marxveix wrote on 2025-11-13, 10:03:

I have one Audio PCI 3000 with Creative ES1370 with AK4531. You think this works faster than ESS Solo1?
I tested K6II with Creative Live card,but it does not like my MVP3 or MVP3 motherboard does not like Live.

You have the fast one. ES1370/PCI64/CT4750 is the same chip and same minimal driver overhead.

There are many drivers, what driver version is good for ES1370 in Win9x?

https://archive.org/details/ensoniq-audiopci-drivers
https://archive.org/details/audio-pci-by-enso … 00-installation
https://archive.org/details/creative-sound-bl … io-pci-software

Mystery card here is cheap Ensoniq and it does not give great result by these bencmark results, was it es1370,es1371 or es1373, i dont know.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/best-sound-c … r-socket-7.html

This sounds interesting.

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-13, 11:33:

There are many drivers, what driver version is good for ES1370 in Win9x? […]
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There are many drivers, what driver version is good for ES1370 in Win9x?

https://archive.org/details/ensoniq-audiopci-drivers
https://archive.org/details/audio-pci-by-enso … 00-installation
https://archive.org/details/creative-sound-bl … io-pci-software

Mystery card here is cheap Ensoniq and it does not give great result by these bencmark results, was it es1370,es1371 or es1373, i dont know.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/best-sound-c … r-socket-7.html

Super interesting and he is right in comments (e.g. ES1370 does processing in software) but there shouldn't be any processing in the test - the card should be just pulling pre-processed wavs. It would be interesting to compare Microsoft basic drivers vs. Ensoniq's gaming drivers.

Not interesting: Creative Labs' marketing drivers. These apparently mean"everything gets resampled to 48 kHz in software before it even gets to the sound card." Resampling everything to 48 kHz is SB Live's hardware behaviour, and the biggest ES1370 drivers force the audio to behave exactly the same on the CPU. That extra step might be the FPS drop that Phil observed.

Source: https://flaterco.com/kb/audio/PCI/index.html

If Phil's only choice is to use the diver with most CPU sound processing, not the one with simplest sound delivery, I'd ask "why?"

I remember the Creative Labs control panel had binaural setup to output 3D sound from stereo inputs streams on stereo speakers - educational, but that is all software processing that would theoretically extend capabilities with any sound card and would be best disabled for FPS. Creative's installer probably unpacks a load of other stuff (luxury software wave tables, visually appealing mixers, etc.) for Windows to load into main system memory on startup and forever eat CPU cycles - and the most mature Creative Labs drivers will unlock the flashiest software routines on the CPU!

Back in the day, I used to wonder why Creative was investing in software for a practically free PCI card that they were shutting down? I assumed at the time it was actually to lead people like me towards buying the SB Live that could deliver similar capabilities with less software overhead.

Phil also mentioned A3D, but failed to distinguish between software A3D and hardware A3D. If you throw A3D or EAX at an ES1370 then that will translate into extra CPU cycles and more cache spills - hammering FPS. If you throw both A3D and EAX at an ES1370, you should expect your CPU to crawl.

And, if you are running benchmarks to compare 3D sound then Aureal Vortex (original) cards would be the most interesting baseline because games studios had time to target the original - not the rare Aureal Vortex 2.0 that emerged when the future of Aureal was in doubt. And, A3D is sophisticated - we need to see settings to know which 3D features were active in the tests.

What Phil has done is test software stacks. Phil shows us that Creative Labs shipped Ensoniq hardware with a lot of software capabilities that slow down CPUs. That also tells more about marketing than silicon.

We can assume all the benchmark results reflect a vendor's default software settings - but there is no record of what those defaults are. Phil hasn't done any hardware testing. It looks like Phil may have tested some cards without A3D enabled, some cards with A3D enabled, and not identified which of those cards are doing A3D in software.

Phil has provided an interesting list of cards for someone to test against the Aureal Vortex (original), which is the hardware that aligns best with Quake 3's A3D features. In that test, it would be good to see every card run twice - once with A3D (slow) and once without A3D (fast). And before someone does it properly, I think they should decide how they are going to tackle software EAX (slow) that Quake3 won't explicitly activate but that OS/drivers might.

Assuming EAX is purposefully disabled at driver level because it is not a feature of Quake3, my gut tells me the order from fastest to slowest will be:

Without A3D (Microsoft INF): ES1370, Yamaha. Delta, Vortex, Vortex2, SB Live!
Without A3D (Vendor INF only): ES1370, Yamaha. Delta, Vortex, Vortex2, SB Live!
Without A3D (Vendor full install): Delta, Yamaha, Vortex, Vortex2, SB Live!, Creative PCIAudio (ES1370).
With software A3D (Vendor full install): Vortex, Vortex 2, Yamaha, SB Live!, Creative PCIAudio (ES1370). Delta.
With hardware A3D (Vendor INF only): Vortex, Vortex 2. ES1370, Yamaha. Delta, SB Live!

Then my gut feeling is to expect a conclusion that discusses the two juxtaposed Quake III experiences: Ensoniq (without A3D) vs Vortex (with A3D).

Nevermind ... I was investigating something that turned out incorrect.

Phil says (in his YouTube channel) that the AudioPCI cards he has clock at 48kHz. BAM! That is spicy because Quake3 is outputting 22kHz/44kHz meaning the audio stream is being resampled to 48kHz (apparently in software - ouch!) It also means Phil is experiencing AC’97 compliant flavours of these cards, not the original Ensoniq configuration.

Ensoniq designed their ES1370 to clock at 44kHz, and resample in hardware only. So regardless of whether Quake3 outputs 22 or 44, the audio stream will be clean and handled in hardware.

In conclusion, Phil did not review a pre-AC'97 ES1370 and all my ramblings are irrelevant. But, I stand by my view that any serious Quake3 sound card review must include the Aureal Vortex (AU8820) and Ensoniq AudioPCI (ES1370) - both absent from Phil's writeup.

So whats the highest Quake 3 FPS score you achieved on your K6/k6-2/K6-3/K6-2+/K6-3+ . Vanilla and/or tweaked. The highest I achieved on my K6-3+ 400@630mhz is in the forties, and on my maximum tweaked version I achieved 218 frames per second so far. This with a Geforce 2 GTS. My tweaked Quake3 has a modified Quake3.exe ,dlls, config file, texture pak, compressed sounds etc.

Necrodude wrote on 2025-11-15, 11:25:

So whats the highest Quake 3 FPS score you achieved on your K6/k6-2/K6-3/K6-2+/K6-3+ . Vanilla and/or tweaked. The highest I achieved on my K6-3+ 400@630mhz is in the forties, and on my maximum tweaked version I achieved 218 frames per second so far. This with a Geforce 2 GTS. My tweaked Quake3 has a modified Quake3.exe ,dlls, config file, texture pak, compressed sounds etc.

I’m in more suspense than anyone, since my Socket 7 rig isn’t with me right now (and IIRC I don't have a K6-3).
But 218 FPS is a lot for a K6-3+, so could you post a screenshot of the timedemo run (console output) from your tweaked build?
I’m genuinely curious how your modified .exe and .dll setup is reporting FPS and whether the game is actually running the full rendering path.

I can start by posting a old video from a early version that was WIP. It is way faster today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhQz_MtvZa4

I will get back to you with a fresh video. I just need to hook up the computer and shoot some fotage.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-15, 14:37:

Necrodude wrote on 2025-11-15, 11:25:

So whats the highest Quake 3 FPS score you achieved on your K6/k6-2/K6-3/K6-2+/K6-3+ . Vanilla and/or tweaked. The highest I achieved on my K6-3+ 400@630mhz is in the forties, and on my maximum tweaked version I achieved 218 frames per second so far. This with a Geforce 2 GTS. My tweaked Quake3 has a modified Quake3.exe ,dlls, config file, texture pak, compressed sounds etc.

I’m genuinely curious how your modified .exe and .dll setup is reporting FPS and whether the game is actually running the full rendering path.

Its no cheating. I can assure you. The exe is compiled with visual studio 2005. It it not compiled by me. A friend of my did the work. But all I know is that the code is faster. He meantioned something about disabling virtual machines or something like that. Something about using recompiled dll:s. Im not sure.

You can try the patch if you want.
You just need to have the 1.32 point release patch installed before you do.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HdxPbRuDk82M … iew?usp=sharing

This is the #Quake3toTheMax patch. It is a speed patch/mod that includes the best tweaks that we got from the #Quake3toTheMax competetion we held a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0UaSexTKsI

This patch aims to make Quake3 as fast as possible. It will probably Quadruple your FPS count, compared to regular Quake3 with vanilla settings.
I am not Kidding!

Installation:
Just drag and drop the files in your quake3 folder.
If the game for some reason decides not to start. Try another config file. Remember, if you try this, also delete the q3config.cfg file in your baseq3 folder. The autoexec file writes it info to the q3config file.
The default autoexec config file is the fastest.
This patch is also modular. You can choose if you want compressed textures or sounds.
In the Baseq3 folder and you will find different pak . You will find the following files:
pak9 - map animations This file turns of all the moving stuff on the maps.
pak9 - sounds This file includes low quality faster sounds.
pak9 - texures This file includes compressed faster textures.
pak9 - GFX This file includes compressed explosion effects etc.
If you dont want compressed textures or sounds, or any of the stuff, just remove the pak files you want.
This Patch also includes @1984 exe with SMP support ,and "low Quality Audio" support. Different speed configs are also included.

Did some benching on My modded Quake3 today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBAHsUUdeKM