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Is Deus Ex supposed to be so slow in Glide?

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First post, by rockman_XXX

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Hi. I finally built my late '90/early 2000 gaming rig and to my disappointment just when I finally could play Deus Ex in all its Glide glory with a 3dfx card I realized that the cards just can't handle the game, it runs horrible. First I tried the GOTY version I thought the problem might be because it was updated but then I downloaded the demo and the performance is identical. Tested on Voodoo 3 3000 AGP and Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, with latest official and then beta/unofficial drivers.
SPECS: Pentium IV 1.8 Ghz
1 GB DDR 266,
MB PC-Chips M925ALU
Windows 98 SE with RAM patch

Reply 2 of 84, by rockman_XXX

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Anything above 640x480 in the voodoo 3 it's shameful, and in direct3d the problem is worse, opengl mode doesn't work
(black screen, sound only), and there's barely a difference with the voodoo 5 in Glide, but I haven't tested direct3d or opengl in that one.
I don't know, maybe the game just wasn't made with these cards in mind. I remember that in the first Hitman they even recommended using direct3d mode with VSA-100 based voodoos.

Reply 3 of 84, by leileilol

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What's considered a low framerate? when Deus Ex came out in 2000, new Geforce2s were rather behind the curve with DX's D3D/OpenGL renderer in comparison to Voodoo5, and poor performance wasn't uncommon.

Also 1.8GHz P4 implies Williamette core and DX can be a CPU hog as well. I never tried Win98 on 1gb of ram though...

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 4 of 84, by Gamecollector

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Deus Ex 1.002f, glide renderer, 640x480. 38 FPS at the Mission 1 start.
800x600 - 30 FPS.
The PC is P4 3.2E, 2 GB DDR400B, Voodoo2 12 MB, WinXpSp3 + Voodoo2 Win2k 1.02.00 drivers.

1) I doubt any Voodoo card can get 60 FPS in this game if the resolution is 800x600 and above.
2) Your CPU is too slow. Even if it's P4 1.8A (Northwood).

I will test with Win98 (standard MaxPhysPage=20000 fix) later.

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 6 of 84, by tgod

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I'm not sure what's considered poor performance, as I've played this game with a voodoo 2. Try using v.control to optimize glide for speed, it has fast/quality presets. Also in Deus Ex, while playing hit T, the talk button. Backspace everything, and type preferences and hit enter and a options panel should come up. In the Glide rendering pane try turning off some things for improved performance, vsync, detail texturing, screen smoothing, etc. You can also modify these settings in DEUSEX.ini.

Reply 7 of 84, by swaaye

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I think a Voodoo5 should manage 60fps at 800x600 on a fast CPU. Unreal Engine 1 is pretty demanding on the CPU indeed. Wheel of Time is another UE game that left contemporary systems in ruin.

Reply 8 of 84, by Arctic

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Glide games are basically "made to run best on Voodoos". I don't have Deus Ex, but I find this problem rather odd.
What drivers are you guys using?
The 3rd party drivers produce different results.
For example the SFFT is better for Direct3D in later games than the AmigaMerlin 2.9

Is the 3dfx control panel set to "fastest performance" or maybe even "single chip only"?
Also there is a known bug in the control panel with vsync. It works the wrong way. If it's "disabled" it's actually enabled and vice versa.

The driver of the system in my signature makes it even possible to play GTA Vice City in 2xFSAA and decent framerates.
I'm using AmigaMerlin V2.9 Win9x Driver -= Latest Release =-
You can find it on FalconFly.de

Reply 9 of 84, by rockman_XXX

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I used 3dHQ's Beta10 for the Voodoo 3, and the last 3dfx official driver for the 5500. How can I benchmark the Unreal Engine in this particular game? I'd like to try that with both cards later...

pd: Remember you can try the demo version if you never bought the game.
http://www.fileplanet.com/45404/download/Deus-Ex-Demo

Reply 10 of 84, by Gamecollector

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1) Edit User.ini and make the binding "T=Talk".
2) In the game - press t, delete "Say", print "set DeusEx.JCDentonMale bCheatsEnable True", press enter.
3) Again press t, delete "Say", print "timedemo true", press Enter.
You may skip 2) if you run the game with "deusex.exe -hax0r".
P.S. The 3dfx renderer uses v-sync by default. You can disable it in the "Advanced" options ("preferences" in the talk console).

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 11 of 84, by Arctic

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rockman_XXX wrote:

I used 3dHQ's Beta10 for the Voodoo 3, and the last 3dfx official driver for the 5500. How can I benchmark the Unreal Engine in this particular game? I'd like to try that with both cards later...

pd: Remember you can try the demo version if you never bought the game.
http://www.fileplanet.com/45404/download/Deus-Ex-Demo

Awesome! I will perform some tests now 😁

Reply 12 of 84, by rockman_XXX

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oh dude. I want to kill myself, after activating timedemo I realized that the Voodoo 5 performs even worse than the Voodoo 3!, both on Glide 640x480, same drivers I was using at the beggining.

Heres a screenshot for the voodoo 3, I couldn't take one with the Voodoo 5, screenshots get corrupted on that one. I guess I'll be testing some other drivers for the 5500, and maybe XP.

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Reply 13 of 84, by Gamecollector

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IMHO, the main bottleneck is your CPU.

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 14 of 84, by Kerr Avon

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Sorry, I can't suggest anything to help, but I wanted to say: enjoy Deus Ex, it's a brilliant game. And when you've played it through, and want to play it again, you can try the different mods, such as Shifter (alters the gameplay, but doesn't have any new levels), GMDX (alters some levels, and gameplay), and The Nameless Mod (almost a whole new game!).

Reply 15 of 84, by idspispopd

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Gamecollector wrote:

IMHO, the main bottleneck is your CPU.

Somehow I can't believe that. Even if the CPU is a Willamette, that would be from 2001, Deus Ex is from 2000.
I'd rather assume that something else is wrong with the system.
@rockman_XXX: Could you try to benchmark something else, eg. Unreal or UT?

Reply 16 of 84, by rockman_XXX

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UT runs fine, both in Glide and Direct3d, hell I can make it work even in 1360x768 in D3D and it runs decently. I was just testing a 733 Mhz Pentium III with an Intel Motherboard I found lying around, to discard mobo problems and the game also performs in the 20~25 fps range. I also tried with Geforce 4 MX440 in both systems; same results. I guess it's just as leileilol and gamecollector first pointed out: My 1.8 Ghz Pentium IV it´s just too slow for Deus Ex!. I wonder how the average gamer managed to run this game in those years...

P.S: Just for the record, taken from the Deus Ex manual.

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Reply 17 of 84, by swaaye

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People were used to 20-30fps back then. I watched various people play it on Athlon Thunderbirds with Geforce 256, Geforce 2 GTS or Voodoo5.

Deus Ex Invisible War is probably a bit worse relatively. You needed the best hardware available at its release to be able to run it remotely well. It requires DirectX 8, which meant Geforce 4MX people were out of luck. It is incredibly inefficient because of the renderer they wrote and the graphics tech they implemented badly. It's more demanding than Far Cry and Doom3 and that is simply crazy for how it looks.

Reply 18 of 84, by rockman_XXX

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Mmm, that's interesting. Could the original Deus Ex be the most hardware demanding Glide game? My intention was to play just Glide games on this thing for now. If I cover this one I shouldn't worry about any other I might install in the future, at least for post Voodoo 2 games(?).

Reply 19 of 84, by swaaye

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rockman_XXX wrote:

Mmm, that's interesting. Could the original Deus Ex be the most hardware demanding Glide game? My intention was to play just Glide games on this thing for now. If I cover this one I shouldn't worry about any other I might install in the future, at least for post Voodoo 2 games(?).

Deus Ex is certainly one of the most demanding Glide games out there. I don't think there's anything that goes much further with crushing ca. 2000 hardware.