Run the vspeed test that often comes with fastvid to determine if it is needed.

Most SVGA games need a lot of CPU power so those are the go to choices. SVGA simulations or shooters. I've found most of these need a fast PIII to finally run 60fps. 1400MHz is probably excessive in most cases though.

Jane's ATF or Jane's US Navy Fighters with the textures enabled at 1024x768. Quite the demanding games coming from 1994-96 😀

Also NAM and WWII GI are late BUILD-engine games with caching issues due to the strange decision to use high resolution artwork. They're going to be slow.

I would suggest Extreme Assault, but that has a framerate cap and it maxes out on early P3s anyway...

Can't help but feel that the system should be faster...

I ran FASTVID and that improves things somewhat:

3DBENCH2: 404
PCPBENCH: 148.8

quake timedemo demo 1:
320 x 240: 98.3
640 x 480: 60.3
800 x 600: 48.7
1024 x 768: 26

I think Links LS went up to 1600x1200. Can't remember well though.

My Pentium II 400 can play Apache and Hind high res with all options turned to max, smoothly, with or without the 3dfx voodoo2 helping out.

Screamer runs high res well too.

Have you tried XS? And also Witchaven 2 in high res? Also suggest Corridor 7 high res. I can't remember if I tested these in my P I or P II machine, but these were not very smooth iirc.

Ok so I tried another computer. A S370 board that can't take the 1.4, but does take a regular 1.0GHz / 133 FSB Pentium III.

I get:

3DBENCH2: 987.6

PCPBENCH: 59.1

Quake timdemo demo1:

640 x 480: 60
800 x 640: 43.4
1024 x 768: 28.9

I believe the clockspeed has little impact and it comes down to the RAM speed / FSB.

I also noticed that the AudioPCI in the second machine is more "stable". On the 1.4 GHz machine there are issues with Doom and DukeNukem 3D when using General MIDI. The games come to a crawl and in Quake the sound has some chops in there.

And on the 1.0GHz machine I get read errors for some games when EMS is loaded. It's all a bit "weird" 😀

I think I stick with my Socket 7 Time-Machine...

Try Pył 😀

Are any of these "demanding" games available on GOG.com?

Here are some comparison benches from my 1.4 GHz Athlon box:

PCPBench: 184.3
3DBench: 402.0

For demanding apps you could also try late DOS-era demoscene stuff (they went on for a bit longer than games), e.g. Smash Designs demos go up to 1600x1200:
Event Horizon (1999)
Sleepless (2000)

maybe the onboard vga is to blame for the build feeling slow?

keropi wrote:

maybe the onboard vga is to blame for the build feeling slow?

Could be, but I do believe it's the "low" FSB / RAM speed.

Anyway it was a fun experiment and I can't wait for my new case to arrive and go back to my SS7 Time-Machine 😀

Tried the same Quake timedemo on a K6-2+ 550MHz and it only gets 14.2 fps at 640 x 480...

67 fps in 320 x 200.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Tried the same Quake timedemo on a K6-2+ 550MHz and it only gets 14.2 fps at 640 x 480...

67 fps in 320 x 200.

This seems about right. I'm getting 15.8fps on my K6-3+ 550 on the same demo.
At 320x200 though I'm getting 97fps. This is using a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and an AWE32 (sound is enabled).

Odd ran it again and getting 15.1 in SVGA and 75.5 in VGA. Not sure what I did differently.

I'm liking the AMD K6 plus CPU more and more because of the ability to set the multiplier in CONFIG.SYS via k6.sys...

Wow, I had no idea you could do that. This could be very very useful. What's the lowest possible? 1.5x?
I too am liking my K6-III+, it's quite speedy for most things, I'd say at 550MHz it's about as fast as a Pentium II 400-450MHz on some very demanding 3D games, otherwise it can be just as fast as a similarly clocked Pentium II/III.

Also, I just remembered that I'm using a 110MHz FSB, so I'm doing 5x110=550MHz, perhaps that's why I'm getting quite a bit higher fps at 320x200.

Ah and I forgot to mention that I have a Tualatin 1.26-S that I can compare with your 1.4-S. Would you like that?

F2bnp wrote:

Wow, I had no idea you could do that. This could be very very useful. What's the lowest possible? 1.5x?

Available multiplicators for K6+ are 2x, 3x, 3.5x, 4x, 4.5x, 5x, 5.5x and 6x.
There even are tools that can set it from DOS command-line (e.g. K6CLK).

And you can double your Quake 640x480 framerates by enabling your CPU's MTRRs. Fastvid doesn't work on K6, but there are alternatives (e.g. MXK6OPT).

Interesting!

Ok I tried MXK6OPT and it has improved the scores a little bit. But I also changed the RAM, instead of the slow 16MB module, I used a faster 128MB module.

For Quake VGA I now get 84.3 and for SVGA 23.6.

PCPBENCH has greatly improved to 83.6 fps.

PS:

There is a German seller selling 1.6V K6-3+ 400 MHz CPUs. I ordered one and will likely go with this CPU in my Time-Machine.

The K6 is one of the slowest CPUs with cache disabled (slow is good) and on 66MHz FSB with the multi set to 6x you get 400MHz, which should be fine for most games.

For hard-core SVGA DOS games it seems you really can't have enough and going for an Athlon or Pentium 4 system might be the way to go?

Are you sure that 2x is available? AFAIK 2x is interpreted as 6x since the usual SS7 board go only up to 5.5x

Also checking if MTRRs are set on K6 (CXT and newer) should always be done. I usually use ctcm and k6dos.

Hardware (jumpers): 2x multiplier interpreted as 6x. 2.5x multiplier interpreted as 2x.

Software (k6dos.sys): -2.5 and -5.5 are the same. -2.0 will give 2x multiplier.