What year did your GPUs come out and what year are the games from?

Interesting. I had that game running on a similar, although weaker, system...PIII-1GHz, Riva TNT2, SB Live! without issue back in 2002. It could be a conflict between the 2 video cards. The Voodoo2 is listed as incompatible, although I've seen proof that it works.

The following chipsets did not meet the minimum specification or were found to have significant problems. Some chipsets listed b […]
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The following chipsets did not meet the minimum specification or were found to have significant problems. Some chipsets listed below may end up working if updated drivers become available.
...
3dfx Voodoo 2
...

Jedi Outcast doesn't even see it, runs on the GF256 instead. As I do with all D3D games.
JO and NWN1 are 2002 and 2003 respectively. I'm sure a 256 was a little dated by then, but to reach levels of literally unplayable? Like, I can't understate how /bad/ yavin is, we're talking 10FPS with all settings set down. The rest of the game runs fine though?
NWN is mooostly playable but laggy? I dunno, maybe I'm just wanting too much with too little.

What resolution are you running at?

800x600 for later games like that, although I try to push 1024x768.

I'll try it now with a TNT2 Ultra and a 1.4 Tualatin. Close-ish.

If you lower the Tualatin to 1000 at a 100mhz FSB it should be nearly equal.

On 800x600, Medium Settings, I am getting very smooth playback on the first level. (at 1.4GHz and 1.05GHz)
The Q3A engine should run extremely well on a GeForce 256 DDR.

Even at 1024x768 on High, I'm seeing smooth gameplay.

All that to say that it would seem like you have an issue of some kind. Just to be safe, maybe disable the Voodoo2s in the Device Manager. See if there's any difference.

What motherboard are you using? Also, which drivers are you using?

Both Jedi Outcast and Neverwinter Nights are OpenGL games and both are quite demanding for the time. 10fps does sound quite low for that level on Jedi Outcast though, but I wouldn't expect more than 20-25 to be honest, it really is that demanding. I unfortunately don't have much experience with NWN, but I know it was pretty demanding as well. Around the time of its release, the GeForce 4 Ti was Nvidia's top dog and ATi had already released the Radeon 9700 Pro. The GeForce 256 doesn't stand a chance against these cards and you are also using an older CPU which doesn't help things. Again, at the time, something like the Athlon XP 1800+ or the Pentium 4 2GHz was becoming very popular. Not to mention DDR memory where as you're using SDRAM. It all adds up slowly.

Reason I'm asking what motherboard you're using is that maybe you're not getting optimal performance as well because maybe you're using a VIA chipset.

ASUS... CUSL2? i815 based.

Okay, so that's one thing sorted out. 😀 What drivers are you using for the Nvidia card?

Do you have any suggestions? Same ones I used for the Geforce 2 MX I had once (I have a /thing/ about not using low end cards >.>) and I think it was 12.something.
E: for 98SE and 2000.

These drivers are pretty old, 2000 I believe? Both games you mentioned came out in 2002, so I figure you might get a lot better performance with newer drivers. Try 45.23, they are the go to drivers for GeForce 4/FX and below.

P3-933 was from 1999, so by 2002 it was on the low end. Remember how fast CPUs got during this time period... Athlon Thunderbird and then XP were destroying P3's and all games/gamers were using them.

That may all be true, but the engine was from 1999, the game would have been in production in 2001, and his system is well inside the requirements. I'd bet that the newer drivers sort the problem out. It may not be perfect, but it should be wholly playable.

DISNEY wrote:

Star Wars™ Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast™ requires the following: […]
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Star Wars™ Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast™ requires the following:

Windows 95 OSR2/98/ME/2000/XP
Pentium II or Athlon class 350 MHz or faster CPU required.
64MB required. 128 MB RAM required for Windows 2000 and XP.
16 MB OpenGL compatible PCI or AGP 3D Hardware Accelerator required
16-bit DirectX 8.x compatible sound card required.
Quad Speed IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive required.
Keyboard or mouse required. Joystick supported.
Microsoft DirectX 8.0a
665 MB of free hard drive space required.
Additional free space required after game installation for Windows swap file and save games.

What are the supported video cards?
Below is a list of the supported video card chipsets:
ATI Rage 128, Rage 128 Pro, Radeon, Radeon 7500/8500
Matrox G400, G450, G550
NVIDIA GeForce 256, GeForce 2, GeForce 3, RIVA TNT2 families
PowerVR Kyro, Kyro II

Yeah that's my thinking, waiting on a benchmark to test against to proceed further. That'll confirm if it really is underperforming.

I could try it on a Pentium III 1GHz + Voodoo5 but I don't know if it would be indicative. I have a GeForce 4 MX lying around somewhere but I'm a little lazy to grab it and install new drivers etc. Try the newer drivers, I'm sure they will help quite a bit. You stand not to lose any performance, probably gain quite a bit and have better compatibility with games. If something goes wrong, you can always roll back.

fitzpatr wrote:

That may all be true, but the engine was from 1999, the game would have been in production in 2001, and his system is well inside the requirements. I'd bet that the newer drivers sort the problem out. It may not be perfect, but it should be wholly playable.

Don't compare Quake 3 with Jedi Knight 2. The engine evolved quite a bit, to accommodate for outdoor environments for example and as such can be quite a CPU hog. The GPU is also somewhat old by this point, the TNT2 would run terribly in this game by the way 😁.