Unreal doesn't even NEED a high framerate to be enjoyable. The game leans heavy on exploration, the monsters and weapons are slow and easily dodgeable, and you can brute force the 'smart' monsters with barrages of rockets/grenades at low framerates anyway.

When Unreal came out, no one had a K6-2 400 (or any K6-2 for that matter). The 440BX was barely launched. Unreal didn't use multitexturing on Glide then and so there wasn't much performance advantage of a Voodoo2 over a Voodoo Graphics for a while. (the multitexturing updates that came after used different blending functions for the lightmaps so combine could work, and resulted in a much darker looking game and took many patch releases to tweak and compensate lightmap data). The readme has plenty of references to Pentium MMX, so they've definitely had that system in mind.

Hell, Unreal had native support for PowerVR SGL and that didn't have all the blending modes or look or run the best, but it could go through Unreal and it was still accelerated. That was also CPU/bus bottlenecked.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-09-01, 20:33:

And honestly what conceivable reason would someone limit themselves to just a Pentium when there are so many faster S7 chips to be had for peanuts. Even a middling K6/2 400 will handily beat the Pentium here for almost no money. At at the point you upgrade that then you moght as well upgrade to a Voodoo 2 or Banshee and then it's just a constant spiral.

I know that feeling, I did similar upgrades to my Socket 7 computer for more versatility thanks to this forum. 😀

leileilol wrote on 2021-09-01, 20:42:

Unreal doesn't even NEED a high framerate to be enjoyable. The game leans heavy on exploration, the monsters and weapons are slow and easily dodgeable, and you can brute force the 'smart' monsters with barrages of rockets/grenades at low framerates anyway.

When Unreal came out, no one had a K6-2 400 (or any K6-2 for that matter). The 440BX was barely launched. Unreal didn't use multitexturing on Glide then and so there wasn't much performance advantage of a Voodoo2 over a Voodoo Graphics for a while. (the multitexturing updates that came after used different blending functions for the lightmaps so combine could work, and resulted in a much darker looking game and took many patch releases to tweak and compensate lightmap data). The readme has plenty of references to Pentium MMX, so they've definitely had that system in mind.

Hell, Unreal had native support for PowerVR SGL and that didn't have all the blending modes or look or run the best, but it could go through Unreal and it was still accelerated. That was also CPU/bus bottlenecked.

-You do have a good point here. I can't really argue that at all. My first play through was in software mode at 512x384 cause I had a crappy SiS 6326 that while it looked nice in D3D was waaay slower than software rendering which still looked great.
-I do still think a high framerate is rather important in this game however. Especially if you play the death(bot)match modes.

If one had played and enjoyed the game in the past with less capable hardware at 640x480 15 FPS average, it does not mean that it will be fine 20 years later. If one had loved a game in the past with low quality rendering, low frame rate playability with available hardware back then, it would be an even stronger reason to be able to replay the same game at its best of the time, high resolution, highest quality rendering and smooth & fluid frame rate, given for that many years one had patiently waited. Not everyone had the fortune to enjoy the game at its best at launch with the utmost high-end system specification at the time.

If you had played Unreal at 1600x1200 OpenGL/Direct3D rendering at highest quality at 60 FPS locked to VSYNC all-time, then you would not go back to any Voodoos. Today, one would pay to get Voodoos for build experience. It is a joke to get Voodoos to play good old games. You can probably get a $200 laptop and it delivers more performance and much more pleasant game experience than real Voodoos, at the same price used but tested Voodoos called for in EBay.

Great...

Starting to state the obvious thing about how great old games are on new computers (with emulation depending of the situation) around a discussion related to old hardware. The only thing that I agree from that statement is that most didn't have the money at the time to get the best experience.

Agree with most of the last dozen comments. No you really do not need a Voodoo card unless you are trying to recreate some nostalic exact replica of something you had back then.
That includes the CRT, and same everything else. Yeah not a new optical mouse or other fancy gadgets that did not exist ;p

"Worth it" is entirely relative. It depends on many factors, including what games you want to play, how nostalgic are you, and how much dough are you willing to drop on old hardware? Voodoo cards are easily some of the priciest vintage components you can get, and it's only going to get worse, like anything else highly collectible.

The only Voodoo card I had back in the day was a Diamond Monster Fusion (banshee) and I loved it. I mostly remember playing Quake, Unreal, and Need for Speed 2 SE on it, all of which support glide. It was installed in an AMD K6 200 MHz system and ran those games just fine.

Now that I'm older with a good job I have a lot more discretionary funds to play with and can buy the things I couldn't afford back then. Over the years I've acquired a Voodoo 1, 5 Voodoo 2, a Voodoo 3 2000 and the big daddy, a Voodoo 5 5500. I wouldn't trade them for anything, but I'm very nostalgic with very fond memories of that era of PC gaming, so to me they're definitely worth it. Old glide games are a unique experience.

I don't know why people are so obssesed with the whole 60 FPS 4k 234234xFSQAZXYASY antialiasing or nothing. Many games feel, play great and have their early 3d acceleration charm on a 233mmx and a 4mb Voodoo 1 at 640x480, 30 fps.

subhuman@xgtx wrote on 2021-09-02, 03:21:

I don't know why people are so obssesed with the whole 60 FPS 4k 234234xFSQAZXYASY antialiasing or nothing. Many games feel, play great and have their early 3d acceleration charm on a 233mmx and a 4mb Voodoo 1 at 640x480, 30 fps.

I absolutely agree with this. As an example, Lego Racers on these specs for me runs at around 30-45 or so fps, It never went under that from what I've played and to me it was a very nice experience. Honestly for the most part only some older games will run at near constant 60fps on a Voodoo 1 for me (like Pod), but I really don't consider that a huge problem. Many games will run pretty consistently at around 30fps up until around late 1998 especially if they natively support Glide. Even then, though, I was surprised how well some games like Frogger 2 from 2000 ran (usually 30fps or a little higher at times). I consider it very impressive for a late 1996 chipset.

Ultimately, "worth it?" isn't a real question.. unless it comes with a real price tag attached. 🤣

All we can do is state the Things these cards do, then it's up to the individual, as to whether or not they want something which does those Things.

Strangely enough, we all want and appreciate different stuff, which illustrates the folly of trying to provide an absolute answer to a broad hypothetical question. 🤣

The nostalgic aspects for games, of course not for particular hardware as most Marvin folks would matter, do not have to be exact replica of what one experienced in the past. The Moore's Law mandated that hardware would be more powerful and cheaper as time passed. It is logical for one to expect more and replaying games at different experience, from PC speaker to SoundBlaster, from AdLib/FM music to GM/GS/MT32/Wave synthesizer, from 640x480 to 1024x768 native rendering, an improved graphics assets etc. it is a choice not an obsession, frame rate isn't the only thing but a highly welcome aspect, especially for games such as Unreal. I don't think one can get 640x480 30FPS with Voodoo1 on Unreal with P233MMX. Older games maybe, such as GLQuake, but Unreal is definitely out of reach at 30 FPS on Voodoo1. After all, Unreal or any games based on the Unreal engine, are so good at high resolution, 32-bit color/textures and near 60 FPS gameplay. If one got a Voodoo for free, then no harm to play around. Otherwise, it is a joke to pay at the current price on EBay for games such as Unreal.

kjliew wrote on 2021-09-02, 04:31:

I don't think one can get 640x480 30FPS with Voodoo1 on Unreal with P233MMX.

If you're curious, at 512x384 lowest settings the opening Castle flyby intro from what I recall ran at an average of 22fps. Imo, that's still a good upgrade over software rendering which at 320x240 lowest settings ran at I think 12fps. This was done using Unreal Gold, I would use OG unpatched Unreal but for some reason it has an issue on my system where on some levels the music only plays out of the left speaker. Not sure if that would give slightly higher results. I do consider it playable, though. I'm far from a framerate snob.

Additional to the above helpful benchmark, quite a few of us (including myself) do have P233MMXs with Voodoo1's and 2's, so if there's a particular game or benchmark anyone is interested in - not that I'm trying to drag this thread too far into actual science, you understand! 😉 - then just let us know.

kjliew wrote on 2021-09-02, 04:31:

The nostalgic aspects for games, of course not for particular hardware as most Marvin folks would matter, do not have to be exact replica of what one experienced in the past. The Moore's Law mandated that hardware would be more powerful and cheaper as time passed. It is logical for one to expect more and replaying games at different experience, from PC speaker to SoundBlaster, from AdLib/FM music to GM/FS/MT32/Wave synthesizer, from 640x480 to 1024x768 native rendering, an improved graphics assets etc. it is a choice not an obsession, frame rate isn't the only thing but a highly welcome aspect, especially for games such as Unreal. I don't think one can get 640x480 30FPS with Voodoo1 on Unreal with P233MMX. Older games maybe, such as GLQuake, but Unreal is definitely out of reach at 30 FPS on Voodoo1. After all, Unreal or any games based on the Unreal engine, are so good at high resolution, 32-bit color/textures and near 60 FPS gameplay. If one got a Voodoo for free, then no harm to play around. Otherwise, it is a joke to pay at the current price on EBay for games such as Unreal.

In particular for Unreal, the forums I hung round on during that time, the bang for buck card was considered to be the GF2 MX 400, though that might have been a while after release when the momentum really got large for the online aspect.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-09-02, 04:40:

kjliew wrote on 2021-09-02, 04:31:

I don't think one can get 640x480 30FPS with Voodoo1 on Unreal with P233MMX.

If you're curious, at 512x384 lowest settings the opening Castle flyby intro from what I recall ran at an average of 22fps. Imo, that's still a good upgrade over software rendering which at 320x240 lowest settings ran at I think 12fps. This was done using Unreal Gold, I would use OG unpatched Unreal but for some reason it has an issue on my system where on some levels the music only plays out of the left speaker. Not sure if that would give slightly higher results. I do consider it playable, though. I'm far from a framerate snob.

It would be a joke for anyone to spend the price of Voodoo1 on EBay today to play at such quality, wouldn't it? 🤣 Just buy a Rock Pi X 64 (Atom z-8350) at $80 and I can show you how to play Unreal at 1024x768 highest settings, may be not at 60 FPS but close.

I played Quake2 on Matrox Mystique using TechLand miniGL on P200MMX without dynamic lighting 20 years ago. My timedemo was around 14 FPS at 640x480 IIRC. Do I want to play again at that kind of quality now? No, thanks! 🤣 I am absolutely not nostalgic at that kind of game experience. Did you get the point now? It's not about being a framerate snob, neither was I.

kjliew wrote on 2021-09-02, 04:31:

I don't think one can get 640x480 30FPS with Voodoo1 on Unreal with P233MMX. Older games maybe, such as GLQuake, but Unreal is definitely out of reach at 30 FPS on Voodoo1.

Here are some benchmarks from my Pentium MMX 166 + Voodoo1 system. Unreal (original, not Gold) averages around 15 FPS at 640x480 during the flyby intro sequence. I imagine it would be slightly faster on a 233 MHz CPU but still nowhere near 30 FPS. That was at the highest settings.

One thing to note, the actual game runs faster than that flyby intro when you're indoors. I was getting 20+ FPS at 640x480 in those cases. Not smooth by any means, but still somewhat playable. It gets better if you drop the resolution down to 512x384. Lowering some of the settings might also help a bit.

While the Voodoo Graphics is slow on Quake 2 and Unreal, I didn't either find it unplayable especially if one dials down the settings, lower the resolution and enables "8-bit texture" if supported in the case of Quake 2.

I know that some people don't want to relive that considering the improvements on technology over the time and how currently expensive are most of the old hardware on eBay. Most of us here are for nostalgia and a faithful experience.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-02, 14:03:

While the Voodoo Graphics is slow on Quake 2 and Unreal, I didn't either find it unplayable especially if one dials down the settings, lower the resolution and enables "8-bit texture" if supported in the case of Quake 2.

Quake 2 at 512x384, 8-bit textures and highest texture quality on the first demo gave me an average of over 32 fps. A pretty pleasant and decent looking experience, imo. I don't think the resolution decrease between 640x480 and 512x384 in Quake 1 & 2 is super noticeable. It's not worth decreasing the texture quality at all, the performance gain is very minimal in my experience and makes the game look pretty awful.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-09-02, 15:19:

Quake 2 at 512x384, 8-bit textures and highest texture quality on the first demo gave me an average of over 32 fps. Pretty pleasant and decent looking experience, imo. I don't think the resolution decrease between 640x480 and 512x384 in Quake 1 & 2 is super noticeable. It's not worth decreasing the texture quality at all, the performance gain is very minimal in my experience and makes the game look pretty awful.

I second this.

Lowering the texture quality slider is worthless and degrades the look and feel in my opinion.

*sigh*

I'm not liking how this thread is starting to become about someone's rant about experience with old hardware...

I'll ignore you from now on.

Edit: The post from kjliew that caused this reply was deleted, leaving it out of context.