idspispopd wrote:

LunarG wrote:

It's strange to think that some people appear to believe that a K6-III is on a performance level with a Pentium classic. I mean, in ALU heavy tasks, a K6 MMX could actually outperform a Pentium MMX clock for clock, although the Pentium MMX had a much better FPU.

I don't think that they are on the same performance level at the same clock for FPU heavy tasks. But a Pentium 133 or even the fastest official model Pentium MMX 233 can be matched by a K6/-2/-3 running at a sufficiently high clock rate.

I think perhaps you misunderstood my point. I wasn't saying that the K6-III is slower than a Pentium classic, rather the opposite. A K6-2 at 300MHz is already noticeably faster than a Pentium MMX 233 at the majority of tasks. There are some games, pre-3D accelerators that would've possibly ran faster on the Pentium MMX, but in general, the K6-2 on a decent motherboard with a good amount of cache and fast PC100 SDRAM would be on par with a Pentium II at equal clock speeds for most desktop tasks. A K6-III with it's on-die L2 cache, was generally an excellent performer for the price. The saving for getting a K6-2 or K6-III and a decent motherboard, compared to a PII or PIII and a decent motherboard, was usually almost enough to get you a Voodoo 2, at least it was here in Norway. Pretty much a no-brainer if you were aiming for price/performance.
I'm actually impressed with how well my current K6-III 400 manages to play games like Icewind Dale, which supposedly has PIII as recommended CPU. 😀

AlphaWing wrote:

Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, lists itself as playable on a Pentium 90 when it first came out.

This game gets like 6-15FPS (unless you look at a wall, or sky which doesn't count 🤣) at 320x240 on the first stage, in software render mode, it doesn't do any better on a P90 with a 3d card to help it either!
Engine is completely CPU bound at this point, the MIN req should of been a Pentium 200++

This is simply not true. I'm not a star wars fan or anything, I actually use this game for 3d benchmarking on my 486 systems mainly I'm fiddling with, and on my primary unit, which is an X5 oc'd @ 160MHz, 32MB RAM, win95, running on voodoo 2 - to bare eyes, the speed is 40-60fps - no enemies or NPCs; below 40 with up to 3 enemies; 10 +/- with more enemies. Guess I should make a video 🤣

vetz wrote:

I bought this game in 1999. Big mistake. I had a PC that matched the minimum requirements, but it was unplayable. I believe ther […]
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F2bnp wrote:

Outcast released mid 1999 […]
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Outcast released mid 1999

Minimum : MMX 200, 32MB RAM
Recommended: PII 300, 64MB RAM

These seem generally ok, however this is a strictly software rendered game thanks to its voxel technology. So anybody who thought they could skimp on a better CPU and just buy a powerful GPU got the short end of the stick. Maximum supported resolution was 512x384 and you'd need far more powerful CPUs that were available at the time of release. Tried it on a Coppermine 1GHz once and it still had frame drops, so I'd say Tualatin 1.4GHz and 128MB RAM to truly max this, otherwise, gem of a game.

I bought this game in 1999. Big mistake. I had a PC that matched the minimum requirements, but it was unplayable. I believe there are homemade mods that increases the resolution up to 1280x768. I guess that takes some CPU power to run 😀

EDIT: Found this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgIrvt9zJ8k
Q9550 CPU and still not fluid framerate in some areas.. 🤣

Bump with updates on the Outcast front.

Just tried the demo on a Tualatin 1.4-S at 1575MHz (150MHz bus). It still can't do 60fps with everything on 🤣 .
I found out that there's one option that utterly kills the framerate, it's a DoF setting. You can set it up like this:

Low: Turns DoF off
Medium: Turns DoF on in dialogues
High: Turns DoF on all the time

High absolutely kills performance, however using the Medium setting and setting the aspect ratio at 16:9 (using the Cinemascope setting), the game is running at 60fps. Using a 4:3 aspect radio, the performance isn't as satisfying, but it's definitely very close to perfect. It certainly never goes below 30 during gameplay. I'd say it usually hovers at around 50-65.

Mind you, this is still at 512x384 and there was an unofficial (and buggy) patch to increase the resolution to 640x480. I'm willing to bet that won't be nearly as smooth. Pretty crazy for 1999 hardware overall, but they were aiming for far lower framerates too. 24-30fps were considered close to perfect for this type of game.

Test Drive 3 (1990): despite XT in min, worked well on 386 and higher
Pył (1999): min P 133, but seems it's with Voodoo, while most should play in software where min playable was P2 400 or so
Real Myst (2000): P2 450 minimum

Star Trek Starfleet Academy released 1997

Pentium® 150Mhz processor
32 MB RAM
US version of Microsoft Windows® 95/98 operating system
100% Windows® 95 compatible computer system
185 MB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files; plus an additional 100 MB for Windows® swap file
DirectX® 3.0a
100% Windows® 95 compatible sound card.
1MB VESA compliant SVGA card

This thing slows down pretty bad on even a Pentium 3 in intense fights

IIRC SFA required a Pentium 90MHz and it was somewhat playable on high-end 486s (the PCI tripledigit mhz ones decked out with cache). Not exactly out-of-this-world for '97 when you consider the previous year's Necrodome, which looked like a 1994 3d game closer to Cyclones/Terminal Velocity with vehicle models tacked on in a very integer precision 2.5d spritey world, and demanded *much more* for just 320x200 VGA graphics, which is relatively unplayable to SFA on the same kind of 486 mentioned earlier.

I don't know what kind of programming went on at Raven that led to a slow Necrodome, it's their first DirectX game and they probably were writing it all to video memory and using lookup tables against that. Then again Necrodome was rushed, and SFA had a lot of sweet time for some hardcore assembly work with that loooong dev cycle. There could've been a chance we'd have what was the SNES/32X game for DOS in 94 instead 😀

Anyway SFA wasn't crazy requiring in the time when Cyrix 6x86Mx's were sold a-plenty to retire many budget PC enthusiasts' 486s. 😀

leileilol wrote:

IIRC SFA required a Pentium 90MHz and it was somewhat playable on high-end 486s (the PCI tripledigit mhz ones decked out with cache). Not exactly out-of-this-world for '97 when you consider the previous year's Necrodome, which looked like a 1994 3d game closer to Cyclones/Terminal Velocity with vehicle models tacked on in a very integer precision 2.5d spritey world, and demanded *much more* for just 320x200 VGA graphics, which is relatively unplayable to SFA on the same kind of 486 mentioned earlier.

I don't know what kind of programming went on at Raven that led to a slow Necrodome, it's their first DirectX game and they probably were writing it all to video memory and using lookup tables against that. Then again Necrodome was rushed, and SFA had a lot of sweet time for some hardcore assembly work with that loooong dev cycle. There could've been a chance we'd have what was the SNES/32X game for DOS in 94 instead 😀

Anyway SFA wasn't crazy requiring in the time when Cyrix 6x86Mx's were sold a-plenty to retire many budget PC enthusiasts' 486s. 😀

Nah I've still got my Box for it, it says Pentium 150 on my Boxed copy from the Star Trek Gamefest.

candle_86 wrote:

Nah I've still got my Box for it, it says Pentium 150 on my Boxed copy from the Star Trek Gamefest.

It recommends a 150MHz, not requires one. Here's a relevant section of the readme

1Starfleet Academy requires the following minimum system
2configuration:
3  - IBM PC or 100% compatible Pentium(TM) 90 or
4    faster
5  - Windows(R) 95
6  - 16mb RAM
7  - 4x or Faster CD-ROM drive
8  - Sound Blaster(TM) or 100% compatible
9    sound card
10  - 180mb free hard drive space
11  - 100% Microsoft Compatible Mouse
12  - DirectX(TM) 5.0+

Star Wars racer.

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 95, 98
Processor (CPU) Pentium 233 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 400 MB
Video card (GPU) Direct3D compatible graphics card
2 MB of VRAM

2mb vram? well, about the processor, it may be well with all disabled/off but it will run some maps well, but many will play lower than 30fps most ot thetimes, and some of them gets 5fps (the air maps)

Racer requires a P166 minimum and 170mb disk space.. At the time even it's hardly 'crazy'. A cyrix could even handle it very playably
(remember: 1999 is very much a time for UnrealEngine games and all of them are true system hogs, and nothing will outcrazy Outcast and Ultima IX anyway.)

Has anyone mentioned Homeworld? It's a 3D RTS (the best ship combat 3D RTS if you ask me) released in late 1999.

Listed system requirements:
- Pentium II 233 and 32Mb of ram and 4MB video card as minimum
- 350+ and 64Mb / 12MB+ video being recommended

Well guess what, for poops I tried to run it on my 350MHz compaq deskpro with 128mb of ram and it runs like A$$ on minimum graphical settings. As soon as 10 or more ships come on screen and start shooting at stuff, the whole game turns into a slideshow.

I remember finishing the game on my then brand-new K6-2 450Mhz / 256MB of ram and Voodoo 2 SLi - it was playable at 640x480 but still slowed down severely in massive battles.

Frankly, even a 1GHz pentium 3 with 512MB of ram and a GF3 Ti 500 has trouble with it. The minimum configuration I found the game to be comfortably playable at 1024x760 - maximum detail on is Athlon XP 2500+ / 512MB DDR / GF4 Ti 4600.

kanecvr wrote:

Has anyone mentioned Homeworld? It's a 3D RTS (the best ship combat 3D RTS if you ask me) released in late 1999. […]
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Has anyone mentioned Homeworld? It's a 3D RTS (the best ship combat 3D RTS if you ask me) released in late 1999.

Listed system requirements:
- Pentium II 233 and 32Mb of ram and 4MB video card as minimum
- 350+ and 64Mb / 12MB+ video being recommended

Well guess what, for poops I tried to run it on my 350MHz compaq deskpro with 128mb of ram and it runs like A$$ on minimum graphical settings. As soon as 10 or more ships come on screen and start shooting at stuff, the whole game turns into a slideshow.

I remember finishing the game on my then brand-new K6-2 450Mhz / 256MB of ram and Voodoo 2 SLi - it was playable at 640x480 but still slowed down severely in massive battles.

Frankly, even a 1GHz pentium 3 with 512MB of ram and a GF3 Ti 500 has trouble with it. The minimum configuration I found the game to be comfortably playable at 1024x760 - maximum detail on is Athlon XP 2500+ / 512MB DDR / GF4 Ti 4600.

man RTS in general can bog a system down, I caused my modern System to cry like a girl with Red Alert 2 when I tried to fly 400 harriers on an attack