VOGONS


First post, by obobskivich

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Background:
I'm kicking around the idea of moving my V2 into my XP box (after I re-work it with a newer, faster P4 😈), since there's only a handful of games I own that can even use glide. And with one exception I know all of them to work under XP (the exception is Nuclear Strike, and I just haven't tested it with XP yet), so I was thinking why not conflate everything into one system.

I know there are third-party drivers that reportedly support this, and I know there's the W2k drivers (which I've got installed on a W2k system with my V2 currently, and it does fine with Half-Life via the miniport driver), but I'm hoping to hear from someone that's attempted it as to whether or not there's big problems to be expected or not. Should I try using the W2k drivers? Or just go straight to third-party drivers? Or scrap the whole idea? 😕

Reply 2 of 3, by Gamecollector

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1) Nuclear Strike works in Xp after several ACT fixes.
ACT fixes are - EmulateGetDiskFreeSpace and ProfilesGetFolderPath for ins.exe, EmulateSlowCPU, EmulateToolHelp32 and FileVersionInfoLie for launcher.exe.
2) I use retail W2k 1.02.00 drivers for my Voosoo2 in WinXp. Works perfectly. The only trouble is - Win2000 graphical sub-system was included in the OS core. So - you must set 2 Voodoo2 services (fxgpio and fxptl) as system services.
Currently only 4 games not work correctly - FIFA 99, World Cup 98 (can freeze, game engine bug, can be fixed by voodooa.dll/voodoo2a.dll replacement), Total Club Manager 2003 (game engine bug), Ultimate Hunt Challenge (freezes before simulation, works in Win9x).

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 3 of 3, by obobskivich

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Alright got around to trying it today in XP Pro SP2. I hooked up the V2 to a second monitor just to be sure it was actually engaging when it needed to (advantage of having two monitors to test with). Anyways, tried two different unofficial drivers from 3dfxzone.it - FastVoodoo XP 4.0 and LegendgrafiX 2.0. The short story is: it doesn't work, and the card is coming out, and Windows is being re-installed.

The long version is: both install very nicely, neither created instability (which the release notes said could happen), there was no problem having them hooked up with the GeForce FX (and I had it on pass-through during installing Windows - no problems there). LegendgrafiX is in a language I don't speak (I can't even tell you what language it is) so that might've been part of the problem there, but it just never let the card enable. FastVoodoo XP 4.0 would have the card show up in CS, but anything higher than 512x*** and it would crash, and when it did render it had MASSIVE problems with lighting and texturing. Under 2k the card had no problems doing 640x480 or 800x600 - looked pretty indiscernible from the WildcatVP when I tested that out. At this point I'm kind of "done" with it, and I'm not spending anymore time screwing with it - the system is getting nuked and re-done with a clean XP install (the uninstallers on both of these drivers are a joke - both CTD with no error) and just going with the FX. The V2 is going to go back in either the W2k system, or a Win9x box.

On a more positive note, the 5900XT at stock with the new P4 scores a nudge under 17k in 3D01SE (16875 if I'm remembering right - I have screens but didn't take them off the machine); OC'd to 450MHz core it does about 500 pts higher. So the 5800U should be doing 17-17.5k (or better) based on how it compared to the XT on the 2.0GHz and the 450MHz results. That's almost 10k pts increase and pretty substantial increase in measured FPS in all of the tests - hopefully that translates to games as well (not that anything on the 2.0GHz is having problems, but faster is nice). And it's quieter thanks to the giant heatsink it came with. 😀