... and IIRC the later Catalyst drivers removed those 3DNow optimisations so you actually need to hunt.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-11-06, 16:03:

... and IIRC the later Catalyst drivers removed those 3DNow optimisations so you actually need to hunt.

I have used 3DNow! OpenGL at Quake2 with ATi Rage Pro / XL (improvements visible at lower resolutions with AMD K6-II+ 400Mhz)

Quake2 3.20@Rage XL
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 320x240 all default 34.7
Quake2 default OpenGL 320x240 all default 33.7
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 32.2
Quake2 default OpenGL 640x480 all default 31.4

marxveix wrote on 2025-11-06, 16:32:

I have used 3DNow! OpenGL at Quake2 with ATi Rage Pro / XL (improvements visible at lower resolutions with AMD K6-II+ 400Mhz) […]
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I have used 3DNow! OpenGL at Quake2 with ATi Rage Pro / XL (improvements visible at lower resolutions with AMD K6-II+ 400Mhz)

Quake2 3.20@Rage XL
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 320x240 all default 34.7
Quake2 default OpenGL 320x240 all default 33.7
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 32.2
Quake2 default OpenGL 640x480 all default 31.4

as i concluded years ago, 3dnow version of quake2 yields significant improvement on software rendering and 3dfx cards, but very slight boost for nvidia and ati cards.

Damn! I forgot about this thread. I have some updates. A new freshly compiled exe for Quake2 with code taken from the #Quake2ToTheMax contest. The exe has a loot of quality if life improvents and speed improvements. I will come back this evening and post the stuff.

Somebody can share some light why Rage3 gets 11.6fps penalty with cl_lights @ multitexture with AMD K6-II?
It gets 4fps gain with same settings, multitexture wins with set cl_lights "0" and loses with set cl_lights "1" 😀

Direct battle,same settings,difference is multitexture

No multitexture - Bilinear enabled / set cl_lights "0"
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 28.4
vs
Multitexture - Bilinear enabled / set cl_lights "0"
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 32.4

4fps gain is good results @ rage3 and multitexture
----------------------------------------

No multitexture - Bilinear enabled / Default
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 27.9
vs
No multitexture - Bilinear enabled / set cl_lights "0"
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 28.4

Difference is small, 0,5fps @ cl_lights on/off ok!
-----------------------------------------

Multitexture - Bilinear enabled / Default
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 20.8
vs
Multitexture - Bilinear enabled / set cl_lights "0"
Quake2 v3.20 @Rage XL FastPerf-OpenGL setting
Quake2 3Dnow ! OpenGL 640x480 all default 32.4

difference is 11.6fps , that seems very odd to me 😀

Re: ATi RagePro drivers and software
Re: ATi RagePro drivers and software

Here is the new 3.27 patch. A faster exe that gives you more frames per second, packed with Quality of life improvements
Note You need to patch Quake2 to version 3.20 before using this.
The SSE version ONLY works on computers with SSE

Quake 2 BDGN 3.27 patch notes.

Modern screen resolutions

Cinematic can now be turned off in the option menu so the intro and
movies between missions don play.
It can also be disable from the console using cl_hack_nocinematics 1.

Hiding or drawing the weapon on the left can now be done from the
option menu, no need to go to multiplayer and player setup menu.

There are now 4 sound quality options instead of two.
8khz was added for slower machines and 44kHz for faster machines.
The game only has 22khz sound originally so a high definition
sound pack needs to be added to benefit from 44kHz.

Wall and floor textures can also be disable in OpenGL mode from the
video menu, mainly for very slow machines.
The console can also be used to disable textures, gl_hack_notextures 1.
There is also gl_hack_noimages 1 to turn off even more textures but
the result is ugly.

Zoom was added to the game.
Its 2.4x and is bound to mouse2 but can be rebound to any key in the
option menu and customize controls.
Sensitivity is adjusted automatically when zoom is used.

If you desire custom zoom and sensitivity you can set “zfov” and
zsensitivity manually in the console.
You should also set dfov and dsensitivity to match your normal
fov and sensitivity cvar.
*(z for zoom and d for default when not zoomed)

All keybindings where updated to modern WASD hack style and more
keybindings are available in the option menu under customize controls,
like weapons, zoom and grenade.

Freelook is now on by default and a lot of legacy keybindings and mouse
settings where removed.

Chris Dohnal SMP patch for Quake 3 was added to the video menu as a
driver option, SMP OpenGL.
Only OpenGL is available as a menu option because the 3dfx
implementation was intended to use 3dfxvgl.dll from the 30202 voodoo2
drivers and using that or other minigl driver offered no benefit in any
testing we did.

Using the SMP Opengldriver option in the video menu I saw a gain
from around 160fps to 220fps on my Dual Athlon MP 2Ghz with the patch.
On my Dual Pentium 3 1Ghz I saw no gains, so results may very so make
sure to benchmark before and after using timedemo 1 and demo1.dm2
in the console.
Also Make sure you actually have 2 or more processors and are running
windows NT, this is not for single processor systems with windows 9x,
it will crash but the game should launch just fine again.
Processors with SMT like Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading should work as
long as you are on some Version of Windows NT.
The patch should be mostly useful if you are CPU limited and not GPU limited.

Here is the latest Quake2 speed patch that we have done.
It contains the the above posted 3.27 patch with a faster quake2 exe, dll:s etc
a optimised autoexec.cfg file for maximum FPS,
pak7.pak file containing smaller uglier textures for low vram computers
pak8.pak containing low quality 4khz mono sounds for those really slow computers

Thank you, i will try some of it. Do i need to do something extra or just copy files over Quake2 v3.20 files if same named files exist?

marxveix wrote on Today, 14:53:

Thank you, i will try some of it. Do i need to do something extra or just copy files over Quake2 v3.20 files if same named files exist?

All you need to do is to place the files in your Quake 2 folder

Necrodude wrote on 57 minutes ago:

marxveix wrote on Today, 14:53:

Thank you, i will try some of it. Do i need to do something extra or just copy files over Quake2 v3.20 files if same named files exist?

All you need to do is to place the files in your Quake 2 folder

Thanks, later today i will check it out.