Limpem wrote on 2021-06-28, 12:16:

Thanks! :D Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F […]
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Thanks! 😁
Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F4 or F2 on the keyboard).
There is a frame-limit of 30FPS, but especially in larger area's the framerate drops to 20'ish on my system at 1024x768.
It's possible to improve performance with single-buffering (I think F9) which makes it better, but I am very curious if the higher clocks would solve this as well 😁

On what CPU and clock speed?

Limpem wrote on 2021-06-28, 12:16:

Thanks! :D Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F […]
Show full quote

Thanks! 😁
Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F4 or F2 on the keyboard).
There is a frame-limit of 30FPS, but especially in larger area's the framerate drops to 20'ish on my system at 1024x768.
It's possible to improve performance with single-buffering (I think F9) which makes it better, but I am very curious if the higher clocks would solve this as well 😁

From testing it looks like ~20fps is about the limit on outdoor areas at 80MHz in 1024x768. Single buffer takes it up to 27-29 or so.

1024 is still a bit much for this card. Testing with Tomb Raider Demo on P3 1GHz.

When testing Quake 2/HL1 you only get ~2fps+ increase at 80MHz. About a 10-12% increase or so.

So IMHO it isn't worth moding an existing PCX2 card, they are rare and I would only do it if you are really keen. I will run mine at 80MHz though, because at least in Quake 2 it is enough of a difference, although Quake 2 you can use other cards that are better suited.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2021-07-05, 11:52:

From testing it looks like ~20fps is about the limit on outdoor areas at 80MHz in 1024x768. Single buffer takes it up to 27-29 o […]
Show full quote

Limpem wrote on 2021-06-28, 12:16:

Thanks! :D Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F […]
Show full quote

Thanks! 😁
Tomb Raider doesn't have a built-in benchmark, but you can display the current fps (I think with F3 but it might be F4 or F2 on the keyboard).
There is a frame-limit of 30FPS, but especially in larger area's the framerate drops to 20'ish on my system at 1024x768.
It's possible to improve performance with single-buffering (I think F9) which makes it better, but I am very curious if the higher clocks would solve this as well 😁

From testing it looks like ~20fps is about the limit on outdoor areas at 80MHz in 1024x768. Single buffer takes it up to 27-29 or so.

1024 is still a bit much for this card. Testing with Tomb Raider Demo on P3 1GHz.

When testing Quake 2/HL1 you only get ~2fps+ increase at 80MHz. About a 10-12% increase or so.

So IMHO it isn't worth moding an existing PCX2 card, they are rare and I would only do it if you are really keen. I will run mine at 80MHz though, because at least in Quake 2 it is enough of a difference, although Quake 2 you can use other cards that are better suited.

Thanks a lot for testing this!
I run my powervr with a 850 Mhz Tualatin (1133S @ 100Mhz FSB) and it seems performance for Tomb Raider is quite similar to my system with a 66 Mhz PCX2.
Won't be modding the card then, would hate to break the card in the process 😀

Pcx2 suffering from the 33mhz bus speed, especially when it overclocked. I recommend to raise bus clock to 40 or even to 44mhz if your mobo allows. And, once again, it hates chipsets above bx.

Reference point: q2 640x480 all default, map demo.dm2 should give 26.7fps @ 80mhz, 44mhz pci. Or even slightly more.

As i remember at default clocks Pcx2 gives about 21.6 fps in that benchamark

Thanks Anthony for quake2 results I have:

640x480 16bit
24.2 fps 80MHz
21.5 fps 66MHz

I'm currently running i815 chipset, no overclocks.

So that is good but also very good to know about pci speed etc. I will try this in future.

Not worth frying a pcx2 to get marginally better fps in games that don't run well on them to begin with my 2 cents stick with playing mw2 re1 and whatever games have superior ports which are the only relevant reasons to play with the cards pushing the cards way past their limits to not even achieve what's considered playable frame rate is a waste

Ordered a new heatsink, but ordered 55mm instead of 53, luckily fan was just the right size.

Let's look closely at some PVR2 texels

So... some interesting (to me) tweets came up about "gaussian" texture filtering. I believe it's about the filtering in Flight Unlimited, which looks similar to PCX2's alpha texturing (think about the blocky lightmaps in GLQ / Q2 / HL / Unreal).
https://twitter.com/nothings/status/1426643521700728832

Just dropping this here for reference (for some future implementation 👀 ).

Tomb Raider has an undocumented PC98 compatibilty mode with the PowerVR patches. You start it with "tombpcx2 pc98", the pcx1 version has it too. When you run with "info" it says "NEC PC98 compatibility mode.". I found about it with a text editor. I tried on a pc but as expected it doesn't work, it goes back to the dos prompt with the wrong resolution. Patches for the other graphics cards don't seem to have this option, although I haven't tried them all.

Its very useful info thank you!
It means that PC-98 at least have one 3d accelerated game
i found only video cards for this platform like:
NEC Mystique (MSI API)
NEC PCX1/2 (PowerSGL API)
probably other card(s) for PC-98 that deliver 3d graphical API(s) also exist?
Seems PC-98 is the same IBM PC MS DOS but modified specially for Japan?

I think other tombrider patches can reveal some questions ...

added to 3d accelerators on other platforms not PC

Ordered a new/remake Neon 250!

https://www.facebook.com/100014167215786/post … 8617865034/?d=n

KyroToon, for those curious of what that looked like. Also a mascot?

mwdmeyer wrote on 2021-11-11, 11:58:

Ordered a new/remake Neon 250!

https://www.facebook.com/100014167215786/post … 8617865034/?d=n

Got it up and running, need to do some more tweaking though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9X-1v_CyxU

Good stuff, thanks for sharing! Someone needs to get MW2 working!

So should we start a new Neon 250 thread or keep the fun rolling here? Just calling out there are several new owners of this card, probly with questions like me. Has anyone been able to use “high texture detail” in Quake 3 without some textures obviously not loading correctly? Check the gun in the pic.

Looks like a LOD error.

Can you show shots after doing this?

r_colorMipLevels 1
devmap q3dm1

this should reveal what mip level's being used and where.

Usually on a PowerVR when there's way too much textures to thrash the TSP, it'll just skip them, and some games just stick to lower mip levels (Unreal etc) to fit them into rendering. Weapons and players are loaded last in Q3.

Cool I’ll give it a shot when I get home later, but that is exactly it, textures missing on weapons and player models, but only when “high” detail is selected.

leileilol wrote on 2022-01-20, 15:06:

Usually on a PowerVR when there's way too much textures to thrash the TSP, it'll just skip them, and some games just stick to lower mip levels (Unreal etc) to fit them into rendering. Weapons and players are loaded last in Q3.

Good to know, I had a similar issue in 3dmark2000 in the high quality tests.

Is this what you were expecting to see?