Con 2 botones wrote on 2021-10-04, 20:45:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-04, 19:09:

Con 2 botones wrote on 2021-10-04, 18:45:

K6-2+ and k6-3 dont care about “Cacheable RAM Size”, do they?
Because if they do, MVP3 chipset prefers 128MB to 256MB (when the onboard L2 cache is 512Kb).

If Blood II is the only game you are experiencing weird performance, then the above makes even less sense.

You will get different opinions on this. Phil's tests show that they do care but very, very little.

Myself I have a SiS5598 chipset and 512k of cache and I find that 128MB performs slightly better on my setup for whatever reason. It is minimal however. YMMV

Good to know, thanks. I also own a SIS5595+Sis530 chipset based motherboard (ASUS P5S-VM). I would like to add a K6-2+ or K6-3, but they are not easy to find or relatively expensive when they show.

If "very, very little" means 1 or 2 FPS when it comes to gaming, then I guess it would be better to keep 256MB for overall system performance. If it means around 5 FPS penalty...hmm I would stay with 128MB (especially because I only use vintage PCs for gaming).

Here is the link to his video and the graphs as well. Worth a watch if you are considering finding a + CPU.

https://youtu.be/A2Oymnq5DEQ

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/amd-k6-2-vs- … -vs-k6-iii.html

Yeah, just to kind of further the sanity check, I put Blood 2 on my P233MMX (running at 2.5 x 100 FSB) and the Riva 128. It performed about as well at 640x480 lowest settings as the K6-2+ 500/Geforce 2 MX 400. Maybe even a little bit better. Although it was actually effected by scaling up the resolution and quality, so moving beyond min settings incurred a stiff performance penalty the GF2 machine doesn't incur.

I threw it on my Athlon 64/Geforce 7800 GS machine, running WinXP and DX9.0c. Where so far its running at a capped 60 FPS maxed out no issues. So I suppose I'll play it there. Just not in a mood to reinstall Win98SE from scratch on that rig again in the hope it unfucks whatever driver issue is occurring.

Alright, despite saying I didn't have the motivation to install Win98SE again, I backed up my old install and started from scratch.

Install Win98, Via drivers, Via pci latency patch, SBLive drivers, DirectX6, and... things were weird.

I though I had installed the drivers for the CT4780 off the Liveware 3.0 CD and had them work. They didn't. Gave me the old "Pretends to play audio but nothing happens". Whatever, I ran Blood 2 anyways and it was also weird. It was running at 60 fps! But the game appeared to be stuck. Nothing was happening. Just a view of the subway car you start the game on, and no cutscene actually playing to kick things off.

I figure, ok, I'll install those drivers off MSFN that always worked. And they do! Except now DirectX 6 is complaining that it can't initialize direct sound, and Blood won't even launch anymore.

Ok, I install DirectX 7, and find myself back where I started. If I'm staring at a blank wall, maybe 30 fps. A character on the screen? 15 fps.

For shits and giggle I tried having it output over the AWE64 in my system instead of the SBLive, to no noticeable difference.

This is very, very strange.

Did you check the BIOS settings and disabled both "Video BIOS Cacheable" and "System BIOS Cacheable"?

AMD K6-III and K6plus CPUs requires them to be disabled for reliability reasons.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-10-05, 01:10:

Did you check the BIOS settings and disabled both "Video BIOS Cacheable" and "System BIOS Cacheable"?

AMD K6-III and K6plus CPUs requires them to be disabled for reliability reasons.

Those are in fact disabled.

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-05, 01:16:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-10-05, 01:10:

Did you check the BIOS settings and disabled both "Video BIOS Cacheable" and "System BIOS Cacheable"?

AMD K6-III and K6plus CPUs requires them to be disabled for reliability reasons.

Those are in fact disabled.

Mmm 🤔, does this weirdness happens with different D3D titles?

Since Shogo uses the same engine as Blood 2 you could test that game in that computer and see what happens.

Yeah, I'll give Shogo a spin and see how crap it performs. 3dmark99 gives me about 3200 marks on a good day, which is in the ballpark of what I'd expect. I'm actually realizing I don't have a ton of D3D games to test on it. Mostly OpenGL id engine games. I remember Unreal in D3D felt pretty sluggish when I played it, but it seemed within it's non-glide performance envelop on the system from what I was able to learn through old toms hardware articles. Diablo 2 in D3D mode is kind of herky jerky, but it's D3D mode always sucked.

I have Draken, but I'm not really sure what proper framerates would be for it. It is getting towards that era where I'd expect more and more games to have some CPU bottlenecking on a K6-2+. I also have Dungeon Keeper 2 which I can give a spin.

Edit: Ok, Shogo ran great. First level was running about 20-30, but the second was a solid 60.

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-05, 00:48:

Alright, despite saying I didn't have the motivation to install Win98SE again, I backed up my old install and started from scrat […]
Show full quote

Alright, despite saying I didn't have the motivation to install Win98SE again, I backed up my old install and started from scratch.

Install Win98, Via drivers, Via pci latency patch, SBLive drivers, DirectX6, and... things were weird.

I though I had installed the drivers for the CT4780 off the Liveware 3.0 CD and had them work. They didn't. Gave me the old "Pretends to play audio but nothing happens". Whatever, I ran Blood 2 anyways and it was also weird. It was running at 60 fps! But the game appeared to be stuck. Nothing was happening. Just a view of the subway car you start the game on, and no cutscene actually playing to kick things off.

I figure, ok, I'll install those drivers off MSFN that always worked. And they do! Except now DirectX 6 is complaining that it can't initialize direct sound, and Blood won't even launch anymore.

Ok, I install DirectX 7, and find myself back where I started. If I'm staring at a blank wall, maybe 30 fps. A character on the screen? 15 fps.

For shits and giggle I tried having it output over the AWE64 in my system instead of the SBLive, to no noticeable difference.

This is very, very strange.

From your words I got the idea your problems started when you installed the Sound Blaster drivers.
It would have been good if you tried launching Blood 2 before installing the sound drivers to see what happens.

Also, a lot of Sound Blaster Live models can be installed with the Audigy driver, there´s a Phil´s Computer Lab video tutorial on that.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-04, 20:52:

Here is the link to his video and the graphs as well. Worth a watch if you are considering finding a + CPU. […]
Show full quote

Con 2 botones wrote on 2021-10-04, 20:45:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-04, 19:09:

You will get different opinions on this. Phil's tests show that they do care but very, very little.

Myself I have a SiS5598 chipset and 512k of cache and I find that 128MB performs slightly better on my setup for whatever reason. It is minimal however. YMMV

Good to know, thanks. I also own a SIS5595+Sis530 chipset based motherboard (ASUS P5S-VM). I would like to add a K6-2+ or K6-3, but they are not easy to find or relatively expensive when they show.

If "very, very little" means 1 or 2 FPS when it comes to gaming, then I guess it would be better to keep 256MB for overall system performance. If it means around 5 FPS penalty...hmm I would stay with 128MB (especially because I only use vintage PCs for gaming).

Here is the link to his video and the graphs as well. Worth a watch if you are considering finding a + CPU.

https://youtu.be/A2Oymnq5DEQ

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/amd-k6-2-vs- … -vs-k6-iii.html

I believe I have already watched it some time ago, but don´t remember the conclusions. Thanks!

To add some spice, I took the time to install Blood II on my k6-3+ system last night. It installed fine but when it launches it immediately hangs at the cutscene. Doesn't seem to matter what resolution I use.
This is a K6-3+/V3/Aureal Vortex 1 system running Win98SE

I didn't have much time to play with settings or even try software rendering. I'm also not sure but i THINK i have DX7.1 installed.

Not sure on the video bios caching but that is something I need to look into.

I know this isn't apples to apples comparison but thought I would add my experiences.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-05, 15:00:

To add some spice, I took the time to install Blood II on my k6-3+ system last night. It installed fine but when it launches it […]
Show full quote

To add some spice, I took the time to install Blood II on my k6-3+ system last night. It installed fine but when it launches it immediately hangs at the cutscene. Doesn't seem to matter what resolution I use.
This is a K6-3+/V3/Aureal Vortex 1 system running Win98SE

I didn't have much time to play with settings or even try software rendering. I'm also not sure but i THINK i have DX7.1 installed.

Not sure on the video bios caching but that is something I need to look into.

I know this isn't apples to apples comparison but thought I would add my experiences.

One thing I found is that cutscenes are often wonky unless I enable triple buffering. Or you can just turn the movies off in the advanced panel.

I thought I'd try to be clever/clumsy and just dump all the DX6 dlls off the install CD directly into the Blood 2 directory so it references those first. It just caused Blood 2 to blue screen. I suppose I would have been more shocked if it had worked.

I'm going to try and play with it some more this evening. I will try the triple buffering trick and see what happens. If not I will disable them and go from there. System is usually pretty stable once I got all the bugs ironed out anyway.

Con 2 botones wrote on 2021-10-05, 13:04:

From your words I got the idea your problems started when you installed the Sound Blaster drivers. It would have been good if yo […]
Show full quote

Namrok wrote on 2021-10-05, 00:48:

Alright, despite saying I didn't have the motivation to install Win98SE again, I backed up my old install and started from scrat […]
Show full quote

Alright, despite saying I didn't have the motivation to install Win98SE again, I backed up my old install and started from scratch.

Install Win98, Via drivers, Via pci latency patch, SBLive drivers, DirectX6, and... things were weird.

I though I had installed the drivers for the CT4780 off the Liveware 3.0 CD and had them work. They didn't. Gave me the old "Pretends to play audio but nothing happens". Whatever, I ran Blood 2 anyways and it was also weird. It was running at 60 fps! But the game appeared to be stuck. Nothing was happening. Just a view of the subway car you start the game on, and no cutscene actually playing to kick things off.

I figure, ok, I'll install those drivers off MSFN that always worked. And they do! Except now DirectX 6 is complaining that it can't initialize direct sound, and Blood won't even launch anymore.

Ok, I install DirectX 7, and find myself back where I started. If I'm staring at a blank wall, maybe 30 fps. A character on the screen? 15 fps.

For shits and giggle I tried having it output over the AWE64 in my system instead of the SBLive, to no noticeable difference.

This is very, very strange.

From your words I got the idea your problems started when you installed the Sound Blaster drivers.
It would have been good if you tried launching Blood 2 before installing the sound drivers to see what happens.

Also, a lot of Sound Blaster Live models can be installed with the Audigy driver, there´s a Phil´s Computer Lab video tutorial on that.

Reading over the steps for this, it appears installed DirectX9.0a is a requirement, and I'm not sure that's the best idea in my circumstance. But I may get around to it at some point and see what happens. I have a spare SD card I can use to fiddle with Win98 installs.

Well I did some testing. I was able to get the game to run after enabling triple buffering, I also disabled movies for good measure. I set the resolution to 640*480*16 and set to max details.

The game will cruise along at about 35-40 FPS with no action on the screen, however as soon as gun fire and a lot of actors on the screen it will tank to about 15-17fps. So very similar to what Namrok is seeing.

In software render mode I get a pretty much locked 10fps.

Now this is version 1.0 no patches installed, and I checked my Direct X version it is 7.0.
System Specs:
PC Chips m571 512k cache
K6-3+ 83*6@ 500mhz
128MB PC 133 CL3
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI , stock clocks.
40GB HDD
Win98SE
Aureal Vortex 1

I'm using the latest 3dfx reference drivers on a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
128MB RAM, Standard 60GB HDD Win98SE with no patches installed.
Installed the game to HDD using Daemon tools, no disc reading.
DMA is enabled on drive.
System is fairly optimized with tight timings/cache
Same system gets about 40-45fps in Unreal on Castle flyby timedemo.

Hard to believe that Unreal is less demanding than Blood2

Yeah, I also started over on my rig. Fresh install of Win98. Only install via drivers, gf2 drivers and the version of DX6 on the blood cd. Performs no better.

Maybe this is just how Blood performed, and my memories of playing on a humble p233 with a Riva TNT are very thickly rose tinted.

Edit: Yeah, I tried a bunch of other things, just to see. I tried about 5 more versions of Nvidia drivers from 5.32 to 21.81, to no effect. I tried the Audigy drivers, which did work on my system, and involved installing DirectX 9.0a, but it provided no performance relief. Also EAX didn't seem to want to work.

Now I kind of wonder how Blood 2 performs on say, a Pentium II 400.

Sorry, I haven´t had the time to test myself until yesterday.

I had the impression the game ran better, but I was wrong, it is not the case!
Just like you both have described, it runs in the middle 30s (when not much is going on) and falls to 17FPS (when shootings occur).
When you get close to walls or step into small rooms, the FPS go up to middle 40s.

This is with Via MVP4 chipset, K6-2 (not plus) 500, Voodoo2 12MB (latest reference driver) onboard ESS audio, directX7.0a, W98Se.
Neither VIA PCI Latency nor Memory Interleave Enabler patches are applied.

I haven´t noticed relevant differences when running the game at 640x480 instead of 800x600,
Changing from Max Details to Medium doesn´t produce much difference either, maybe 4FPS more.

Settings:

Voodoo2 800x600, when not much is going on:

Voodoo2 800x600, some action happening:

Voodoo2 800x600, close to walls, no action:

Tnt2 m64 800x600, when not much is going on:

As Gmlb256 suggested I tried Shogo too. Very similar performance. Changing from 640x480 to 800x600 does affect perfomance in this case though (can be around a 10FPS difference in some instances):

Shogo, Voodoo2 640x480, outside, some action going on:

Shogo, Voodoo2 800x600, outside, some action going on::

Shogo, Voodoo2 640x480, outside, nothing going on:

Shogo, Voodoo2 640x480, inside:

I find this behaviour weird, as Jasin Natael said, this same setup runs Unreal much better. Not to mention Quake II (with 3DNow patch) which is most of the time above 60FPS. Even Quake3 gets better performance at 640x480 than Blood II and Shogo...

I´m thinking this is not related to video cards, since you both have better cards but get quite similar performance.
It could be this game engine (LithTech) in particular doesn´t like either VIA (MVP3/MVP4) chipset or K6-2 CPUs much...

The only other game I had trouble with this chipset+CPU combination, was POD (no ingame sound). But that could be related to the onboard sound too.

Something is up. I'm thinking it is a issue with the FPU in the K6 architecture and not the chipset, since I don't have the VIA chipset in my rig it is SiS.
I do have a a Pentium MMX 166 I could install to test with but I'd rather not as I had serious pains getting the K6-3+ to work properly and I'd rather not fight that battle again.
I do have a few different PIII machines that I could test with. I don't have a PII 400 but I do have a PIII 450 Katmai somewhere that I can try to test with.
The main problem is finding the time. The only fully set up PIII I have right now is a socket 370 and it has a 1GHZ Coppermine installed, I'd have to dig out a slot 1 system to try the 450 one.
But I am curious....

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-06, 14:11:

Something is up. I'm thinking it is a issue with the FPU in the K6 architecture and not the chipset, since I don't have the VIA […]
Show full quote

Something is up. I'm thinking it is a issue with the FPU in the K6 architecture and not the chipset, since I don't have the VIA chipset in my rig it is SiS.
I do have a a Pentium MMX 166 I could install to test with but I'd rather not as I had serious pains getting the K6-3+ to work properly and I'd rather not fight that battle again.
I do have a few different PIII machines that I could test with. I don't have a PII 400 but I do have a PIII 450 Katmai somewhere that I can try to test with.
The main problem is finding the time. The only fully set up PIII I have right now is a socket 370 and it has a 1GHZ Coppermine installed, I'd have to dig out a slot 1 system to try the 450 one.
But I am curious....

All right, it is not the chipset then, since yours is SIS.
Then it should be LithTech+K6-2 CPU

I do have a couple slot1 (PII 450 and PIII 750) around to test it, but If I recall properly it ran more than ok in those.
Will check and post results when I find the time.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-06, 14:11:

I do have a a Pentium MMX 166 I could install to test with but I'd rather not as I had serious pains getting the K6-3+ to work properly and I'd rather not fight that battle again.

I share your pain considering that I had to deal with POST issues on several BIOS versions when installing the K6-2+ CPU on a Socket 7 motherboard with an Intel 430VX chipset.

On a hunch I googled for Blood 2 3Dnow patch and IDK if all roads leads to Vogons or something but it pulled up this which might be illuminating.. My K6-II machine