3dfx patch it is totally unplayable even with lowest details, but after I install 3dfx patch, it becomes playable really. Not the best, but playable even when I am using 486 33Mhz way below system requirements. I could be even at 60Mhz pentium level that would not have voodoo card which would be minimum requirements for the game.

Reply 11 of 14, by elfoam

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

My friend had a 486dx 100mhz and was one of the very first people to have a voodoo 1, it was plenty fast enough for those early 3dfx games. No problem. Hardly any slower than the pentiums if at all.

Reply 12 of 14, by meljor

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
elfoam wrote:

My friend had a 486dx 100mhz and was one of the very first people to have a voodoo 1, it was plenty fast enough for those early 3dfx games. No problem. Hardly any slower than the pentiums if at all.

Sure.....

I have tested a voodoo1 and voodoo2 on a 486 with amd 133mhz cpu clocked at 160mhz and also with a cyrix 100mhz clocked at 120mhz. I have only tried screamer rally and screamer 2 and without 3dfx the games are not playable (DOS), maybe a bit at 320x240 on a virge 4mb and matrox g200 (tested both).

With 3dfx both games become NEARLY playable and actually give some pretty smooth pleasure at some circuits but not all. HOWEVER, it doesn't even come close to the experience you'll have with these games on a p1 233mmx, so ''hardly any slower'' is imho not the case. But maybe with some older games it is just fine?

But mine was clocked very high, on a 486 33mhz i would not be happy, at all.

BTW, i also tested voodoo3 pci and voodoo2 was the fastest, just a tiny tad above the voodoo1.

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1