VOGONS


Reply 60 of 71, by ruthan

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Radeon 4670 is interesting one without enhancer its slimmer even with it in Doom its slow, but in Quake 1 and 2 its quite fast.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 61 of 71, by AvalonH

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I started playing Quake again but wanted to try it out with the on-board Intel graphics chip X4500 (on a gigabyte G41M-ES2l motherboard). Using a Pentium E5400 @3GHZ. (300mhz FSB x10 multiplier), 4GB DDR2 (memory speed is fsb x2 - 600mhz). In the Bios the x4500 has 64MB RAM.
In DOS this is surprisingly very fast.
Results are on Dos7.1 with only himem.sys and umbpci running (no emm386).

Quake
320x200 - 678 fps
640x480 - 223 fps
800x600 - 152 fps
1024x768 - 98 fps
1280x1024 - 61 fps

Quake with MTRRLFBE v1.5 WC enable on VGA and LFB
320x200 - 931 fps
640x480 - 385 fps
800x600 - 269 fps
1024x768 - 184 fps
1280x1024 - 126 fps

In quake console I used vid_nopageflip = 0 (page flipping used) for all resolutions. Also I had to set vid_wait = 0 to disable vsync otherwise capped at 60fps. Disabling page flipping(vid_nopageflip = 1) was slower with the X4500. for example at 1280x1024 result was 120 insead of 126fps. Surprised that page flipping offered so little performance boost.

Couple of problems I have noticed. On fast video cards and CPU combinations (>2GH+) fastvid is not reliable. It runs, completes and reports everything as enabled, but it does not in fact enable LFB. Also Vspeed.exe as a benchmark breaks giving negative bandwidth results on very fast cards and cpus.

I now use mtrrlfbe v1.5 instead of fastvid to enable VGA and Linear Frame Buffer Write Combining. It works no matter how modern and fast the system is in DOS, and in the rare instances it can't enable write combing it correctly reports so.
To replace vspeed I use VESATEST v1.47. You can test any resolution but I just use 640 x 480 x 8 (256 color) to get an idea of the speed of a video card before and after enabling write combining. It scales well no matter how modern and fast the system. I use the following exact command:
'Vesatest 640 480 8 BS' for bank switching and 'Vesatest 640 480 8 LFB' for Linear frame buffer benchmarks. You can also use it to test if vesa modes actually display properly like 1600x1200 (x4500 supports this mode too).
Results for the X4500 running vesatest

640 x 480 8bit
BS - 477 fps - 139MB/s
LFB - 487 fps - 142MB/s

640 x 480 8bit (with mtrrlfbe WC enabled)
BS - 10460 fps - 3064MB/s
LFB - 19063 fps - 5584MB/s

Reply 62 of 71, by ruthan

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Thanks,
interesting results, i never really though about big results with old Intel integrated GPU, because there are usually pretty bad for gaming.

I tried to add results to my online sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QPf4V … dit?usp=sharing

I need some more info, if Dual channel is used or not? Also would be nice to post numbers for:
- Doom
- Quake2Dos
- all for Quake with nopage flip
- PathBench for CPU - it take few seconds to measure

All binaries for testing are linked above.

Last edited by ruthan on 2023-05-22, 20:43. Edited 1 time in total.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 63 of 71, by ruthan

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I added in online sheet at the bottom some PCem results for comparision.

PCem is here for long time, but i always had some issues with it and i still have, but for some use cases it would be good/best solution.

Overview (+/- logic):
+ It using MB real Bioses not just Vmware crippled one with few options..
+ Dos sound is working..
+ you have use 1 disk image for multiple different virtual machines configurations
+ i can emulate anything from old CP/M, DOS, OS/2 to Windows 2000, even WinXP slideshow is possible.. and with faster CPU and some code optimalizations it could be only better
+ its emulating whole machine, is not just framework to run SW as Dosbox
+ for configuration is used simple gui, no any text configs etc,
+ its emulating anything from XT to K6-III+ 500 MHz with Voodoo 2 SLi, if you have enough raw CPU power
+ if have roms, you can really emulate lots of different videocards and sound cards, you can choose PS/2 or Serial mouse, map joystick to some modern controller, enable networking
+ its only solution where DOS/Win 3Dfx emulation just working quite nice.. Virtual box or Vmware will probably never implement it, because of 3rd party roms needed etc.. and QEMU awkward implementation as usually, if you are brave see Topic 60950
- you need roms
- disk controllers emulation seems to suck, at least for me..
- you need for faster machine lots of horsepower
- so far i have some problem with disk controllers..
- some akward problems and almost not info for debugging
- bad documentation and not enough info

I hope that someone here has more experience with PCem, i have so far, lots of problems with disk operations - i very often have to resave disk image because its get corrupted, sometimes some disc operation from unknown reason take lots of time.. and for some operations are disk operations always very slow.

So for example i can run Q2DOS within, but first game loading take minutes... and menu is slowest part of game.. when i try to load timedemo i see that assets are loaded very slowly, but when i use menu to start new game is not so slow.. and gameplay speed is fine.. its annoying.
Q1DOS is working fine with 3Dfx, unless i get that occasional storage slowdown.. i can play long session without it.. maybe solution would be use emulated SCSI instead of IDE, but im not able to make it working..
Details are here: https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic. … &p=13162#p13162

Officially is Q2Dos reported as working:)
https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic. … 24&p=2114#p2114

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 64 of 71, by ruthan

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I added Riva 128 AGP test on SS7 (i wanted this card for long time) - it has only old AGP interface so its not working on my more modern MBs.
+ Geforce 2 MX 400 on SS7 AGP + Core 2 - here results are quite good. Proper Geforce 2 would be probably better, but im still hunting for it..
I also added some PCem test, faster real CPU really dont help, i expected that Core i9 9900k and Core i7 4770S would show some significant different.
And Qemu 4.2 DOS machine on Win10 1909, here im unable to make Quake 1 Demo working with 640x480, emulated cirrus graphics seems to not support it, at least not without some addition VBE 2 driver, other drivers giving me Error: Unable to load Vesa pallete, but with Q2DOS 640x480 and 1024x768 are working, but its quite slower than Vmware or Virtualbox, but other tests are faster that these.

Otherwise if you interesting about setup QEMU dos machine on Windows and can look here for details:
https://www.win-raid.com/t6017f53-Windows-SE- … .html#msg104395 // Its original Win98 thread envoled from Win XP on modern HW thread, someone was arguing that its better to use QEMU for all these XP and older stuff.. you can passthrough whole videocard into it on Linux, but at least on Windows is not so great for DOS, for Win98 we now have PCem with 3dfx, so it really i guess make sense for Linux KVM and Videocard pass-through.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 65 of 71, by ruthan

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I added X58 with new Cheap Core i7 920 + Radeon 460 test, with enhancers its running fast enough - 60 FPS in every test.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 66 of 71, by ruthan

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I added tests of Matrox G200 MMS 32MB PCI abomination and Geforce 8800 GT (with enhancers is nice card 60+ FPS everywhere) i got it even with big passive cooler so no more vacuum cleaner noise..

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 67 of 71, by ruthan

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New cards tested - i finally got some newer PCI cards and radeons R 7xxx and Rage 128:
Geforce 2 MX 200 PCI
Radeon 7000 PCi Sapphire
Radeon 7200 AGP
ATI Rage 128 Pro 32MB AGP
ATI Rage 128 Ultra 32MB AGP
ATI 7000 64MD DDR AGP
Geforce 5600 256MB AGP MSI
Geforce MX4000 AGP MSI
ATI MACH64-VT 2MB PCI - previously i had only 1 MB variant, so you can check difference
Geforce 8600GT PCI-E

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 68 of 71, by ruthan

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New cards tested in last month:
S3 Trio 3D 4MB AGP
S3 Trio 3D/2x 4MB AGP
Matrox G200 AGP 8 MB
Radeon 9250 AGP Gigabyte
Geforce FX 5500 PCI
Radeon 9600 AGP
Radeon 3650 AGP
Radeon 9100 AGP
Geforce 6800 GT PCIE Aopen
Geforce GT 240 PCI-E Asus
Geforce 9600GT Asus
Radeon 3850 PCI-E
CyberPro2000 2 MB PCI
S3 Trio 3D/2x 8MB PCI
S3Trio64V2/DX 1MB PCI

So coverage is getting better and better.

Last edited by ruthan on 2020-11-08, 12:40. Edited 1 time in total.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 69 of 71, by ruthan

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Geforce 5900 XT AGP and Riva TNT 16 MB AGP tested.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 70 of 71, by ruthan

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New cards tested:
Intel 740 AGP
SIS 6326 PCI
ATI RAGE TURBO AGP
Matrox Milennium II 4MB AGP
Radeon 2600 PRO PCI-E
Riva TNT 2 AGP 32mb
Matrox Millenium PCI 4MB
Radeon HD 5450 MSI
S3 Savage 4 Pro AGP
TNT2 PRO 32MB AGP
Matrox G200 AGP
Voodoo 1 - only Q2Dos and 1 resolution, i made it working only with slow SS7 - K6-2+ 500 MHz machine.

I finally got tired with Zoho performance, so i moved sheet to Google Sheets - original link still has link to new one:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QPf4V … dit?usp=sharing

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 71 of 71, by ruthan

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New bunch of cards tested:

Radeon 6670 GDDR5
Matrox G200 PCI
Geforce PCX 5750
Radeon 4350 PCI-E
Geforce 7300GT
Geforce 6600 Asus
Radeon 3850 PCI-E
Radeon 4870 PCI-E
Permedia 2 AGP 8MB
Savage 4 LT AGP
ATI Rage Pro Turbo PCI 8MB
Mostly slimmers from point of view high performance dos gaming.

I also finally also with new builds and knowledge was able to complete all benchmarks with PCem and Qemu3Dfx(no CPU all accel, HAX, WHPX) for both SW rendering and Dos 3Dfx - Q1 shareware for this test was replaced by Q1DOS which have 3dfx version and in Q2Dos were used also 3Dfx opengl api too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QPf4V … dit?usp=sharing

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.