I would suggest it may be possible with a Pentium Pro 200MHz

96-wise, it'd be only really playable on a PPro+FASTVID at that res. A larger res in Quake also means a larger surfacecache as there's a wider range of surfaces to draw in more detail, and that means more work for the CPU to lerp some luxels across them.

Also you'd need a good video card with a VESA 2.0 VBE to even access 640x480.

kennyPENTIUMpowers wrote on Yesterday, 09:30:

hi guys, was quake playable at a decent framerate (25+) back in 1996 on say a P166/200? those were the fastest cpu's available […]
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hi guys,
was quake playable at a decent framerate (25+) back in 1996 on say a P166/200?
those were the fastest cpu's available at the time the game came out (mid 96)..

other game like duke3D and doom95 could do it and played decently but what about quake?

no im not taking about voodoo because GLquake didnt release till jan 97, yes there was Vquake (rendition verite oct 96) but am ignoring that..

so im guessing most people played it in lower resolution which in my mind defeats the "upgraded" (compared to duke and doom95)..

does anyone have any typical frame rates for quake/doom95/duke @640x480 on contemporary non-3daccelerated systems?

I remember like it was yesterday that, Quake was doing like 5 FPS on my Olivetti Envision powered by an AMD DX4 100 (easily overcloccable to 120 by an undocumented jumper), then I discovered that the culprit was the sound card (I don't remember how I solved the problem, possibly switching fr0m SB compatible mode to WSS).

After that it was absolutely smooth, later I got the Envision P75 (easily overcloccable to 90, see above), and obviously Quake ran even better.

Both machines were "powered" by a Trident VGA, nothing of memorable except for having the TV out and a SCART connector in addition to the usual VGA, the selection of the output was done by a very convenient physical Switch (which was an Olivetti addition). Something that Matrox and ATI managed to do well a decade later.

In short yes a Pentium 166 or 200 is more than enough to play Quake, at least at normal resolutions of the era.

I’m appalled by the lack of software-rendered-Quake-on-Pentium-Pro footage online (YT). It’s pretty much only PPro + Voodoo 1/2, as far as I can see. Maybe I’ll grab some footage from my machine later, unless someone else beats me to it.

and before anyone clever uses a Pentium Pro emulator (like PCem) for reporting results: DON'T

thank you. this is a real hardware subforum

I've benchmarked Quake in the past comparing a Pentium 200, Pentium Pro 200, and Pentium MMX 200. This is all software mode using Phil's benchmark pack.

At 640x480, the fastest performance was 18.4 FPS with the 512kb cache Pentium Pro 200 and FastVid enabled. It's technically playable, but probably not great at that FPS.

With scitech display doctor (univbe) you could have 400 x 300 or 512 x 384 and one of these already made a big difference. On my original Pentium 100 PC back in 1997/8, I played at 400 x 300 but I probably tolerated it running at 20fps

My current socket 7 system with a Pentium 233 MMX only manages 17 fps at 640 x 480 and 54fps at 320 x 200. So I would probably run the game at 512 x 384 (if I had to!)

I don't really remember 640x480 @ high framerates 25+ in software rendering. This is the era I was used to playing that way if I wanted to play in 640x480. The 3d accelerator was really the game changer for res or higher frame rates.

Running tomb raider or quake for the first time... it was awesome. I think they looked good as they were 😀

the3dfxdude wrote on Yesterday, 21:51:

I don't really remember 640x480 @ high framerates 25+ in software rendering.

Back in the days anything above 16 fps (consistently above 16 fps) was considered smooth, a definition that is still, more or less, applicable.

Back in the days companies and magazine did't have to invent needs to sell new hw, needs were real.

3D accelerators had an instant success because the huge improvement in quality rather than FPS and resolution

Running tomb raider or quake for the first time... it was awesome. I think they looked good as they were 😀

Yes both revolutionary in different ways, albeit personally I think that TR was more revolutionary than Quake (and a bit later Unreal).

Based on my own benchmarking, no - you won't get above ~20 FPS at 640x480 in software render on anything at release time (Pentium Pro or MMX). In fact, I needed Fastvid or MTRRLFBE to get above 20FPS @ 640x480 on a Pentium II 400MHz on all but 1 of the random AGP cards in my collection.

I remember when Quake was released. There was a big difference between the "fastest available CPU" and what people actually had / could afford.

At that time, I was using an AMD 5x86 @ 133 MHz with a Trident PCI video card. 640x480 was too much for that setup. Friends and family with newish PC's had Pentiums between 75 - 133 MHz. There were still a lot of 486's out there too. Pentium MMX or Pro were high-end - you didn't really see those for another year or so, at least in a home PC. Quake's engine was a bit too ahead of CPU capability at release time, which meant most people were running at 320x200.

Shponglefan wrote on Yesterday, 17:06:

I've benchmarked Quake in the past comparing a Pentium 200, Pentium Pro 200, and Pentium MMX 200. This is all software mode using Phil's benchmark pack.

At 640x480, the fastest performance was 18.4 FPS with the 512kb cache Pentium Pro 200 and FastVid enabled. It's technically playable, but probably not great at that FPS.

I also benchmarked a Pentium MMX 200 with Phil's pack, and my results were very similar to yours.
Intel "Lonetree" (430TX) with on-board ATI 3D RAGE II:
42.5 FPS @ 320x200
14.1 FPS @ 640x480

Most of my other benchmark tests were on a Pentium II 400, for the purposes of comparing video cards I currently have. It basically confirmed CPU is the biggest factor for non-accelerated Quake. Nearly all of the AGP cards I tried were getting 19 FPS @ 640x480 without Fastvid/MTRRLFBE, and 39 FPS with. (Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, Intel 740, Riva TNT2, FX5200) There was one surprise standout - ATI Rage 128 All-In-Wonder, which managed 44.7 FPS without Fastvid, and 55.4 FPS with Fastvid. I was tempted to retest on a different board/CPU, but haven't gotten to it.

Thanks for sharing your charts - it is interesting to see. I did record my results in spreadsheet, but didn't chart any of it.

Granted these are slightly overclocked and winquake but:

And IIRC DOS quake properly setup should not be slower.
Now 25-30 fps would probably not be considered "playable" today.
But I would totally have played it back in the day =)

bofh.fromhell wrote on Today, 01:01:

Granted these are slightly overclocked and winquake but: […]
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Granted these are slightly overclocked and winquake but:

And IIRC DOS quake properly setup should not be slower.
Now 25-30 fps would probably not be considered "playable" today.
But I would totally have played it back in the day =)

30FPS . .that's what GTA 6 will be locked to on the PS5, there are a LOT of games on the PS5, Xbox, Switch that are locked to 30FPS .. so even today its considered playable by the industry and they will happily charge you AAA premium pricing for 30FPS gameplay.

Finally managed to grab some footage from my 440FX/Pentium Pro 200 (256kb)/MGA Millennium/AWE32 system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ghZ73-MSc

I threw in a little extra non-FASTVID footage for the hell of it. Gives an idea of how much FASTVID improves things (in this case, on a Matrox Millennium 2 MB).

How fast did vquake run on a rendition verite 1000 card at that time?
Would that along with a pentium pro get you closer to OPs target framerate?

The earliest Rendition cards ran VQuake around ~20fps at best.

That is why I don't own any rendition card 😀

EDIT: IIRC CGW's big Dec 96 holiday issue had benchmarks about Quake at 640x480 and then a 3d card section which included Verite cards, but I don't think the P6 is involved.

leileilol wrote on Today, 03:50:

The earliest Rendition cards ran VQuake around ~20fps at best.

apparently a bit better .. 23 seems the zone.. up massively from 13..

P51 MMX 133MHz (underclocked 233)

320x200 320x240 384x288 400x300 512x384 640x400 640x480 720x480 768x576
Matrox Mystique 37.9 33.0 -- -- -- 15.3 13.1 -- --
Rendition Verite 46.4 43.6 40.4 37.4 29.6 26.5 23.3 18.0 14.0

thats from this site : https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_pc/vquake/

pretty decent if you could afford it at the time..

Ran a few tests on my own setup as well, just for posterity.
System is a digital Venturis FX-2 with a 430TX board, MMX 233, 64MB RAM and a Voodoo Banshee. I believe the motherboard cache is just 256KB.

Running under DOS, Quake 1.06, using XMS memory, sound enabled but no CD inserted (card is a Vibra16 AFAIR).

320χ200

TimeDemo1 avg: 52,2 FPS
TimeDemo2 avg: 54.2 FPS

640χ400

TimeDemo1 avg: 22 FPS
TimeDemo2 avg: 24.1 FPS

640χ480

TimeDemo1 avg: 18.8 FPS
TimeDemo2 avg: 20.8 FPS

This is with the default viewsize that includes the weapons HUD. I didn't bother testing lower resolutions but I think 30 FPS is achievable if you run at 512x384 with a slightly reduced window.

That being said, in June 1996 the best available hardware was a Pentium 200 for consumers and Pentium Pro 200 for servers/workstations (was the 200 even out by June?). Compared to the MMX 233, the plain 200 has half the L1 cache and a deficit of 33MHz, not a huge loss but still some frames lost there.
My system is a prebuilt OEM machine, so I can't do much in terms of memory timings and optimal BIOS settings, so I'm sure some performance could be attained from such actions. On top of that, Quake loves extra L2 cache, so if you bought an expensive 512KB board you were getting a couple more frames or so.
The Voodoo Banshee on my system is also plenty fast, though I think a Matrox Millennium 1 or Mystique would probably not bottleneck Quake in any way.