On a bit of a quest to find graphics cards that work well on slower pentium machines. I’ve noticed in some situations my Diamond Stealth S220(Rendition v2100) performs a bit better than a voodoo on a POD100 because it can render at 320x200 or 320x240. What other GPU’s might I find that would perform well enough at these lower resolutions?
i would assume those situations to be quite particular because on that setup i'd expect mostly a cpu limit... i heard at least some of the s3 virge series chips can run at that resolution (which is probably more fitting for that hardware anyway).
there was a big push at the time to get away from 320x200/240 so i wouldn't expect much, but maybe some of the later more obscure budget chips can run that.
tecnically you can force that resolution in most d3d games, either via mods, or simply registry/config file modification.
one example would be the original unreal and unreal tournament
they'll show you the available and compatible resolutions, but you can force almost any via the config file
DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475
Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D (only AGP) performs decently on 240p. And with disabled texture filtering - it's very playable in early 3D games.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
When it comes to testing really old video cards where 320x240 might actually be relevant (I'm looking at you S3 Virge and SIS 6326) I have an old Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith demo that is extremely quick and easy to use. Using that, I have found that almost every pre-2000 3D card I have tried on that system has worked at 320x240 as long as I don't select "Mode-X". The game is also really convenient because I can quickly toggle hardware acceleration to see if some cards are actually decelerators on a specific CPU. No restart required. It also has a setting for colored lighting and "Back Buffer in System Memory" to diagnose some issues.
If you want to try that, download the demo zip here and just use the "MotS Demo":
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file … the-sith-demos/
I have not tried the higher res textures or sound enhancements... that is something I just discovered when I found this page a second ago. I doubt those work too well on 2MB and 4MB cards. 😀
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.
