Good looking system! I suspect once you test the turbo switch you'll find it allows Ultima 7 to play at a good speed. WC1 should do fine with setmul disabling L1 (or do it manually in BIOS).

Regarding DN3D -- I have not tried it on my DX2-66, but based on my experience with Doom, I would expect DN3D to be sluggish. Doom benchmark for me is about 24-25 fps, with slow spots getting down to about 15 fps. And my gut tells me DN3D in 320x200 is more demanding than Doom. You can turn on the framerate indicator in Duke by typing 'DNRATE' in-game. Run around and see what it's showing. Oh, and if I remember correctly, you can gain some speed by turning some audio settings down in Duke's setup.exe Reduce audio channels, sound quality, etc. It should make a bigger difference on a slower system like a 486.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Univbe will help performance in 320x200. It's mainly for SVGA. Still, you can try older versions (Sci Tech Display Doctor 5.3a and 6.53) to see if they support your VGA card. I have a Genoa-branded Cirrus Logic VLB, and I do get support on with SDD5.3a. Wouldn't hurt to try.

Yeah, as it is, Duke Nukem 3D gives me single digit FPS in open areas of the first level and 12-19FPS in buildings. I can certainly see myself thoroughly enjoying the game this way 20 years ago, but I definitely have no reason to do that now 😀

A DX2 66 should handle VGA Duke3D OK - but not SVGA obviously. Sounds like something's not right - have you fiddled with the BIOS for that motherboard? Caches all enabled? What's with that EPROM? The sticker appears to be missing, I can see the little window.

Do you have another VLB VGA card you can try? I'd use Phil's benchmark spreadsheet and tools to determine if your machine is performing on par with similar systems.

it's sad you couldn't get the faster CPU's working, but VLB was tricky to get working best of times, and THINK I remember DX4 and later moreso.
For me DX2 66 is the ultimate CPU to pair with VLB, Its also the "true" 486 being the minimum requirements system for years.
DX4 and later suit PCI 486's, or "Ultimate" 486.

Re Duke3d. I played though the 1st episode on my DX2/66 with ATI Mach 64 VLB and for the most part was ok, not smooth but ok.
Playing on the EXACT same PC recently, HDD and all, it feels unplayable, Maybe the Atomic edition doesn't run as earlier versions but I think the more likely reason is my standards have become higher!

badmojo wrote:

Do you have another VLB VGA card you can try? I'd use Phil's benchmark spreadsheet and tools to determine if your machine is performing on par with similar systems.

Only a non-upgradable 512KB CL-GD5428. I'll try it just to rule out the faulty card possibility

Time for some benchmarks:

Normal mode:
3DBench: 44.4
Chris's 3D Bench (SVGA): 14.5/8,7FPS
System Information 8: 143.3
Speedsys: 24.99
Doom timedemo: 24,7FPS

Turbo:
3DBench: 18.7
Chris's 3D Bench (SVGA): 5.3/3.1FPS
System Information 8: 51.9
Speedsys: 15.06
Doom timedemo: 9,36FPS

Duke Nukem 3D is the game that finally convinced me I needed a better video card back then. We had upgraded from the DX2/66 to a Cyrix 6x86 133MHz system, but the video card was still an ISA Cirrus Logic CL-GD5426 1MB. DN3D was so choppy that I knew something had to be wrong, and that it had to be the graphics card. After upgrading to an S3 Virge PCI, it was dramatically improved. This was in standard 320x200 mode, I think SVGA was not fast enough to be enjoyable.
However, since your Cirrus card is VLB, I'm not sure if it would be suffering from the same issue.

With the exception of Chris' 3D VGA, very similar to my DX2/66 results.

Normal (yours/mine):
3dbench: 44.4/43.4
Chris 320: 14.5/26.7
Chris 640: 8.7/8.2
Sysinfo 8: 143.3/131.9
Speedsys: 24.99/25.14
Doom: 24.7/24.3

Turbo (yours/mine):
3dbench: 18.7/17.5
Chris 320: 5.3/10.7
Chris 640: 3.1/3.0
Sysinfo 8: 51.9/43.7
Speedsys: 15.06/14.95
Doom: 9.36/9.02

That is strange how low your Chris 320 scores are. Everything else pretty much lines up. I'm going to copy Duke3D on here and test it and get back.

clueless1 wrote:

With the exception of Chris' 3D VGA, very similar to my DX2/66 results.

I posted only SVGA results for Chris'. It's just that it produces a score and an FPS count, hence two numbers.

I tried running Duke Nukem 3D with all sound devices disabled. Now I get around 15FPS in open areas and up to 25FPS in rooms.

The weird thing is, low FPS in this game really feels different than it would in a modern game, for some reason. I mean, 15FPS should be unplayable, but here it's just choppy at times.

Starting a new game, I'm at 11 fps just standing there in the initial position. The open areas are between 9-11 fps. The enclosed areas seem to be between 10-17 fps. This is with SB Pro2 and GM music enabled.

edit: with sound and music disabled, I get 14 fps standing at the starting point. Open areas around 13-19 fps and enclosed areas around 13-24 fps.

Wow I'm surprised how slow it is in the cold light of day - I played countless hours of Duke3D on my trusty DX2 66 and loved it. It's all relative I guess.

Thinking about it though I wouldn't even play DOOM on a 66MHz 486 these days, I use a P166MMX, and Duke3D is 3 years younger than DOOM.

We didn't know any better. 😀`

That chip to the right of the power connector with the "window". I'm not terribly knowledgeable with those types of chips but, I'd cover that window with a small piece of black tape.

Nice system!
Your speeds seem "within the margins". It can be quite sobering to see some games running on original hardware only to burst an "ancient bubble".

Duke 3D was released in 1996 (same year as Quake), and 486 DX2 was released in 1992 - the year when Wolfenstein 3D just came out.