I suspect the problem is the socket3, not the Riva, which is quite capable of running Q2 decently enough.

I’m curious what cpu? POD?

BinaryDemon wrote on 2020-09-01, 00:39:

I’m curious what cpu? POD?

Yes POD@100MHz

With a Voodoo 2 I’m getting 33+FPS with sound. Was hoping the Riva would post up some decent numbers but I’m getting about 1 frame every few seconds.

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-01, 00:32:

I suspect the problem is the socket3, not the Riva, which is quite capable of running Q2 decently enough.

I’m suspecting the same, curious that Direct3D functions without issue though.

Okay nevermind, by some miracle it started working. I did enable the use of system memory for textures in OpenGL settings. Only seeing 16fps in timedemo1 but much better than it was.

Yea by default the system memory setting is 0. Change it to 1 or 2 and viola! OpenGL acceleration working on socket 3! Yah pointless for the most part but I think it’s cool!

Super frustrating revisiting this and I can’t get the “Additional Settings” panel to open, when I click, nothing happens. I swear I had this working in Windows 95. Gotta start taking more notes 🤣. The performance is abysmal on the PCI card until you can adjust the PCI Texture Size under that OpenGL tab and I just can’t get there.

I was able to get to this panel to open and working on the same machine in Windows 98. I did need to install >16 megs of ram to change the value higher than 0. Performance was not as good as I remember in 95 though, but I don’t have any numbers on it.

Anyway, if anyone else tries this odd combination maybe this will help them.

Funny to see this come up. I was having the same issue once upon a time in Win98SE with a PCI Riva128, MVP3 motherboard and a P233 MMX. Just massive stuttering at fixed points in the game, presumably when the memory was constantly thrashing.

It was very strange. D3D had a system memory setting too, but it was far less restrictive in how I could set it. OpenGL seemed to be capped at some proportion of system memory lower than D3D was. With 32MB in the system I think it was capped at 4MB. Even going into the registry and manually setting it higher, the driver would drop it back down as soon as I went to play GLQuake.

Upgrading the system memory to 256MB and then increasing that system memory setting for OpenGL to >10MB totally fixed all stuttering in GLQuake. Probably less of an option with a Socket 3 though.

It's been a hot minute, and I didn't keep that hardware configuration very long. But I think I remember only having the issue in GLQuake. Quake 2 worked fine in OpenGL. It was all very peculiar.

Namrok wrote on 2021-07-23, 12:45:

Funny to see this come up. I was having the same issue once upon a time in Win98SE with a PCI Riva128, MVP3 motherboard and a P […]
Show full quote

Funny to see this come up. I was having the same issue once upon a time in Win98SE with a PCI Riva128, MVP3 motherboard and a P233 MMX. Just massive stuttering at fixed points in the game, presumably when the memory was constantly thrashing.

It was very strange. D3D had a system memory setting too, but it was far less restrictive in how I could set it. OpenGL seemed to be capped at some proportion of system memory lower than D3D was. With 32MB in the system I think it was capped at 4MB. Even going into the registry and manually setting it higher, the driver would drop it back down as soon as I went to play GLQuake.

Upgrading the system memory to 256MB and then increasing that system memory setting for OpenGL to >10MB totally fixed all stuttering in GLQuake. Probably less of an option with a Socket 3 though.

It's been a hot minute, and I didn't keep that hardware configuration very long. But I think I remember only having the issue in GLQuake. Quake 2 worked fine in OpenGL. It was all very peculiar.

Appreciate you sharing your story, def corroborates what I'm seeing. I wish I could get that "Additional Settings" panel to open, I know I have before. There must be some missing dll or something that it needs. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this old hardware 🤣, I love it though. It's interesting to see the 3DFX version perform quite well with only 16Meg of RAM and then see the RIVA 128 completely choke. I'm sure it has something do to with the original design being AGP and having to retro a PCI version.

Chadti99 wrote on 2021-07-23, 18:17:

Namrok wrote on 2021-07-23, 12:45:

Funny to see this come up. I was having the same issue once upon a time in Win98SE with a PCI Riva128, MVP3 motherboard and a P […]
Show full quote

Funny to see this come up. I was having the same issue once upon a time in Win98SE with a PCI Riva128, MVP3 motherboard and a P233 MMX. Just massive stuttering at fixed points in the game, presumably when the memory was constantly thrashing.

It was very strange. D3D had a system memory setting too, but it was far less restrictive in how I could set it. OpenGL seemed to be capped at some proportion of system memory lower than D3D was. With 32MB in the system I think it was capped at 4MB. Even going into the registry and manually setting it higher, the driver would drop it back down as soon as I went to play GLQuake.

Upgrading the system memory to 256MB and then increasing that system memory setting for OpenGL to >10MB totally fixed all stuttering in GLQuake. Probably less of an option with a Socket 3 though.

It's been a hot minute, and I didn't keep that hardware configuration very long. But I think I remember only having the issue in GLQuake. Quake 2 worked fine in OpenGL. It was all very peculiar.

Appreciate you sharing your story, def corroborates what I'm seeing. I wish I could get that "Additional Settings" panel to open, I know I have before. There must be some missing dll or something that it needs. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this old hardware 🤣, I love it though. It's interesting to see the 3DFX version perform quite well with only 16Meg of RAM and then see the RIVA 128 completely choke. I'm sure it has something do to with the original design being AGP and having to retro a PCI version.

So I went back and checked some of my old posts about this. I had to go into the registry and "fix" the memory setting in the registry at a certain point when the additional settings panel wouldn't open. I'd had plans to try different versions of the drivers to see if any performed better or were less wonky about the OpenGL System memory setting, but I don't think I ever did.

Got it, I need to find these registry entries.

I believe the registry entry you are looking for is MaxPCITexHeapSize, although I can't recall where it is in the registry. I think if it's set to a truly wonky value, the advanced settings panel refuses to open.

Namrok wrote on 2021-07-23, 19:44:

I believe the registry entry you are looking for is MaxPCITexHeapSize, although I can't recall where it is in the registry. I think if it's set to a truly wonky value, the advanced settings panel refuses to open.

Interesting, I can find this entry in 98 but not 95.

Returning to this for posterity.

I've thrown my old PCI Riva 128 back into a Pentium 233 MMX build with 32 MB of RAM, running Win95 OSR2.1. And once again, in GLQuake it chugs and stutters at all the same points it used to running the latest NVIDIA reference drivers. And like you, I cannot get the "Additional Settings" panel to open.

So I uninstalled the NVidia reference drivers, and installed the STB Velocity 128 drivers, version 182. Since that's actually what my card is. It was a self extracting zip that refused to run on Win95, so I had to extract them in a VM running Win2K. But they installed just fine. And sure enough, GLQuake is now smooth as butter.

Further futzing around with this setup, with the STB Velocity 128 drivers installed, I also installed NV3 Tweak 2.1 which I found on archive.org. As opposed to the one built directly into Nvidia's reference drivers. It's "Additional Settings" panel worked in Win95, unlike the Nvidia reference driver's version of NV3 Tweak. Also, with 32 MB of system memory, it showed 5 MB available for the PCI Texture Heap in both D3D and OpenGL when using the latest STB Velocity 128 drivers. Unlike the most recent Nvidia Reference drivers which suspiciously allowed 5 MB of D3D, but only 2 or 3 MB for OpenGL.

When trying to edit the registry setting for the PCI Texture Heap directly, it would just get reset to a lower value as soon as I'd actually try to run a game. Presumably the drivers calculate a safe texture heap size based on the total system memory, and won't let you go above it, no way, no how. For the STB drivers, it's the same amount for OpenGL and D3D which makes sense to me. For the Nvidia last drivers it's lower for OpenGL. Which causes issues in GLQuake which I suspect revolve around it having to goto the HDD for textures since there wasn't enough texture heap space in system memory for them. I remember when I was messing around with this last time, to get around this I just increased the amount of system memory to 256 MB, which allowed me to raise the OpenGL PCI Texture Heap to a more reasonable amount. Still, if you are attempting to run a "period correct" 1997 rig, 32 MB of ram is probably a more common configuration.

I think the bottom line for me, is that Nvidia's last set of reference drivers are not well optimized for low RAM, or Win95. I had better luck with manufacturer drivers, STB to be specific. It's possible older versions of Nvidia's reference drivers are better tuned, or this is a bug that crept in but wasn't obvious because systems had more memory generally by then, or it was always this way in the reference drivers and STB thought it was stupid.

Not sure how many enthusiast are rocking PCI Riva 128 cards though. I'm just personally nostalgic because it was my first 3d card. And finding even the most recent drivers is quite an effort, much less drivers even older. So the answers to these questions may never be known. But that's my experience.

Appreciate all the detailed info on your tests! I’ve found that simply having 32megs of ram corrects the performance issue for me. So I think your theory is correct, the older drivers handle less memory better than the newer reference drivers.

The Riva128 PCI is one my fav 2D cards because of the excellent VESA implementation and performance. I can run Duke3D at 320x400 for example without any extra software. It also consistently performs at the top of the heap of other PCI cards I have for DOS Quake. It’s a great card in socket 3 and 7 machines paired with a Voodoo 2 IMO.