Thanks for these results. It will be immensely helpful when doing a balanced Voodoo 2 retro PC.

GL1zdA wrote:

Thanks for these results. It will be immensely helpful when doing a balanced Voodoo 2 retro PC.

That was the idea 😀

Wow, nice presentation! 😀

So at SLI 1024x768, seems like it doesn't get much better going beyond Deschutes after all (authentic 1998 combo btw, Deschutes+Voodoo2!). Also funny that Incoming scores noticeably fastest with Deschutes/BX combo (94fps vs ~68fps on Katmai and beyond), or is that a glitch in the matrix?

archsan wrote:

Wow, nice presentation! 😀

So at SLI 1024x768, seems like it doesn't get much better going beyond Deschutes after all (authentic 1998 combo btw, Deschutes+Voodoo2!). Also funny that Incoming scores noticeably fastest with Deschutes/BX combo (94fps vs ~68fps on Katmai and beyond), or is that a glitch in the matrix?

Yea that high SLI score was likely a typing error. Happens with more than 800 entries 😀

I fixed it in the graph (because here every mistake jumps right out) but forgot to update the table. Will fix it tomorrow 😀

Deschutes is a solid CPU to pick. At high resolutions it really doesn't matter that much. An extra 1000 Mhz does hardly anything at high resolutions.

It will be interesting to see how this changes with a AGP V3. Can't wait. I never owned any Voodoo past V2 so this will be entirely new land to explore 🤣

Kahenraz wrote:

TnL isn't noticable unless you start doing things with a lot of polygons and most games were already programmed defensively prior to its introduction. Additionally, you had to actually target DirectX 7 to enable the TnL unit on the card; which is why you it didn't really provide any tangible benefit upon introduction until people actually started using it.

TnL could also be utilized by OpenGL. This should be noticeable in glQuake and Quake2 (those came out before DirectX 7) when running on a slow cpu and a TnL capable card.

I don't know how OpenGL utilizes TnL. I would assume as well that this feature needs to be "enabled" like it has to be with DirectX.

Kahenraz wrote:

I don't know how OpenGL utilizes TnL. I would assume as well that this feature needs to be "enabled" like it has to be with DirectX.

From what I've read, it only has to be supported by hardware and the driver, and the OpenGL application will use it automatically. So a GeForce or later with TnL support will automatically "work" with OpenGL. DirectX appears to be far more limited in requiring the application to specifically invoke TnL features, which many older applications do not.

Phil: I'm looking forwards to reviewing this epic tome once I get back to my main workstation later today. Thanks for doing this and publishing it all. 😀

EDIT: I've made it about half-way through; this is more comprehensive than probably any performance review I've ever read. Seriously, thanks for doing this! I do have one question: what CPU was used for the temperature measurements?

obobskivich wrote:

Kahenraz wrote:

I don't know how OpenGL utilizes TnL. I would assume as well that this feature needs to be "enabled" like it has to be with DirectX.

From what I've read, it only has to be supported by hardware and the driver, and the OpenGL application will use it automatically.

Indeed. See Wikipedia:
"Nvidia's GeForce 256 was released in late 1999 and pioneered consumer hardware support for T&L. It had faster vertex processing not only due to the T&L hardware, but also because of a cache that avoided having to process the same vertex twice in certain situations. While DirectX 7.0 (particularly Direct3D 7) was the first release of that API to support hardware T&L, OpenGL had supported it much longer and was typically the purview of older professionally oriented 3D accelerators which were designed for computer-aided design (CAD) instead of games."

obobskivich wrote:

So a GeForce or later with TnL support will automatically "work" with OpenGL. DirectX appears to be far more limited in requiring the application to specifically invoke TnL features, which many older applications do not.

OpenGL always did transformation and lighting in the driver, which could be implemented purely in software or with hardware acceleration.
DirectX up to version 6 just didn't support this, the application has to use DirectX 7 API calls to enable hardware acceleration for TnL. I don't know the exact reason, though. It could be that the API calls just don't allow for this (possibly because coordinates are already expected transformed/in screen space), or that the DirectX DLLs just won't do this. With OpenGL the driver is more or less one monolithic block supplied by the graphics chip maker. With Direct3D you have the driver which has to provide an internal API (DDI which also exists in several versions) and then the DirectX DLLs which do a big part of the work. So if DirectX 6 can't do something and Microsoft doesn't update DirectX 6 to do this then the video chip maker can't do much about it. See eg. 3dnow support, DirectX 6 enabled this, and this is definitely a software issue.

Did you implement the Quake 3DNow! patch?

feipoa wrote:

Did you implement the Quake 3DNow! patch?

No, he used original minigls installed with the game/patch (1.1 IIRC). And the 3dnow! support was added in 1.47 IIRC.

What is the consequence on the results for not using the 3DNow! patch with the AMD CPUs?

Yea the idea was to be conservative. I'm aware that for many of these games there might be specific driver versions or patches that improve performance. I was really after a broad overview.

At 800 x 600 the K6-III+ is right up there with the top dogs 😀

I wonder if 3DNow! extensions make a difference when using a TnL enabled GPU with OpenGL. Hhmm.

Mau1wurf1977,

Thank you for all of your hard work on this! I've saved a copy and I'm sure I'll be referencing it for a long time to come. I look forward to seeing your V3 project.

Thank you 😀

I can't wait to play with the V3 cards. Never had one. It will be a totally new experience! Reliving the past 😁

Great stuff! I wonder if vogons would add a info section with your particular benchmarks; maybe on a wiki or something...? Maybe give you some money or something hehe. They should (that's a lot of freakin' work).

http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx_Benchmarks !!

mwdmeyer wrote:

http://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/3dfx_Benchmarks !!

Yea I should really contribute to the wiki...