DarthNvader wrote on 2022-06-09, 17:06:

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-06-09, 16:56:

DarthNvader wrote on 2022-06-09, 13:27:

I built Netradiant for the macOS, but I have no clue how to get it to open the games texture?

you need to first find out how the texture was compressed / what format. Opensource games usually have documentation explaining this.

Ok, I was hoping this was something you had done before with Quake3. Anyway I can't seem to properly install Quake3 support into NetRadiant, so I have to figure that out first:

https://gitlab.com/xonotic/netradiant

Actually I was never a quake fan, at the time, I preferred UT 🤣

Doogie submitted a new result and took the first place from himself with 434,9 fps
https://youtu.be/NLJY4LxYzJc

Highest score at the moment.
#1 Doogie with 434,9 fps on his Athlon 850 with a geforce 256 DDR
#2 Svensktiger with 302 fps on his Athlon 850 with his Geforce 256 DDR
#3 Svensktiger 263,9fps on his P3 900 with a Geforce 256 DDR
#4 mwd with 156,9 fps on his Dell Pentium III 866 System with a TNT2 M64
#5 XTRINO with 104,7 fps on hos Pentium III 866 System TNT2 Ultra
#6 Seraph with 52,7 fps
#7 JizzMasta with 46 fps on his K6-3+ System Geforce 256 SDR

170MHz is a dang nice o'c on a GF DDR =)
I noticed that when going past 380 FPS or so the GPU actually starts making a difference.

I feel bad for running that card to the limit, but I figure at least I did so with heatsinks on all of the RAM, and as big a cooler as I could fit on the GPU core. I couldn't get much more out of the GPU past that, so I'm not going to continue to push it.

I haven't submitted officially, but after recovering from a failed BIOS (replaced the chip), I've managed additional progress - 448.6fps.

I have heard a rumor that a competitor broke 500 fps yesterday. I am looking forward to review his submission.

Listen up guys and gals!
There is less then one week left until the competition ends, and then I will decided who will be the lucky winner.

As far as I know there are to people who are fighting for the grand prize.
Both of them have breached the 400fps barrier, and are still pushing on for more frames per second.
Either way. 400 frames per second on a sub ghz machine with a 1999 graphics card is almost unbelievable. But this two people managed to do it.

Im excited as f__k to see who will take home the grand prize.

The competion is over and we have declared the winners.
Sir King James Breakfast Pie won with 560,5 fps.
Doogie took the second place with 518.7 fps.

The Leaderboard
#1 King James Breakfast Pie with 560,5 fps Athlon 850 with a geforce 256 DDR
#2 Doogie with 518,7 fps on his Athlon 850 with a geforce 256 DDR
#3 Svensktiger with 302 fps on his Athlon 850 with his Geforce 256 DDR
#4 Svensktiger 263,9fps on his P3 900 with a Geforce 256 DDR
#5 mwd with 156,9 fps on his Dell Pentium III 866 System with a TNT2 M64
#7 XTRINO with 104,7 fps on hos Pentium III 866 System TNT2 Ultra
#8 Seraph with 52,7 fps
#9 JizzMasta with 46 fps on his K6-3+ System Geforce 256 SDR

Doogies final submission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU70JoiP2kg
King James Breakfast Pie:s submission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI2IuvX5nYc

King James won a 3DFX Voodoo3 3000
and Doogie won a 3DFX Voodoo3 2000

Well done guys!! You deserved it!!
I could never in my wildest dreams imagine that 500fps was possible on a sub ghz machine.
That is so awesome!!!!!! 😀

bobpitch? i cant believe I didn't think of that!
I mean its so obvious that if the "dude" doesn't actually face the stuff that needs rendering you gain performance 🤣.
And disable mouse, yea I knew that trick from back in the day, completely forgot about it now tho......

In the end I managed 380'ish fps on my AMD system.
Tho it was pretty clear there was no point in submitting anything less then 450 at that time =)

Can't wait to test the various configs and trick on other systems to see how big the performance gulf really is.
And maybe use the key tricks to make a tweaker that doesn't completely ruin the look of the game 🤣 =)

Anyways, it was a fun challenge when you didn't know beforehand what hardware would preferable.
It became clear that nForce would be king, but sound cards and graphics cards?
I reckon there's a few surprises lurking around in our retro drawers.
I know I found a some golden eggs in my memorypiles, like a few DDR sticks that do 2-2-2-4 at 170 FPS.

Ayways big congrats to the winners!

Necrodude wrote on 2022-07-02, 10:41:

I could never in my wildest dreams imagine that 500fps was possible on a sub ghz machine.
That is insane!!!!!! 😀

Uhm... it's... not, though? 😁 It's not even possible in Quake 2 or Quake 1. 🤣
Congrats to the winners!

Here is the submitted tweaks from all the contestants.
The rar file contains only custom compiled open source exe and dll:s files and the contestants config files.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Al5OEc0Sc9SsgZ5jx0wDzdaAuamgzw?e=vmFCmt

---> I decided to call myself "King James Breakfast Pie" at the Brain Drain Retro LAN <---

Wow!!!! The contest came down to the wire thanks to Doogie's unwavering hard work, cheerful attitude, and community spirit. And here I thought my "secret weapon" of Corsair Platinum Twinx 500MHz DDR RAM was going to put me on easy street! I could not have been more wrong. As I see it, Doogie and I both had our own styles which drove us during the contest. While Doogie's efforts where more elegant, refined and precise like an Eagle - Mine were more brutish, raw and lumbering like an elephant - but each of us were determined to reach our goals one way or another.

I am especially heartened to know Doogie has earned a prize. I was ready to split mine in half with him had this outcome not been possible. Doogie put in a tremendous amount of work. I am glad the good folks here weren't about to let his efforts go unrewarded. The Voodoo 2000 might as well be a 3000, since it can usually reach the same speeds as a 3000, if not more. Of course, it won't be any sort of challenge for Doogie to attain!

A big "Thank you!" goes to all of the contestants and their entries. I learned a lot watching their videos, and I was amazed at what could be done in such a short of amount of time.

I offer huge thanks to the proprietors of this contest, forum, and community. This place has some of the most kind, helpful, and intelligent members I have ever experienced, especially in such a short while. I can't thank you all enough!

Finally, I offer my deepest gratitude to Necrodude. He consistently nudged us with all thoughtfulness to consider other avenues in the pursuit of more speed, while simultaneously providing the breadcrumbs which led us to success. There are not many people in the world who can offer this kind of positive reinforcement. Thanks, man!

Once again, THANK YOU ALL!!!

We will host more competitions in the future.
The plan is the we will start a new competition after the summer.
Stay tuned! 😀

Most interesting result from this is that the old list of what sound-card is most efficient is completely blown out of the water.
Before this competition who would have guessed that our simple ESS soundcards would come out on top?
Tho I suspect that's because of a simple driver that most likely "cheats" and drops quite a lot of stuff that's supposed to be there ^^

Personally I'm happiest with the realization of how good the nForce2 is in W9x!
I never viewed it as anything but an XP era motherboard, and for that there's better alternatives.
My NF7-S2 have been in my testbench (pretty much replaced my P3B-F) for a while now and works great with everything I throw at it.
IMO its a better MB then the "vanilla" NF7 and the ASUS A7N8X if you don't need to change multiplier.

Now I wonder if there's Thunderbird CPU's hiding out there that works with <x5 multiplier.

Don't SB64 and later have the rep of being cycle light? and they're based on ESS tech by then, so makes sense.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2022-07-02, 14:48:

Most interesting result from this is that the old list of what sound-card is most efficient is completely blown out of the water […]
Show full quote

Most interesting result from this is that the old list of what sound-card is most efficient is completely blown out of the water.
Before this competition who would have guessed that our simple ESS soundcards would come out on top?
Tho I suspect that's because of a simple driver that most likely "cheats" and drops quite a lot of stuff that's supposed to be there ^^

Personally I'm happiest with the realization of how good the nForce2 is in W9x!
I never viewed it as anything but an XP era motherboard, and for that there's better alternatives.
My NF7-S2 have been in my testbench (pretty much replaced my P3B-F) for a while now and works great with everything I throw at it.
IMO its a better MB then the "vanilla" NF7 and the ASUS A7N8X if you don't need to change multiplier.

Now I wonder if there's Thunderbird CPU's hiding out there that works with <x5 multiplier.

I mistakenly bought an Abit NF7-S2 (instead of the NF7-S 2.0...) after my A7N8X-E crispied its BIOS (since replaced with a new flashed chip). The NF7-S2 would be a great board for day-to-day Barton use. However, the A7N8X-E blows it out of the water performance wise in the case of this competition, not the least of which, of course, is the ability to change the multiplier. However, once I updated the BIOS to the "Uber" BIOS custom: https://web.archive.org/web/20060503013810/ht … michael.mcclay/, I found the A7N8X-E an even better all-around board, which I will definitely use for a future Athlon XP build. The "now available" settings to disable the wretched ACPI (from a 9x usage perspective) and disable onboard IDE controllers is what puts the A7N8X-E over the top for me.

PERFORMANCE OF THE SOUND CARDS TRIED FROM BEST-TO-WORST*:

1 - ESS Maestro-1 (ES1948F)
2 - Onboard NVidia Soundstorm (I did not install the mixer as it required DirectX 9.0c - my final decision was to stick with DirectX 7.1 (Windows ME)
3 - PCI 128 (CT5808)
4 - Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350)

PERFORMANCE OF THE NETWORK CARDS TRIED FROM BEST-TO-WORST*:

1 - Realtek RTL8139 (A) PCI Fast Ethernet NIC
2- Onboard Realtek 8201BL LAN PHY
3- 3com 3CR990SVR97 "3Com EtherLink 10/100 Mbps PCI Server NIC with 3XP Processor"
4- 3com 3C900-COMBO "3Com EtherLink PCI NIC"

*Note - here is my experience in this specific use case, which may not be reflective of others experience in a different situation.

@necrodude, can you make sure you don't link to pirated games versions? I wasn't sure which link it was so I removed both. Feel free to edit your post once you fix this

Sure. No problemo. 😀

Holy $hit!
Awesome work and results!
for more socket a and nForce2 tinkering visit https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads … xp-m-mp.584473/

All we need to do now is to combine all submissions to a ultimate fast version.