Reply 20 of 105, by Mondodimotori
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swaaye wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:08:If you want to play games from like 1999 and older, a Voodoo 3 is really nice. Most of those games were developed with a Voodoo card as the primary concern. Some of them render more effects with Glide.
2000 was the turning point. 3dfx was way behind the competition in features. D3D 7 and Quake3 based games aren't so great on a Voodoo 3.
Yeah, I know that glide was king before 2000. But a Voodoo 3 would defeat two of my goals:
1. Play those games at 1024x768 with good framerates;
2. don't pay too much for the GPU.
Unfortunately 3dfx graphic cards sells like they're made of gold (and for good reason), and unles you get a top of the line one, you also won't get great performances at the resolution I'm targetting.
swaaye wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:17:RTCW should be very playable on a GF2. An 800 MHz CPU might be a problem.
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:18:I wouldn't put too much stock into minimum requirements that game developers listed in their readme files during the late 90s and early 2000s.
The goal was to sell as many copies of their games as possible, during a time when technology was moving forward at an insane pace. Hence the "optimistic" system requirements.
Yeah, I've noticed that. CPU bottlenecks were very easy to reach back then, even if you had decent CPUs way faster than those listed even in the recommended settings. Hell, I'm not even 100% sure that the reason my PC stutter while there are lots of enemies shooting at me in Max Payne is the GPU. May very well be the Athlon 1400. I recall Digital Foundry did a time capsule video on Max Payne, and Alex played it on a period correct PC with a Pentium 4 that was faster than my Athlon, and the game was still performing not optimally, often going well below 60 fps in action sequences.
And some people complain about CPU optimization of current games... I mean, at least you can get mostly 60 fps from games on the "minimum" requirements. Back then it meant "it will boot, nothing more".
SScorpio wrote on 2024-12-28, 19:43:You can run DX9 on 9X. But XP with a more recent GPU will still run correctly and at cranked settings and hundreds of FPSes.
The FX cards are also easier to get with DVI if you want to easily convert to HDMI for modern displays.
Ooh, don't worry. I know. Because I tryend 20 years ago, and I didn't even have a dedicated GPU in the PCI slot of that PC, but was using the one installed within the north bridge, a Trident 3D or something. And I still played games on it that "suggested" using Dx9. But the performances where... Let's say it was a slideshow.
But Dx9 is such a long lived API, that remanined relevant even when Dx10 and, IIRC, Dx11 launched, thus is pretty well supported even on current gen GPUs (unles you get an Intel ARC. But even there the situation is improving).
So I wouldn't worry that much about Dx9 support on this 9x machine, I'm alredy thinking about building an XP machine with late era hardware from scratch. I worry much more about older APIs support.
I also have a couple decent CRTs from the period, the one I'm using right now has optimal image quality at 1024x768 and 85hz, so a VGA output is all I need.
But I've noticed that the FX 5500 is dirty cheap and abundant on the used market. It would've been a deal done if it wasn't quite slower than the Ti 4200 (not that would matter that much with a PIII). But still, if I can afford a Ti 4200, I guess it's worth to pick one up. If I get lucky, it's one of those with the higher clocked memory, but I won't tear my clothes off if I can't get one of those.
RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-12-28, 23:39:So I tried tweaking settings in my BIOS. Disabling shadow Video BIOS, changing AGP Apperture from 64Mb to 32Mb, changing AGP speed from x2 to x1. Now RTCW seems to play OK. Even at 1024x768 32 bit. Reverting BIOS to previous settings and it still is working. So not sure what happened. I wouldn't say the framerate is high, but it is playable. I will have to find FRAPs and see what framerate is.
Misteries of PC gaming. Sometimes I just stop asking myself questions and just roll with it.