VOGONS


First post, by kashmoney

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For some reason I'm having major FPS drops anytime there is colored lighting in opengl games. I've tested Quake 2 and Half-Life.
If I shoot the blaster in Quake 2 for example, or certain areas of the map have colored lights, the framerate goes from 60 to probably around 10.
In Half-Life it was really obvious, perfectly solid framerate through the beginning of the game, then when I got the flashlight, it is around 10 fps when activated.

Celeron 600, Windows 98SE. I've tried both driver versions that support the G450 on Phils Computer labs website (Feb.2022 and May 2002), it made no difference. I've also updated the Intel 815ep chipset drivers.

I can't find anyone else with the same issue, I saw this youtube channel that demo's the video card in quake 2 and the uploader seemed to have no issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC66sURd0jc&l … x4jC9l0hB80AVS5

Any ideas on what to try?

Reply 1 of 13, by paradigital

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Have you tried different driver versions? I remember when testing my Matrox Parhelia PCI-X that it’s Q2 performance was awful.

I then changed driver version and it was a drastic improvement.

Reply 2 of 13, by kashmoney

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Like I said I've tried both the driver versions from phils computer labs that support the G450, it made no difference.

I just tried another older driver from Dell for the G450 on win98, version 6.07.033. It's behaving the exact same way.
Also just tried version 6.03.026.

Reply 3 of 13, by lawyerpepper

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kashmoney wrote on 2023-01-18, 17:27:
For some reason I'm having major FPS drops anytime there is colored lighting in opengl games. I've tested Quake 2 and Half-Life. […]
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For some reason I'm having major FPS drops anytime there is colored lighting in opengl games. I've tested Quake 2 and Half-Life.
If I shoot the blaster in Quake 2 for example, or certain areas of the map have colored lights, the framerate goes from 60 to probably around 10.
In Half-Life it was really obvious, perfectly solid framerate through the beginning of the game, then when I got the flashlight, it is around 10 fps when activated.

Celeron 600, Windows 98SE. I've tried both driver versions that support the G450 on Phils Computer labs website (Feb.2022 and May 2002), it made no difference. I've also updated the Intel 815ep chipset drivers.

I can't find anyone else with the same issue, I saw this youtube channel that demo's the video card in quake 2 and the uploader seemed to have no issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC66sURd0jc&l … x4jC9l0hB80AVS5

Any ideas on what to try?

I see the same thing (P233MMX + G450 PCI) - it's just not something that the G450 can do well. Set cl_lights 0 in the console as a workaround.

A bit more info here: https://github.com/yquake2/yquake2/issues/147

Reply 4 of 13, by dr.zeissler

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A really big impact is using 32Bit colordeph. I am using 16Bit for everything on my G550 and 16Bit look s compared to other card's on 16Bit very good.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 5 of 13, by lawyerpepper

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dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-01-19, 09:08:

A really big impact is using 32Bit colordeph. I am using 16Bit for everything on my G550 and 16Bit look s compared to other card's on 16Bit very good.

From my testing, 32 vs 16 bit color doesn't factor in to this specific issue. On a P233MMX/G450 PCI combo I see 16 bit running a bit (<10%) faster overall, but either takes huge hit from colored light effects.

Reply 6 of 13, by dr.zeissler

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It's a big thing on 800x600 16Bit vs. 32Bit and as far as I can tell. D3D seems to be better than OGL.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 7 of 13, by lawyerpepper

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dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-01-19, 13:03:

It's a big thing on 800x600 16Bit vs. 32Bit and as far as I can tell. D3D seems to be better than OGL.

How big of a difference are you seeing between 16 & 32 bit color? This is what I get (with cl_lights 0):

640x480x32: 25
800x600x32: 24.5
1024x768x32: 22.5

640x480x16: 25.3
800x600x16: 25.5
1024x768x16: 25.3

OTOH, I'm clearly CPU-limited by the P233MMX, so it's quite possible that there is a bigger difference in a GPU-limited rig.

Reply 8 of 13, by Garrett W

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OP, is your card an AGP or PCI one? Also, what kind of resolutions are you running said games at?

G450 is a pretty late chip, I think it came out in the Fall of 2000, as such you can't really use older drivers. There are two driver sets on VOGONS Drivers that you may try, one is the original CD that came with the card and the others are the latest drivers released for Win9x sometime in mid to late 2002.

Have you installed any unofficial Service Packs or addons on your Win98SE system? What version of DirectX are you running?

Do you have an accurate way to measure FPS or are relying on instincts and feel? Perhaps double buffered VSync is engaged and what you're experiencing are sudden jumps from 60FPS to 30 and even 20FPS, although it does sound pretty severe. Perhaps try at 640x480 and see if the issue still persists. Perhaps you could install a version of PowerStrip, preferably some early version from the 3.x line, and disable Vsync in OpenGL, see if that makes a difference.

Reply 9 of 13, by swaaye

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https://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive/win_9x/
But yeah you'd have to figure out where G450 support begins.

I wouldn't think Quake 2 would be a problem for G450 as long as the resolution is 800x600 - 1024x768.

Reply 10 of 13, by leileilol

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Wonder how it'll be through GLDirect or a similar GL->D3D wrapper. I'd imagine there's no optimization on RGB texture updates (for some supposed production reason as Matrox overlaps into the professional market), and Quake2/Half-Life are from before BGRA wisdom.

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long live PCem

Reply 11 of 13, by kashmoney

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Garrett W wrote on 2023-01-19, 15:36:
OP, is your card an AGP or PCI one? Also, what kind of resolutions are you running said games at? […]
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OP, is your card an AGP or PCI one? Also, what kind of resolutions are you running said games at?

G450 is a pretty late chip, I think it came out in the Fall of 2000, as such you can't really use older drivers. There are two driver sets on VOGONS Drivers that you may try, one is the original CD that came with the card and the others are the latest drivers released for Win9x sometime in mid to late 2002.

Have you installed any unofficial Service Packs or addons on your Win98SE system? What version of DirectX are you running?

Do you have an accurate way to measure FPS or are relying on instincts and feel? Perhaps double buffered VSync is engaged and what you're experiencing are sudden jumps from 60FPS to 30 and even 20FPS, although it does sound pretty severe. Perhaps try at 640x480 and see if the issue still persists. Perhaps you could install a version of PowerStrip, preferably some early version from the 3.x line, and disable Vsync in OpenGL, see if that makes a difference.

The card is PCI.

I've tried 4 driver versions:
6.03.026 from August 2000 (this is the one on Vogons driver page called "Matrox G450 Driver CD")
6.07.033 from October 2000
6.82.016 from February 2002
6.83.017 from May 2002

None of the different drivers have made any discernable difference.

I haven't installed any unofficial service packs, or any updates period. It's a fresh Win98SE install.

I have Directx 7.0 installed.

I've tested at 640x480 and 800x600, the results are the same.

Here is a video of what I'm experiencing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WWWCEAkJ55s

Reply 12 of 13, by kashmoney

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lawyerpepper wrote on 2023-01-18, 22:58:

I see the same thing (P233MMX + G450 PCI) - it's just not something that the G450 can do well. Set cl_lights 0 in the console as a workaround.

A bit more info here: https://github.com/yquake2/yquake2/issues/147

Yes, this did help while shooting a gun in quake 2, there are still other real-time lights in the environment that will make the game slow way down though.
I guess fundamentally I'm still confused as to why it's happening.

Actually now that I look at it the video testing done by this youtuber I linked to earlier (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC66sURd0jc&l … x4jC9l0hB80AVS5), I believe he has an AGP card. So maybe it does have something to do with the interface.

Reply 13 of 13, by Putas

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kashmoney wrote on 2023-01-20, 16:37:

So maybe it does have something to do with the interface.

The bridge chip is an extra variable. Still weird for a simple game like Quake2.