Hi mamba
I have done some experiments weeks ago.
Win98SE without unofficial pack is the fastest is for my AMD K6-3+ 400@600Mhz
Another point is to find the right graphics card
I think that FX series like FX5700-5900 are inadequate ( for socket 7) bad driver support and in the same time FX mainstream and high end level are to strong
GeForce 3 or GeForce 2 with old driver detonator version under 3x.xx are better
If I were you, I would bought a Northwood or thorougbred-Barton system to run morrowind of course with your Leadtek FX5900! 😀

falloutboy wrote:

It was DonPedro AFAIK

Good lord, that's quite a score! When I tried to build an ultimate K6 system years ago (and failed miserably--thanks to the K6-2 500 I was using), I was happy to hit just half of that score with a GeForce3 TI500. Actually, I don't remember if I even cracked 2k...🤣

I obtained 3400 points with the fx5900xt.

I' try win98se without fancy service packs as soon as possible.

Plus, soon will be here a weird Radeon 9800XT with 128bit... Strange card, it's keyed for 3.3v.

I got 4 other retro (or strange) rigs to play with, but for now I want to pimp this one.

Morrowind is heavily CPU bound, it doesn't care nearly as much about the graphics card.
Back in those days I think I would have been happy to deal with 10-20fps. Nowadays we've gotten used to faster framerates though.

This might not be what you had in mind, but there's a mod for Morrowind called the "Ultimate Morrowind Anti-Mod" which is designed to speed up slower outdoors areas. It removes a bunch of minor objects that the player normally won't notice. I never tried it myself, but my saved copy of the PES page shows a 9.75 rating. Not that that means much - people on that site were always giving 10 ratings for everything.

I tested a LOT of cards on a k6-2 system and in d3d i got the absolute best performance with these cards: voodoo4, voodoo 5 and matrox g400. They were about 5-10% quicker Than ANY nvidia card from TNT2 to gf4 Ti.
This was with 98se, Asus p5a, dx9 and ali agp 1.72.

NOW it is REALLY ready for battle 😈

Over 4200 3dmark2001SE points

K6-III+ 633MHz (115x5.5)
GA5-AX Rev 5.2 bios F4
512Mbyte RAM PC133 Single stick
Leadtek 5900XT @ 450Mhz/850MHz core/mem GAT2
Promise controller TX2 SATA150
WD Raptor HLFS 74Gbyte
Audigy SB0090

Optimizations via CTU on K6 and Wpcredit on memory

Not bad for a socket 7 😀

nicely done!

honestly my K6-3 struggles with Starfleet Command Orion Pirates which is alot simpler than morrowwind

Mamba wrote:

Uhm... Installed Win2000 with SP4. I got abysmall performance with 3DMark2001 (2400 points.... 1000 points less than XP). That's […]
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Uhm...
Installed Win2000 with SP4.
I got abysmall performance with 3DMark2001 (2400 points.... 1000 points less than XP).
That's weird... Isn't win2000 supposed to be more fast?

I think I'll revert to XP SP3.

Someone at K6plus managed to hit 4000 points with the same 5900xt on a P5A and a K6-III@600Mhz.
Really don't know how...

If you can, you might try XP SP1 instead of SP3.

Even at 690 Mhz OC you will not gain much more FPS...
Upgrade to Slot A 😉

Morrowind was notorious for bad performance. I know the visuals were impressive back then, but even on a top rig of the time playing at 1024x786 with high/max draw distance was a lag fest in most even on a Geforce 4Ti with a fast Pentium 4. It simply wasn't very well optimised. Leaks everywhere. Not only that, but the game runs so many calculations for almost every action, making it a very CPU intensive game. A K6-III running Morrowind is insane, and nice work for even gettin 10-25fps from that rig!

Also, the only way to get the nice pixel shaded water in Morrowind was to run it with a card that supported Pixel Shader 1.1 (I believe), such as the Radeon 8500 or higher, or the Geforce 3 or higher. Possibly the Geforce 2 Ultra as well. The MX-440's didn't support Pixel Shader 1.1, so you end up with the standard transparent textured water effect but no pixel shaders.

Installing MGE (Morrowind Graphics Extender) allows for some 3rd party optimisations and actually runs the game faster than the original config does at like for like settings. It also allows for modern machines to run at far higher view distances and with more lighting effects.

If I was going to build a rig specifically to get the most out of (unmodded) Morrowind, while keeping it Retro Style (because honestly, Morrowind tends to eat everything you throw at it) I would suggest something like a fast P4 Extreme Edition or simply a 3.4Ghz Prescott, a gig of DDR-400 and a 5950Ultra / 9800Pro. Thats if you want smooth gameplay at 1024x786 or even 1280x1024. I mean just have some fun and build the dream machine you really wanted to own back on the date Morrowind was released! (Only this time will not cost you a silly amount of money) 🤣

I played the shit out of it the week it came out on my crappy Duron 700 with a Geforce4 440MX and it ran like ass. Not much better than your K6-III rig does, if any. Still dumped 400 hours or more into it though. The great thing was I never even finished it that time round. I played it again a few years back on a C2D with a 1950XTX using the Graphics Extender and finally finished it. One of the best games ever made for sure! 😎