A Voodoo 3 2000 should be fast enough for all Win98 games, if you stick to 1024x768 resolution or lower. It also works fine under Win3.1 using the Velocity 100 driver.

The compatibility with DOS Glide games is decent but there are some that won't work and need an older Voodoo card. I also think the Voodoo 2 SLI may be slightly faster than a Voodoo 3 2000.

You are going to need something like Geforce 4 at least to get good frame rates in deus ex like that.

I don't think the video card will be the bottleneck for Deus Ex (v3 should be fine) - CPU speed and amount of RAM is. I'm not sure about an AMD system but for a P3 you'll want a Coppermine which makes ISA slots a bit more difficult to come by. Unless you really care about using Glide I would try to run 99/2000 era games on a modern PC, or go for a P4/Athlon XP based system running Windows XP for those difficult games that require faster hardware but have issues working on a modern machine.

Deus Ex works fine on modern machines.

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:22:

I don't think the video card will be the bottleneck for Deus Ex (v3 should be fine) - CPU speed and amount of RAM is. I'm not sure about an AMD system but for a P3 you'll want a Coppermine which makes ISA slots a bit more difficult to come by. Unless you really care about using Glide I would try to run 99/2000 era games on a modern PC, or go for a P4/Athlon XP based system running Windows XP for those difficult games that require faster hardware but have issues working on a modern machine.

Deus Ex works fine on modern machines.

Voodoo 3 barely passes the minimum system requirements for original deus ex. There is no way you would get good frame rates at 1024x768

The original Deus Ex only requires a Pentium II with 300 MHz and any DirectX 7-compatible 3D card. It will run perfectly with with a Voodoo3.

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:30:

Voodoo 3 barely passes the minimum system requirements for original deus ex. There is no way you would get good frame rates at 1024x768

Well I haven't tried it myself so maybe you're right. But what I am sure about is that Deus Ex is very CPU limited and that a fast graphics card only really helps in raw fill rate. All geometry / lighting / clipping is done on the CPU and other than that it only uses multitexturing with two textures and blend modes. And without enough RAM saving/loading takes very long.

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:54:

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:30:

Voodoo 3 barely passes the minimum system requirements for original deus ex. There is no way you would get good frame rates at 1024x768

Well I haven't tried it myself so maybe you're right. But what I am sure about is that Deus Ex is very CPU limited and that a fast graphics card only really helps in raw fill rate. All geometry / lighting / clipping is done on the CPU and other than that it only uses multitexturing with two textures and blend modes. And without enough RAM saving/loading takes very long.

I just tried deus ex on my 1000Mhz P3 and voodoo 2 SLI because I thought voodoo 2 SLI is close to same speed as voodoo 3 and I didn't get very good frame rate with 1024x768 resolution. There is no fps counter though it so it is just personal opinion of if the frame rate felt good.

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:27:

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:54:

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:30:

Voodoo 3 barely passes the minimum system requirements for original deus ex. There is no way you would get good frame rates at 1024x768

Well I haven't tried it myself so maybe you're right. But what I am sure about is that Deus Ex is very CPU limited and that a fast graphics card only really helps in raw fill rate. All geometry / lighting / clipping is done on the CPU and other than that it only uses multitexturing with two textures and blend modes. And without enough RAM saving/loading takes very long.

I just tried deus ex on my 1000Mhz P3 and voodoo 2 SLI because I thought voodoo 2 SLI is close to same speed as voodoo 3 and I didn't get very good frame rate with 1024x768 resolution. There is no fps counter though it so it is just personal opinion of if the frame rate felt good.

'stat fps' console command.

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:29:

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:27:

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 07:54:

Well I haven't tried it myself so maybe you're right. But what I am sure about is that Deus Ex is very CPU limited and that a fast graphics card only really helps in raw fill rate. All geometry / lighting / clipping is done on the CPU and other than that it only uses multitexturing with two textures and blend modes. And without enough RAM saving/loading takes very long.

I just tried deus ex on my 1000Mhz P3 and voodoo 2 SLI because I thought voodoo 2 SLI is close to same speed as voodoo 3 and I didn't get very good frame rate with 1024x768 resolution. There is no fps counter though it so it is just personal opinion of if the frame rate felt good.

'stat fps' console command.

There seems to be big difference in fps in different places. At the start of the game when looking at larger area and the statue of liberty it could go down to 17 fps. When just staring a wall next to you it jumped up to 60 fps. Most of the time when running around in the area and shooting people it was between 20 and 25 fps. This was tested in 1024x768 and voodoo 2 SLI

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:58:

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:29:

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:27:

I just tried deus ex on my 1000Mhz P3 and voodoo 2 SLI because I thought voodoo 2 SLI is close to same speed as voodoo 3 and I didn't get very good frame rate with 1024x768 resolution. There is no fps counter though it so it is just personal opinion of if the frame rate felt good.

'stat fps' console command.

There seems to be big difference in fps in different places. At the start of the game when looking at larger area and the statue of liberty it could go down to 17 fps. When just staring a wall next to you it jumped up to 60 fps. Most of the time when running around in the area and shooting people it was between 20 and 25 fps. This was tested in 1024x768 and voodoo 2 SLI

Interesting, thanks for testing. I remember playing it on a P3-667 with a TNT2 M64, but I don't remember what resolution I used and I probably found slow performance to be acceptable. The main issue was extremely slow quicksaving/loading, which I fixed by upgrading from 128 to 386MB RAM.

Does lowering the resolution make much of a difference?

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 10:16:

Baoran wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:58:

Oetker wrote on 2020-04-08, 09:29:

'stat fps' console command.

There seems to be big difference in fps in different places. At the start of the game when looking at larger area and the statue of liberty it could go down to 17 fps. When just staring a wall next to you it jumped up to 60 fps. Most of the time when running around in the area and shooting people it was between 20 and 25 fps. This was tested in 1024x768 and voodoo 2 SLI

Interesting, thanks for testing. I remember playing it on a P3-667 with a TNT2 M64, but I don't remember what resolution I used and I probably found slow performance to be acceptable. The main issue was extremely slow quicksaving/loading, which I fixed by upgrading from 128 to 386MB RAM.

Does lowering the resolution make much of a difference?

Not a huge difference. At 800x600 it didn't go below 25fps during normal game play and at 640x480 it stayed above 30fps and when just staring at a wall it went to over 80fps with both resolutions.

Thank you all for your replies. I am especially pleased to know how Deus Ex is working with V2 SLI. I do have a V3 3000, but it seems to be faulty. I have to test it on another mobo, as it is not giving me picture on my Asus P2B, and they seem to be expensive, these days. It is why I am considering a very late Windows 98 card with a glide wrapper and the Windows 3.x driver hack (and using Moslo Deluxe for early games.) I have one Voodoo 2 card (Orchid Righteous 3d II,) but will probably sell it if I go with a different option.

A mobo with two ISA slots isa must in order to run an AWE card and the MPU-IPC-T, so it does make designing this system from available ebay parts a challenge. I want glide/glide wrapper for just a handful of games that require glide, or else I would just go with D3D/OpenGL. I have an Athlon XP / WinXP system, though it lacks the required ISA slots, and I want a system that runs Windows 98 for that Windows 98 experience and nostalgia.

A "perfect" system that can run everything with the best music, sound, and graphics for the different eras is difficult, though I believe it is possible with the right selection of parts.

As has been noted, Deus Ex is very CPU demanding. Expect ~20fps with a Coppermine 1GHz and a Voodoo5 at 1024x768.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-04-08, 16:30:

As has been noted, Deus Ex is very CPU demanding. Expect ~20fps with a Coppermine 1GHz and a Voodoo5 at 1024x768.

I could have sworn that I completed Deus Ex GOTY with a Pentium III w/ 64MB and a Voodoo 3 3000 running it at 1024x768, back in the day. I seem to recall 30 fps and used to be satisfied with games running at 30 fps back then. It has been years so my memory is slightly hazy, but I could swear that I had it and beat it before I started building my own computers, with that P3 being a Gateway I had before starting to build Athlon XP machines. If it ran below 30 fps, I don't recall. I used to tweak my Win98 installs and do little tricks to optimize my system back then.

I think that I would be better off if I could get a Slot A system with a 1Ghz K7...

Here's a very interesting thread on the matter:

Is Deus Ex supposed to be so slow in Glide?

Apparently 60fps ain't guaranteed all the time even on a Northwood 3.4GHz! Crazy!

Garrett W wrote on 2020-04-08, 20:15:

Here's a very interesting thread on the matter:

Is Deus Ex supposed to be so slow in Glide?

Apparently 60fps ain't guaranteed all the time even on a Northwood 3.4GHz! Crazy!

How strange that I completed the game back then without issues. Maybe I played it with D3D. I may have to build the best system that I can and just play Revision on my main rig. When I replayed Deus EX back in the day, it was on an Athlon XP system that I built, though I can't recall which one. I may have used a Radeon 8500. I used to build a new PC every 2-3 years, and I know I replayed Deus Ex at least once on one of those Athlons, though the first play through was definitely on a P3 450 w/ Voodoo 3. All of my games were played at a default of 1024x786 if it was supported, but perhaps I played it at a lower resolution. What a conundrum....

I would love to be able to play it as the devs intended. It is one of my favorite games of all time. It is socially relevant (grey death - coronavirus,) cyberpunk RPG, dark, action, stealth... I miss it.

Scythifuge wrote on 2020-04-08, 03:32:

all-in-one Pentium III or Athlon K7 systems that will cover all games from the 80's to 1999/2000

In my experience, this will be difficult outside of emulation. Even the most exotic slowdown setups have gaps at the top, bottom, middle, or a combination of spots in the performance band. A more realistic (but still challenging) objective using real hardware is to cover the full range with two machines.

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-04-09, 05:48:

Scythifuge wrote on 2020-04-08, 03:32:

all-in-one Pentium III or Athlon K7 systems that will cover all games from the 80's to 1999/2000

In my experience, this will be difficult outside of emulation. Even the most exotic slowdown setups have gaps at the top, bottom, middle, or a combination of spots in the performance band. A more realistic (but still challenging) objective using real hardware is to cover the full range with two machines.

Agreed; it is why I have been playing with both DOSBox and 86box while I design the PC and hunt down parts and test things out (I just discovered that Solar Winds is probably locking up on non-OPL sound cards, and my AWE32 is non-OPL..)

I have read that people have great success with Moslo Deluxe properly running 386 and 486 games. Realistically I will have the P3, and Athlon XP, and use emulation on my main rig. I have read of people having success with running a Live! and AWE32/64 in the same machine (I would disable the AWE in Windows 98.)

However, I do feel that emulation is the future, due to scarcity and price of parts... I would rather not buy another AWE32 when I can play Solar Winds on a 486 machine emulating an AWE32 without lockups. I can also build as many machines as I want and use the same disk images over multiple machines.