386SX wrote:

Hi, just built this pc Pentium 100 and 98mb 72pin on Win98 and I have no words it is running Half life with 3dfx miniGl and the Voodoo1 with the S3 Virge 2Mb quiet well almost 15-25fps 640p all effects.. I would like to try a 486 100mhz but i dont have the mobo.

Ummmm...... How did you get 98MB of RAM 😕 Might be 96MB?

Yeah i didnt do the math 😁 it should be 16 16 32 32. 😀

I'll assure you that HalfLife Wont be amazing on a 486DX4 100mhz with a voodoo2 no really not even a AM5x86 at 160mhz will cut it well but maybe a pentium overdrive may have a chance. !

HalfLife really needs the ram because it has bad optimization dealing with sound and textures, the 24mb ram requirement seems like a lie

that seems reasonable, i don't have benchmark demos for halflife but i got 23fps with pmmx-133 in quake2.
i am afraid that you would get around one thirds the score of pentium with a 486 of same clock, if you can squeeze in enough memory and get the 3d card running first.

I doubt even with a V1 that the 486 would do very well in a Quake 1 based engine. Q1 & HL do so much better with a strong FPU and Pentium architecture. Running Q1 software render on a 586 @ 160mhz (Evergreen 486 converter) was painful compared to a true Pentium 90. For HL, I'd suppose a low end Pentium would be the absolute bare minimum you could get a playable framerate. Best of luck though 😀.

Actually with a V2 there's multitexture optimization with the world and the 486 doesn't have to crunch the lightmap blending or span drivers (Quake's two big 486 offenders) leaving more breathing room, GLQuake is far faster than software Quake on one. (as long as you have r_dynamic 0 or gl_flashblend 1 🤣, texture uploads are slow through the early PCI bus)

Half-Life is a heavy floating offender though, thanks to the skeletons and sound DSP

I played Half-Life on my Pentium 166MMX with Voodoo2 back in the days. Can't say it was a pleasent experience with 15-25 FPS. I don't believe you can get the same FPS on a 486, sorry. Did you just test in areas with no action/little graphics?

I didn't tested exactly with console commands but from a approximate point of view I would say more then 15 fps.. Not with the 486 of course but with the original Pentium 100 with a I430VX and the Voodoo1 latest drivers. I've to say obviously miniGL driver is probably the best help here but anyway Pentium 100 was a great cpu. I also web surfed with Opera 9 and if you've patience not that bad. 🤣

I played Half-Life on a Pentium 233MMX and a RealVision Flash 3D Voodoo 1. An while it looked good, max FPS was probably around 20-22 (and I'm being generous with that estimate 😐 ). It wasn't until I got a P3 700, Voodoo 2 and Nvidia TNT2 that I got much better performance; an Athlon 1.4GHz and GeForce 2 made even more of a difference 😀

386SX wrote:

I also web surfed with Opera 9 and if you've patience not that bad. 🤣

You're a brave man to surf the web with a Pentium 100. I wouldn't even try - patience is not one of my virtues 😒

You're a brave man to surf the web with a Pentium 100. I wouldn't even try - patience is not one of my virtues

Excuse me. 486 passing through!

I can imagine that a P100 really wouldn't be too bad. Although its getting worse all the time thanks to "web 2.0" bloat

web 3.0 bloat is worse. Mandatory HTML5 or WebGL compliance for basic site functionality? eugh

would LOVE a bloatfree light win9x NOT WEBKIT html5/webgl compliant browser, like a offbyone for modern web.

bonus points if there's voodoo trickery to force mpeg2 accelerated web video instead of all of those 'faster & better!!!' video formats

smeezekitty wrote:

Excuse me. 486 passing through!

Go on, that particular road is wide open for someone like you 😀 (that includes anyone using a 286/386/486/Pentium 1 to browse today's web). Just don't expect me to pass on by anytime soon ^^.

leileilol wrote:

web 3.0 bloat is worse. Mandatory HTML5 or WebGL compliance for basic site functionality? eugh

would LOVE a bloatfree light win9x NOT WEBKIT html5/webgl compliant browser, like a offbyone for modern web.

That would be a miracle if it ever were to happen 😮

leileilol wrote:

bonus points if there's voodoo trickery to force mpeg2 accelerated web video instead of all of those 'faster & better!!!' video formats

I remember using VoodooMovie back in the day (it was called 3dfx video renderer at first) with my Voodoo 1. It did work, but was never more than a novelty for me; I stopped using it after version 1.3.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

leileilol wrote:

bonus points if there's voodoo trickery to force mpeg2 accelerated web video instead of all of those 'faster & better!!!' video formats

I remember using VoodooMovie back in the day (it was called 3dfx video renderer at first) with my Voodoo 1. It did work, but was never more than a novelty for me; I stopped using it after version 1.3.

Hah, me too - though I didn't think he literally meant "Voodoo" this time! 😁

Stiletto wrote:

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

leileilol wrote:

bonus points if there's voodoo trickery to force mpeg2 accelerated web video instead of all of those 'faster & better!!!' video formats

I remember using VoodooMovie back in the day (it was called 3dfx video renderer at first) with my Voodoo 1. It did work, but was never more than a novelty for me; I stopped using it after version 1.3.

Hah, me too - though I didn't think he literally meant "Voodoo" this time! 😁

Indeed. I just went ahead and took a little "detour", just to make things more interesting 😊

Back on topic - if the OP wants to try Half-Life on a 486-class CPU, go ahead. As others have said, it needs at least a Pentium-class CPU to be playable; even a Voodoo card won't help much.

leileilol wrote:

web 3.0 bloat is worse. Mandatory HTML5 or WebGL compliance for basic site functionality? eugh

would LOVE a bloatfree light win9x NOT WEBKIT html5/webgl compliant browser, like a offbyone for modern web.

bonus points if there's voodoo trickery to force mpeg2 accelerated web video instead of all of those 'faster & better!!!' video formats

That would be fucking awesome. If someone made an Android port that would be even better.

i'll mention there isn't a video card in the world that will make Half-Life magically playable on a 486. You don't need to goosechase over it

I switched the S3+Voodoo combo for a Mystique PCI + M3D. It's incredible how good the 2D quality is both colors and sharpness and considering the same P100 with W98 it's incredible how FAST this machine is working.
I am surfing these pages with no javascript or animations (no flash hd 😁) and with a bit of patience it's certainly usable for light reading and mails.

Tested the PWR tech demos (nice), now I'll test both Quake and HL.

Regarding the 486, I can imagine (I tested a DX2 66Mhz with Quake sw and W98) that HL is probably too much but I would like to find a DX4-100 maybe overdrive to push this architecture to their limits. 😀

Doesn't a Pentium overdrive 83mhz have the same instruction set as an early Pentium?

PowerVR cards need lots of CPU horsepower to really shine. A P100 is not a good choice, Voodoo1 would be much faster. Both cards cards should yield similar performance in glQuake with a faster CPU, though.