That is also the truth, my friend.

The experience with old hardware for late 90's games with 3D acceleration, especially for those based on Unreal engine, can't be called great at all. For build experience, they are fine. For games, they are laughable. For those who knew the difference between them, they won't be annoyed by truth. I am just promoting the true spirit of VOGONS, "Very Old Games on New Systems". 😉 It was the sole reason I joined VOGONS and DOSBox started it all. 😉 I am also helping others relieve the headache to hunt for old used parts for a retro PC for games, for those who just want to play good old games.

Primary reason to get a Voodoo is to play with games that offer glide modes... which is exclusive to some.... Unreal (may 1998) is at the higher limit of P1+Voodoo1 capability, which came out end of 1996. Though it's very playable with tweaking, and some people enjoy tweaking AND playing their games, I also can load it up on my i7 and enjoy it at 1000 FPS.

this thread made me boot up my Pentium 166 MMX / 3d monster PC last night and I tried out a few games to give a rating on how good performance is on some of these 1996/97/98 games:

GLquake - ran at about 30-40 FPS and can dip down to 15 or so in action packed areas. In 1997 this was acceptable but today it is not. I stopped playing at ziggurat vertigo (secret level with low grav) - it chugged really bad when I got up top to find the ogres and shamblers. Might be nicer on lower difficulties with less enemies. I give it a 6/10.
Need for speed 2 SE was similar - bursts of good performance but many spots where it felt like it was 10-15 fps. 5/10, hard to play at low FPS.
POD gold - started with a good framerate but then the audio went to crap and started jittering. The framerate also tanked for some reason. I'm gonna guess it's because of the USB card in the PC. I give it no score.
Nuclear Strike - consistent framerate of about 25-30 but action/explosions/many units on screen meant it got quite low. Playable still, 6.5/10.
Moto racer - a game that actually performed nicely even with details on high. 8/10
Tomb Raider - Runs at 30fps unless the antialiasing (is that what the F3/F4 button does?) is turned on, in some large rooms/areas the FPS goes down to sub 10. It looks just as fine without the smoothed edges. 8.5/10
Battlezone - I think this runs in D3D but it ran really well with all details on medium (some settings max). I don't know how to play it or what I was doing, but the framerate was a solid 25+ while i was cruising around the moon (?) - 7/10.
Myth - Ran at like 15fps the entire time. I've never played it and was shocked to see 3d terrain and buildings in a 1997 RTS, 3 years before Warcraft 3. it gets 5/10 tho cos i ran so poorly.
GTA's 3dfx exe ran the game really nicely. 9/10
SWIV3d ran surprisingly well at 25-30fps the entire time and it is sooo much nicer in 3dfx mode than software renderer. I'm almost tempted to finish this game. 8/10
Jedi Knight ran really really well and i'm almost certain it's not even using 3dfx Glide (not too surprised, I haven't had a 3d card run this game bad at all) 9/10

I couldn't get Shadow Warrior or Blood to work. Might be missing those system variables I see around...

ramble:
I am starting to think that I'm having a bad experience using the USB 2.0 card for my external SSD running most games from daemon tools. I really should put W95 back onto this and move over to using network storage instead.

(I actually have the entire previous W95 build still on the HDD, when I installed W98 I removed or renamed those 2 system files in c: so that the W98 installer didnt detect a previous install. does anyone think it's possible to dual boot from the abandoned windows folder?)

last thought: Would a jump to a 233mmx be a significant boost? I'm using a super socket 7 board, Shuttle HOT-591p.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

I am starting to think that I'm having a bad experience using the USB 2.0 card for my external SSD running most games from daemon tools. I really should put W95 back onto this and move over to using network storage instead.

I've had nothing but trouble with USB 2.0 cards on my retro rigs. They take up multiple IRQs (often conflicting with sound cards) and sometimes reduce overall system performance even when not in active use (no USB device connected).

My advice, get a period correct network card from a reputable manufacturer (e.g. 3Com or Intel). Much less hassle that way and it only takes up a single IRQ. Alternatively, you can use a CF to IDE adapter and simply swap out CF cards as needed. Copying files is a breeze as well. Just use a USB CF card reader on your modern PC and you're good to go.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

I couldn't get Shadow Warrior or Blood to work. Might be missing those system variables I see around...

The 3Dfx version of these games aren't worth the effort to run it. They have rendering issues and are not much faster than the software renderer.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

last thought: Would a jump to a 233mmx be a significant boost? I'm using a super socket 7 board, Shuttle HOT-591p.

Upgrading to a P233MMX would improve the framerates but not in a very big way. The performance boost will be around 10%-20% if I remember.

Overclocking both card and CPU can also boost the performance but it has some tradeoffs such as potential instabilities and affect negatively the lifespan of the components if the cooling is not adequate.

yeah im with you joe. i have the parts but keep putting it off - my nas has a spare network port, i got a 3com isa nic and a nice switch i found recently. im just super lazy.

true gmlb, but id still like to try out blood/swarrior even if its not the best experience. ill def have another go sometime soon.

its time to start looking for a nicely priced 233 mmx !

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

this thread made me boot up my Pentium 166 MMX / 3d monster PC last night and I tried out a few games to give a rating on how go […]
Show full quote

this thread made me boot up my Pentium 166 MMX / 3d monster PC last night and I tried out a few games to give a rating on how good performance is on some of these 1996/97/98 games:

GLquake - ran at about 30-40 FPS and can dip down to 15 or so in action packed areas. In 1997 this was acceptable but today it is not. I stopped playing at ziggurat vertigo (secret level with low grav) - it chugged really bad when I got up top to find the ogres and shamblers. Might be nicer on lower difficulties with less enemies. I give it a 6/10.
Need for speed 2 SE was similar - bursts of good performance but many spots where it felt like it was 10-15 fps. 5/10, hard to play at low FPS.
POD gold - started with a good framerate but then the audio went to crap and started jittering. The framerate also tanked for some reason. I'm gonna guess it's because of the USB card in the PC. I give it no score.
Nuclear Strike - consistent framerate of about 25-30 but action/explosions/many units on screen meant it got quite low. Playable still, 6.5/10.
Moto racer - a game that actually performed nicely even with details on high. 8/10
Tomb Raider - Runs at 30fps unless the antialiasing (is that what the F3/F4 button does?) is turned on, in some large rooms/areas the FPS goes down to sub 10. It looks just as fine without the smoothed edges. 8.5/10
Battlezone - I think this runs in D3D but it ran really well with all details on medium (some settings max). I don't know how to play it or what I was doing, but the framerate was a solid 25+ while i was cruising around the moon (?) - 7/10.
Myth - Ran at like 15fps the entire time. I've never played it and was shocked to see 3d terrain and buildings in a 1997 RTS, 3 years before Warcraft 3. it gets 5/10 tho cos i ran so poorly.
GTA's 3dfx exe ran the game really nicely. 9/10
SWIV3d ran surprisingly well at 25-30fps the entire time and it is sooo much nicer in 3dfx mode than software renderer. I'm almost tempted to finish this game. 8/10
Jedi Knight ran really really well and i'm almost certain it's not even using 3dfx Glide (not too surprised, I haven't had a 3d card run this game bad at all) 9/10

I couldn't get Shadow Warrior or Blood to work. Might be missing those system variables I see around...

ramble:
I am starting to think that I'm having a bad experience using the USB 2.0 card for my external SSD running most games from daemon tools. I really should put W95 back onto this and move over to using network storage instead.

(I actually have the entire previous W95 build still on the HDD, when I installed W98 I removed or renamed those 2 system files in c: so that the W98 installer didnt detect a previous install. does anyone think it's possible to dual boot from the abandoned windows folder?)

last thought: Would a jump to a 233mmx be a significant boost? I'm using a super socket 7 board, Shuttle HOT-591p.

Would you revisit your list of games and how many of those support more than 640x480 native rendering? I think Nuclear Strike can do 800x600 native. Myth, Battlezone and Jedi Knight can do up to 1024x768. Battlezone also has later official big graphics assets patch which would make Voodoo1 cry. What about DirectSound3D/EAX support? I think Battlezone and Jedi Knight may have support for it IIRC. Enabling 3D sound effects will make even P233MMX cry.

So ask yourself the same question, are you into build experience, tweaking or game experience? Or, have you been preached to believe that only retro PCs can play those games correctly that you have to sacrifice some aspects of quality to have fun on the games? Why just P166MMX/Monster3D, why not just use any modern desktops/laptops from the last 7 years? My personal standard for playing good old games is at least 1024x768 either through native rendering or upscaled through various mechanisms.

When you are after the game experience for those games you loved, I think those games on your list may not have scored as high as you would have thought on P166MMX/Voodoo1, considering the missing aspects of game experience at high quality.

man i'm just having fun with it. I got a voodoo 1 to fill in the gap of those few games that won't run on a voodoo 3. Descent and Descent 2's 3Dfx patches don't work so well on my V3 and this was a big motivating factor. I've got 6 machines that I love to use for old games and comparing the performance. And to add to this, I never had a 3dfx card back in the day (Started with a Riva 128 and then to a Geforce 2 MX).

There are some picky games in the bunch for sure, Nuclear strike doesn't want to run at all on the V3 setup, some games run way too fast (POD, Die hard trilogy), others don't detect the V3 etc etc. I've played thru Jedi Knight on 3 or 4 cards so far and it's been interesting to see how they all perform. A few other quirks like animations/weather effects/physics being tied to framerate/cpu speed can make fast machines not the best candidate and a slow machine may be better (rare but its something to consider).

As for 3D sound, I only enable that on my PCs with SB live and Vortex 2 which are in really powerful machines.

don't get it twisted, my "scoring" was for how it performed on my hardware, not what I thought of the actual game. most of those games in the list are 10/10s in their own right.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 04:43:

man i'm just having fun with it. I got a voodoo 1 to fill in the gap of those few games that won't run on a voodoo 3. Descent an […]
Show full quote

man i'm just having fun with it. I got a voodoo 1 to fill in the gap of those few games that won't run on a voodoo 3. Descent and Descent 2's 3Dfx patches don't work so well on my V3 and this was a big motivating factor. I've got 6 machines that I love to use for old games and comparing the performance. And to add to this, I never had a 3dfx card back in the day (Started with a Riva 128 and then to a Geforce 2 MX).

There are some picky games in the bunch for sure, Nuclear strike doesn't want to run at all on the V3 setup, some games run way too fast (POD, Die hard trilogy), others don't detect the V3 etc etc. I've played thru Jedi Knight on 3 or 4 cards so far and it's been interesting to see how they all perform. A few other quirks like animations/weather effects/physics being tied to framerate/cpu speed can make fast machines not the best candidate and a slow machine may be better (rare but its something to consider).

As for 3D sound, I only enable that on my PCs with SB live and Vortex 2 which are in really powerful machines.

don't get it twisted, my "scoring" was for how it performed on my hardware, not what I thought of the actual game. most of those games in the list are 10/10s in their own right.

Don't bother arguing with him. I don't like his attitude.

bloodem wrote on 2021-08-18, 17:32:

luk1999 wrote on 2021-08-18, 16:42:

@drosse1meyer
You can always try to overclock your cpu to 200 MHz (just set multiplier to 3x) and check how much your framerate improve.

It depends on the CPU. Some of them are multiplier locked (limited). I have a Pentium 166 (non-MMX) which will ignore multipliers higher than 2.5 (basically, it will just ignore the 3.0 multi, because 3.5 is interpreted as 1.5 on non-MMX CPUs).
As for Pentium MMX, I think they're all locked (limited) except for the 233 SKUs (which go all the way up to 3.5). The others only accept lower multipliers.

Definitely not all of them are locked. I inherited a 166 MMX rig from a friend who bought it back in the day, and it turns out that the chip can go up to 3.5x multiplier. I can't remember the stepping but it is a ppga one.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 04:43:

man i'm just having fun with it. I got a voodoo 1 to fill in the gap of those few games that won't run on a voodoo 3. Descent an […]
Show full quote

man i'm just having fun with it. I got a voodoo 1 to fill in the gap of those few games that won't run on a voodoo 3. Descent and Descent 2's 3Dfx patches don't work so well on my V3 and this was a big motivating factor. I've got 6 machines that I love to use for old games and comparing the performance. And to add to this, I never had a 3dfx card back in the day (Started with a Riva 128 and then to a Geforce 2 MX).

There are some picky games in the bunch for sure, Nuclear strike doesn't want to run at all on the V3 setup, some games run way too fast (POD, Die hard trilogy), others don't detect the V3 etc etc. I've played thru Jedi Knight on 3 or 4 cards so far and it's been interesting to see how they all perform. A few other quirks like animations/weather effects/physics being tied to framerate/cpu speed can make fast machines not the best candidate and a slow machine may be better (rare but its something to consider).

As for 3D sound, I only enable that on my PCs with SB live and Vortex 2 which are in really powerful machines.

don't get it twisted, my "scoring" was for how it performed on my hardware, not what I thought of the actual game. most of those games in the list are 10/10s in their own right.

Never mind, you do deserve the funs by keeping 6 machines. I am just not into that. 🤣

Out of your list of games, all of them except POD Gold & SWIV 3D, I think I had tried them all at the highest quality on laptops as old as Core i3-4010U. They just worked. SWIV 3D looked to be an interesting game though, I will see if I can get my hands on it. Fast frame rate breaking games on modern machine was the problem of the past, this was no longer the reason to use slow machine, especially for Windows games. There are already proven solutions for such games, Nuclear Strike is indeed one of those, and the chopper freezes at picking up cargos when frame rate exceeds 30 FPS.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 04:43:

There are some picky games in the bunch for sure, Nuclear strike doesn't want to run at all on the V3 setup, some games run way too fast (POD, Die hard trilogy), others don't detect the V3 etc etc. I've played thru Jedi Knight on 3 or 4 cards so far and it's been interesting to see how they all perform. A few other quirks like animations/weather effects/physics being tied to framerate/cpu speed can make fast machines not the best candidate and a slow machine may be better (rare but its something to consider).

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire behaves similarly. It's way too fast on my Voodoo3 but runs quite nicely on my Voodoo1. Digital Foundry even did a video on that game and confirmed that the problems arise due to game physics being tied to the frame rate.

Final Fantasy VII also has some mini games (like the bike race) which become unplayable on faster systems. On the other hand, the MMX + Voodoo1 rig allows me to play them at the correct speed, similar to how they run on the native PlayStation version.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

POD gold - started with a good framerate but then the audio went to crap and started jittering. The framerate also tanked for some reason. I'm gonna guess it's because of the USB card in the PC. I give it no score.

POD is a really fussy game. After many experiments I got it to run well on a 200 MHz Pentium MMX and Voodoo2, but even so there are graphical glitches in the menus. I can live with this though, as the game itself (including sound) runs flawlessly.

I don’t know why I never purchased a “Voodoo 5” back when they where cheap. But I was mainly into dual CRT display setups using the
Matrox G400/G450 and 20” Sony CRT’s

Also the TNT and GeForce video cards had better graphics than the Voodoo.
That what kept me away form the Voodoo cards is that there where Nvidia video cards that had better graphics.
This was a time when Nvidia was emerging as the desired video card with better graphics.

But I wish I should have purchased some “NEW Voodoo 5” when they were available.

I would NOT waist my time or money on it today. They are used, abused, and too expensive.
These cards run VERY HOT and contribute to the life of the card.
So a used card is like buying a used car.
Its just not as good as NEW.

Errius wrote on 2021-09-03, 10:14:

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

POD gold - started with a good framerate but then the audio went to crap and started jittering. The framerate also tanked for some reason. I'm gonna guess it's because of the USB card in the PC. I give it no score.

POD is a really fussy game. After many experiments I got it to run well on a 200 MHz Pentium MMX and Voodoo2, but even so there are graphical glitches in the menus. I can live with this though, as the game itself (including sound) runs flawlessly.

For me, other than some slightly crackly menu sound effects, Pod ran 100% flawlessly and while there's no FPS counter to my eyes it looks like constant or near constant 60fps. All the other sounds like the opening FMV and in-game audio seem fine, btw.

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 02:51:

last thought: Would a jump to a 233mmx be a significant boost? I'm using a super socket 7 board, Shuttle HOT-591p.

It will help. My quake2 improved about 6-7 FPS in quake 2, going from plain 166 to 233mmx... it now runs about 33 fps at 640x480 (it has been tweaked a bit though).
Sidenote - I think that something's up with the win98 aztech 2320 drivers, because some versions give me a 3-4 fps boost over the stock. however they are a bit unstable 🤣. So clearly many things factor into FPS as we know.

Errius wrote on 2021-09-03, 10:14:

POD is a really fussy game. After many experiments I got it to run well on a 200 MHz Pentium MMX and Voodoo2, but even so there are graphical glitches in the menus. I can live with this though, as the game itself (including sound) runs flawlessly.

Yeah, i never personally tried POD but LGR was going on about how much of a pain it was to get working in one of his 3dfx vids iirc, he did get it working however

subhuman@xgtx wrote on 2021-09-03, 05:15:

bloodem wrote on 2021-08-18, 17:32:

It depends on the CPU. Some of them are multiplier locked (limited). I have a Pentium 166 (non-MMX) which will ignore multipliers higher than 2.5 (basically, it will just ignore the 3.0 multi, because 3.5 is interpreted as 1.5 on non-MMX CPUs).
As for Pentium MMX, I think they're all locked (limited) except for the 233 SKUs (which go all the way up to 3.5). The others only accept lower multipliers.

Definitely not all of them are locked. I inherited a 166 MMX rig from a friend who bought it back in the day, and it turns out that the chip can go up to 3.5x multiplier. I can't remember the stepping but it is a ppga one.

The wikipedia page doesn't indicate which revisions are locked. I think they were mostly used by vendors to prevent people from buying a cheaper machine and simply overclocking. Both the p166 that came in my packard bell and the p100 with the Acer board I have can't be forced past their rated speed (but you can run them slower). Pretty sure the P150 Compaq I had back in the mid 90s was the same thing - couldnt force it faster 🙁 They simply don't POST.

IMO in that era the term "locked" doesn't really apply, it's more "unimplemented". I wouldn't call a P133 locked because it could only do 1.5 and 2x, it's just all it had. Early 75, 90, 100 probably only had 1.5 implemented too, but CC0 stepping upward all seem to do 2x as well. I wouldn't judge the chips based on what happened on an OEM motherboard either.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-03, 07:31:

foil_fresh wrote on 2021-09-03, 04:43:

There are some picky games in the bunch for sure, Nuclear strike doesn't want to run at all on the V3 setup, some games run way too fast (POD, Die hard trilogy), others don't detect the V3 etc etc. I've played thru Jedi Knight on 3 or 4 cards so far and it's been interesting to see how they all perform. A few other quirks like animations/weather effects/physics being tied to framerate/cpu speed can make fast machines not the best candidate and a slow machine may be better (rare but its something to consider).

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire behaves similarly. It's way too fast on my Voodoo3 but runs quite nicely on my Voodoo1. Digital Foundry even did a video on that game and confirmed that the problems arise due to game physics being tied to the frame rate.

Final Fantasy VII also has some mini games (like the bike race) which become unplayable on faster systems. On the other hand, the MMX + Voodoo1 rig allows me to play them at the correct speed, similar to how they run on the native PlayStation version.

Any Direct3D/DirectDraw, OpenGL or 3Dfx Glide games can be frame rate limited on modern systems through underlying mechanisms that make the games work on modern systems. DgVoodoo2 has it, if anyone prefers playing native. QEMU also has it for those playing on VMs. The aged long Marvin Myth of requiring slow machines or some would called "period-correct", fiddling with CPU cache/multipliers to play good old games has already been busted. So it is just as pointless to repeat the same rhetoric for those who would rather spend their time on games instead of tweaking.

kjliew wrote on 2021-09-03, 16:04:

The aged long Marvin Myth of requiring slow machines or some would called "period-correct", fiddling with CPU cache/multipliers to play good old games has already been busted. So it is just as pointless to repeat the same rhetoric for those who would rather spend their time on games instead of tweaking.

Note that the thread starter asked this question in the "Old Hardware" forum. My reply was tailored with that taken into consideration.

No one is saying that it's necessary to play on period correct hardware to get the best experience. And you've already made your point about emulation. Everyone is free to choose whatever option they want.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-09-03, 13:46:

IMO in that era the term "locked" doesn't really apply, it's more "unimplemented". I wouldn't call a P133 locked because it could only do 1.5 and 2x, it's just all it had. Early 75, 90, 100 probably only had 1.5 implemented too, but CC0 stepping upward all seem to do 2x as well. I wouldn't judge the chips based on what happened on an OEM motherboard either.

This thread socket7 cpu clock ratio recognition question has a similar discussion with some technical info... but i'm still hazy 🤣