also , the onboard gpu by itself , is the same speed as the radeon 7000 in need for speed , which makes me think that somehow the speed issues might not be gpu related

emosun wrote:

And I just tried quake on the voodoo2 and it's about 1 frame every 10 seconds

glQuake? Or else the Voodoo isn't even being used (its a 3D only card). Honestly with a Voodoo2 even a 486 would get better FPS than that on glQuake.

To be sure the Voodoo is being used you can disconnect the passthrough cable when running the game. If the image stays, its running through the Voodoo.

emosun wrote:

.............. which makes me think that somehow the speed issues might not be gpu related

No shit?

PCBONEZ wrote:

What I would look at is how much cache you have.
That board came with None, 256k or 512k.
A Packard Bell with no cache would not surprise me..

kanecvr wrote:

It would also be a good idea to check how much L2 cache the board came with. Use CACHECHK.EXE under dos. If it reports no L2 cache, this is causing the poor performance.

My biggest gripe about Packard Bell is that they consistently use as little cache as they think they can get away with and sometimes that's none.
And that's why your title is funny as hell.
.

emosun wrote:

also , the onboard gpu by itself , is the same speed as the radeon 7000 in need for speed , which makes me think that somehow the speed issues might not be gpu related

In my experience faster GPUs on these older machines can make some weird problems for your older games, as for the new game NFS III it's right at the top of what a system like this would be capable of doing. Companies often rated their games lower for specs to sell more games, I've never had good results on any computer when running games that technically should be able to meet minimum requirements with my slower computer it's common sense really.

As I said before Quake runs flawlessly on my M415. I just think you are trying to squeeze too much out of this old 1997 Packard, these machines didn't have L2 cache most times like the last guy said so they were never really intended as high end gaming rigs. They are really good for playing older games though and personally I have no problem running games like POD on these. Since I don't have a copy of NFS III I can't really test it but since it's from 1999 and has minimum requirements of 200mmx I'm guessing that this machine is really never going to be able to run it satisfactorily. If you want to have the widest available range of games available use a PIII machines with ISA slots and use a real SB16 while running Windows 98SE. I would also like to add that there are plenty of people who would like that machine though so if you do buy a faster retro rig just pop that one on craigslist or Ebay for a low price and someone will probably buy it (not me obviously I have one but there is a Packard Bell collectors group I'm part of and they are always watching Ebay and CL.)

Runs quake silky smooth.

PCBONEZ wrote:

No shit? […]
Show full quote

emosun wrote:

.............. which makes me think that somehow the speed issues might not be gpu related

No shit?

PCBONEZ wrote:

What I would look at is how much cache you have.
That board came with None, 256k or 512k.
A Packard Bell with no cache would not surprise me..

kanecvr wrote:

It would also be a good idea to check how much L2 cache the board came with. Use CACHECHK.EXE under dos. If it reports no L2 cache, this is causing the poor performance.

My biggest gripe about Packard Bell is that they consistently use as little cache as they think they can get away with and sometimes that's none.
And that's why your title is funny as hell.
.

If the board turns out to have no cache at all, then he'll either have to get a K6-III or K6+ going (possibly with an adapter, but I dunno how well these worked and also no idea how easy or hard these are to find these days) or he'll need to start using another board.
Or just solder some cache chips onto that board which imo is way more hassle than it's worth it.

Would help if we got some pics though.

emosun wrote:

And I just tried quake on the voodoo2 and it's about 1 frame every 10 seconds

That's just weird. I got up to 25 fps in GLQuake with a Voodoo 2 on a 120MHz Cyrix 586:

Stupid question - you are using GLQuake to test the Voodoo 2 are you not?

Yeah I was going to say there's something else funky because with a Voodoo 2 and a 200MMX processor I can almost run Driver flawlessly on my 1996 Packard Bell Platinum 55 which is basically the same machine but a little older.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Yeah I was going to say there's something else funky because with a Voodoo 2 and a 200MMX processor I can almost run Driver flawlessly on my 1996 Packard Bell Platinum 55 which is basically the same machine but a little older.

this one without the radeon 7000 is only getting about 1 frame every 10 seconds with glquake. That's with both the onboard , and the voodoo2 installed. So clearly something is wrong here. any ideas?

If yours works fine on the onboard gpu , then something is very wrong with mine.

emosun wrote:

So clearly something is wrong here. any ideas?

Yes - And you've been told by at least three people.

PCBONEZ wrote:

What I would look at is how much cache you have.
That board came with None, 256k or 512k.
A Packard Bell with no cache would not surprise me..

kanecvr wrote:

It would also be a good idea to check how much L2 cache the board came with. Use CACHECHK.EXE under dos. If it reports no L2 cache, this is causing the poor performance.

My biggest gripe about Packard Bell is that they consistently use as little cache as they think they can get away with and sometimes that's none.

SO HOW MUCH CACHE DOES IT HAVE?
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Yes - And you've been told by at least three people. […]
Show full quote

emosun wrote:

So clearly something is wrong here. any ideas?

Yes - And you've been told by at least three people.

PCBONEZ wrote:

What I would look at is how much cache you have.
That board came with None, 256k or 512k.
A Packard Bell with no cache would not surprise me..

kanecvr wrote:

It would also be a good idea to check how much L2 cache the board came with. Use CACHECHK.EXE under dos. If it reports no L2 cache, this is causing the poor performance.

My biggest gripe about Packard Bell is that they consistently use as little cache as they think they can get away with and sometimes that's none.

SO HOW MUCH CACHE DOES IT HAVE?
.

My point is it's probably not the lack of cache that is to blame, I just said I tested Quake on an identical Packard Bell Multimedia M415 with the original 166mhz Pentium CPU and 24MB RAM running Windows 98SE and I also am using the onboard sound and S3 graphics. Is your installation of Windows fresh or is it an old installation from the previous owner? Windows 9x can really easily get bogged down and it's best to re install it every so often to just start fresh after years of use. Does it seem sluggish in it's normal performance?

(I know it probably seems obvious but I thought I would make sure of that at least before we blamed hardware prematurely, some of the old Windows 98 and 95 machines I have received over the last year have been SUPER bogged down when I got them but perform well after a good cleaning or a fresh install.)

emosun wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

Yeah I was going to say there's something else funky because with a Voodoo 2 and a 200MMX processor I can almost run Driver flawlessly on my 1996 Packard Bell Platinum 55 which is basically the same machine but a little older.

this one without the radeon 7000 is only getting about 1 frame every 10 seconds with glquake. That's with both the onboard , and the voodoo2 installed. So clearly something is wrong here. any ideas?

If yours works fine on the onboard gpu , then something is very wrong with mine.

I didn't run GL quake with the onboard GPU I just ran the ordinary Windows 95 / DOS version. It should run fine with a Voodoo 2 though.

King_Corduroy wrote:

(I know it probably seems obvious but I thought I would make sure of that at least before we blamed hardware prematurely, some of the old Windows 98 and 95 machines I have received over the last year have been SUPER bogged down when I got them but perform well after a good cleaning or a fresh install.)

I'll try a fresher install of 98 and see what it does

although , when I tried quake with windows xp just now it did the same thing. However , need for speed ran much better under windows xp so maybe the 98 install is just too old and needs a refresh.

Wait what? Are you running XP on this computer? 🤣 You should definitely NOT be running XP on a machine from 1997.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Wait what? Are you running XP on this computer? 🤣 You should definitely NOT be running XP on a machine from 1997.

I was using 98 most of the time. The pc has an xp install as well I figure I'd try. But it show that if nfs was running better on xp then the 98 install must have been bad/old.

Ideally the machine should run windows fflp. All the benefits of xp with the speed of 98. My home made stripped down xp was using 45mb for the os but fflp will use less than that.

Still I'll stick to 98 for gaming and try to get that working

King_Corduroy wrote:

Wait what? Are you running XP on this computer? 🤣 You should definitely NOT be running XP on a machine from 1997.

A Pentium 233 with 64Mb RAM is in fact the minimum system requirement for XP.
MS OSs never work worth a crap with the minimum requirements though.

The OP was asked "What's the exact model number of your motherboard?" and he never answered.
That provides essential information.

The specs I gave were for what -should be- in an M415.
There is no reason to believe this M415 has the original guts inside.
There is also no reason to believe that all M415s came with the same amount of cache.

Was also asked several times: "How much cache is in it?".

So:
What's the exact model number of your motherboard?
How much cache is in it?

PCBONEZ wrote:

A Pentium 233 with 64Mb RAM is in fact the minimum system requirement for XP. MS OSs never work worth a crap with the minimum re […]
Show full quote

King_Corduroy wrote:

Wait what? Are you running XP on this computer? 🤣 You should definitely NOT be running XP on a machine from 1997.

A Pentium 233 with 64Mb RAM is in fact the minimum system requirement for XP.
MS OSs never work worth a crap with the minimum requirements though.

The OP was asked "What's the exact model number of your motherboard?" and he never answered.
That provides essential information.

The specs I gave were for what -should be- in an M415.
There is no reason to believe this M415 has the original guts inside.
There is also no reason to believe that all M415s came with the same amount of cache.

Was also asked several times: "How much cache is in it?".

So:
What's the exact model number of your motherboard?
How much cache is in it?

I doubt very much that the motherboard has been changed or upgraded, these Packard Bell's used proprietary motherboards and it would have been a nightmare to fit another in there as far as I know. But yes you are right it would be nice to know what the mobo number is. @Emosun - could you by any chance take some photo's of the inside of the system? Also could you take an external shot of the back of the case so that I can see the manufacturers labels, assuming the mobo is original that would tell us the exact model of Motherboard.

emosun wrote:

And I just tried quake on the voodoo2 and it's about 1 frame every 10 seconds

Actually that kind of "speed" sound like glQuake using OpenGL software rendering. I can't imagine a different reason for it being that slow, except may CPU cache turned off.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I doubt very much that the motherboard has been changed or upgraded, these Packard Bell's used proprietary motherboards and it would have been a nightmare to fit another in there as far as I know. But yes you are right it would be nice to know what the mobo number is. @Emosun - could you by any chance take some photo's of the inside of the system? Also could you take an external shot of the back of the case so that I can see the manufacturers labels, assuming the mobo is original that would tell us the exact model of Motherboard.

Yes it the stock m415 board that it came with linked earlier here http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/810.htm

idspispopd wrote:

Actually that kind of "speed" sound like glQuake using OpenGL software rendering. I can't imagine a different reason for it being that slow, except may CPU cache turned off.

I'll try different versions of quake , if King_Corduroy got it working I sure can somehow.

hey emosun..
i think u should answer pcbonez how much cache your machine has before he has a heart attack 😁