What about MDK and fraps?? MDK even had a benchmark tool. I don't think Expendable supported glide so that would be out.

MDK might even be a little bit late for those early video cards. It requires Windows 95 and a 90mhz Pentium. If you have both of those two, you're probably going to have a better video card than a Virge. The specs say a D3D or Glide compatible video card were optional, but realistically I can't see the game running well on anything less.

MDK never required Windows 95. And it is actually fully playable on a Pentium 90 on software mode.
Also I'm getting the impression that he runs the cards on a much faster machine.
I'd say go for MDK D3D or perhaps Final Reality.

Turok might work. Use -benchmark.

i used win98 and dx9c to run 3dmark99/2000/01, need for speed 3, glquake1/2/3 and glexcess on following 3d cards:
g200
trident9880
riva128
i740
rage pro(3dmark01 crashes)
permedia2(3dmark01 won't run)
sis6326(quake3 crashes)
rendition1000(3dmark01 won't run)

to my standard, one must support both d3d(5) and opengl(1.0), with its own drivers(not 3rd party modified), to be a "real" 3d card. therefore these are disqualified from 3d cards:
nv1
s3virge series/trio3d
matrox g100
ati rage/rage2/rage2+
trident 9750/9850
s3 savage3 should have been a real 3d card, but i have never found reliable drivers to complete these tests, crashing is frequent, just like savage4 in win2000.

Requiring OpenGL disqualifies a lot of cards. Almost all gaming cards from the 90s that aren't NV or 3dfx can't manage that to any reasonable degree. That includes even Rendition V2200 which can just barely play Half Life.

sliderider wrote:

MDK might even be a little bit late for those early video cards. It requires Windows 95 and a 90mhz Pentium. If you have both of those two, you're probably going to have a better video card than a Virge. The specs say a D3D or Glide compatible video card were optional, but realistically I can't see the game running well on anything less.

Will check MDK since i have CD here on the desk, hope that i find some benchmark tool. And about PC speed dont worry, it will be all tested on Pentium 3 1GHz and Intel 815 with win98se.

Im looking for games with some kind of benchmark or show fps command since wanna show difference between 1st gen of cards and later ones. Ill start on virge/mystique/rage II and end at Geforce 256. DirectX is required since almost all these cards support only DX and their strange useles engines like S3D. Will be happy for software rendering mode too, since wanna see difference in fps between SW and HW rendering on those very slow cards like a virge.
And glide rendering i like to have cause it was very popular at these times and older voodoos should work faster than in D3D.

About fraps - tried 1.9D - when i run it, it writes that need newer version of DX - have now 7.0A - dont wanna install 8.1 or 9c since it can do problems with old drivers. Think i must check for older version of fraps. Btw can fraps show fps in glide mode?

Final reality dont wanna use since it show some score, not fps, wanna real game fps, not some number from benchamark which mostly remembers only people from forums like this one 😉

MDK is one of the most compatible, but very specific engine and no in-game animations makes benchmarking less attractive.
Motoracer goes so easy on 3d cards, have all the switches you need for 1st gen.
Features of Turok rarely work on 1st gen, preventing equal conditions.

Yeah this is a tuffy. I too had the same idea as vlask but was concentrating on the cards of 1997, which I was benchmarking 12 different chipsets.

Biggest problem is drivers, what good is a benchmark number if you have crazy artifacts and glitches that would pretty much make the game unplayable. So now you are going to have to make screen shots too. 😜

MDK is a great benchmark, runs in DOS, Win 2D and Win D3D. It even runs on my Win7 system with a score of 1250, which is only 4-5 times faster then a Pentium with Voodoo1. 😕 Also have to run with V-sync disabled to get a score greater then 250. May run into driver issues here with earlier cards.

Turok is another good one, with it's built in benchmarking tool. To be fair you will have to turn all settings on, which is going to make many earlier cards sad and ugly.

Another one that was said earlier too is MotoRacer, but it's benchmark is in real time while you drive around. You pretty much have to start a race and not do anything as the cycles drive off and record your framerate to get anything consistent. It does work well with anything you throw at it, from #9 Revolution 3D to a Matrox Mystique 220.

There is a stand alone Forsaken benchmark out there, with D3D, Glide and PowerVR built in. It plays a prerecorded rolling demo with a plethora of settings. Here comes the hard part, do you run all cards in D3D to be fair, or run the Voodoos in Glide and let it look better and run faster? Guess you have to run it both ways!

I like Final Reality, but you may run into driver issues.

There's Ziff Davis 3D Winbench 97 and 98. I don't really care for those, I like real world game benchmarks better. It was somewhact popular at the time though.

Another you might try is the X3TC rolling demo, I think it's D3D exclusive. From 97' I think, in space.

Good luck!

The X3TC rolling demo will be too much for these cards.
X3: Terran Conflict - Rolling Demo HD

I think he meant the first game not third. The X rolling demo is even on the Matrox M3D cd!

OK maybe I got the X Rolling Demo confused with the X3 Rolling Demo 🤣 My bad.

Just checked MDK - useless - no fps show, confirmed that Fraps doesnt work with glide and build in benchmark have cap at 300Fps
software rendering - 300fps
voodoo 3 2000 agp - 300fps
voodoo 1 d3d - 241fps
voodoo 1 glide - freezes

goin to check forsaken. And ofc cards will be tested at D3D and their engines too (glide, powervr....), will use higher score.

vlask wrote:

Just checked MDK - useless - no fps show, confirmed that Fraps doesnt work with glide and build in benchmark have cap at 300Fps […]
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Just checked MDK - useless - no fps show, confirmed that Fraps doesnt work with glide and build in benchmark have cap at 300Fps
software rendering - 300fps
voodoo 3 2000 agp - 300fps
voodoo 1 d3d - 241fps
voodoo 1 glide - freezes

goin to check forsaken. And ofc cards will be tested at D3D and their engines too (glide, powervr....), will use higher score.

🤣 at 300fps. Talk about overkill. Your game would have to be 10 years behind your hardware to put up a number like that.

Why would you benchmark glide anyway, you need open APIs to compare performance. Worst is that even in d3d voodoo hates fraps. Use help for motoracer, it has demos.
The MDK index says little about in game performance.
I am onto same project kinda, have a suite of 40+ games and benchmarking my slowly growing collection of first generation cards. Their performance is known only by word of mouth and shady memories, so I think we history freaks should know better.

Forsaken seems to be right one, integrated benchmark by running demo, after patch more profiles for other cards (still dunno if i set voodoo, will it use glide or just optimize details in D3D?) and even Matrox Mystique is working (after disabling pci bus mastering - with enabled it crash in everything). Still have to check virge.