Tried it with the DLL's mentioned in the Obliv directory from the XP install that is also on that machine.
It makes it a bit further but 10 seconds in crashes to desktop prob doesn't like the old drivers.

Just to make sure it wasn't the machine and lack of sse2 since its a 1400mhz P-III, I tried it under XP same machine.
It works, drivers are far more recent, 175.19.
Very slow tho, not playable at 1360*768. Probably not playable at 640*480 🤣.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Question for you about older games. Something I always struggled to understand.

The Voodoo uses dithering to display more than 16 bit colours. Now somewhere I read that there are games that only support 16 bit colour and will look better on Voodoo cards because of dithering. Is there some truth to this? Basically if a game does not support 32 bit rendering, is there some benefit of going with a Voodoo over a GeFore, or is it all the same?

Yup the Voodoo uses a fancy RAMDAC filter on output that gives a higher apparent color depth when a game is outputing 16-bit color depth. They improved the dithering techniques with each generation. Voodoo4/5 have the most sophisticated form of it. Also, if you run FSAA on Voodoo5, it improves 16-bit color even more due to the nature of SSAA.

There are two control panel settings that allow you to tweak / disable the dithering Voodoo3/4/5. "3D Filter" and "Alpha Blending" AFAIK. Voodoo1/2 have environment variables that affect the dithering but I think it can only be enabled or disabled.

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/59/

AlphaWing wrote:

Tried it with the DLL's mentioned in the Obliv directory from the XP install that is also on that machine. It makes it a bit fur […]
Show full quote

Tried it with the DLL's mentioned in the Obliv directory from the XP install that is also on that machine.
It makes it a bit further but 10 seconds in crashes to desktop prob doesn't like the old drivers.

Just to make sure it wasn't the machine and lack of sse2 since its a 1400mhz P-III, I tried it under XP same machine.
It works, drivers are far more recent, 175.19.
Very slow tho, not playable at 1360*768. Probably not playable at 640*480 🤣.

Yeah - FX 5900 didn't do a great job with it either (and iirc it's heavy on SM2.0, which means the 5800s will fare even worse). I vaguely remember it running at 800x600 and being so-so; definitely bottom of the barrel though. How much memory does the machine have though? I know it tends to eat up a ton of RAM, and that may be part of the limitation you're hitting if you only have ~512MB.

obobskivich wrote:

Yeah - FX 5900 didn't do a great job with it either (and iirc it's heavy on SM2.0, which means the 5800s will fare even worse). I vaguely remember it running at 800x600 and being so-so; definitely bottom of the barrel though. How much memory does the machine have though? I know it tends to eat up a ton of RAM, and that may be part of the limitation you're hitting if you only have ~512MB.

Yea only 512mb, was chugging VM at the char creation screen for a quite a bit.
I'm thinking of moving the 5800 to an athlon XP whenever I get the time to move the machine from the bottom of the stack.

Oblivion = XP = GF 8800+ / HD 2900+

Nuff said! Back to win9x! 😜

swaaye wrote:

Yup the Voodoo uses a fancy RAMDAC filter on output that gives a higher apparent color depth when a game is outputing 16-bit col […]
Show full quote

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Question for you about older games. Something I always struggled to understand.

The Voodoo uses dithering to display more than 16 bit colours. Now somewhere I read that there are games that only support 16 bit colour and will look better on Voodoo cards because of dithering. Is there some truth to this? Basically if a game does not support 32 bit rendering, is there some benefit of going with a Voodoo over a GeFore, or is it all the same?

Yup the Voodoo uses a fancy RAMDAC filter on output that gives a higher apparent color depth when a game is outputing 16-bit color depth. They improved the dithering techniques with each generation. Voodoo4/5 have the most sophisticated form of it. Also, if you run FSAA on Voodoo5, it improves 16-bit color even more due to the nature of SSAA.

There are two control panel settings that allow you to tweak / disable the dithering Voodoo3/4/5. "3D Filter" and "Alpha Blending" AFAIK. Voodoo1/2 have environment variables that affect the dithering but I think it can only be enabled or disabled.

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/59/

Thank you for this information! I will definitely check it out.

But one thing I don't get is, how can a 16 bit game internally render at 24 or 32 bits. To me, that makes no sense 😢

archsan wrote:

Oblivion = XP = GF 8800+ / HD 2900+

Nuff said! Back to win9x! 😜

ha, yhea if I game says its designed for Win98/XP I usually just consider it an XP game.

But, Eh its fun trying to get newer games to run in 9x tho 😲
Not that Oblivion is exactly new.

AlphaWing wrote:

But, Eh its fun trying to get newer games to run in 9x tho 😲
Not that Oblivion is exactly new.

By Windows 98 standards, Oblivion is 29th century technology. 🤣

But seriously, thanks for testing that out - I've always been curious if it would even work, but I've never had a 9x machine that's robust enough to even attempt it.

archsan: GF8800/HD2900 would be a VERY good companion for Oblivion, especially if you want to run at 1080p and have a lot of mods going! 😁

I don't know of to many early DX9 games to even test in 9x.

One Must Fall 2097 Battle Grounds is one I do know. Its a DX 9.0b game.
The 3d version of the classic 2d dos game 🤣 . It runs Ok on the FX 5800 but not that great, I think it actually has input delay issues in 2k\XP usually play it in 9x.

About the V3? I thought it rendered stuff internally at 22bit color?

Sorry about all the edits... Grammer, is bad at night.

AlphaWing wrote:

I don't know of to many early DX9 games to even test in 9x.

TRON 2.0 runs great in Win9x with a GF4. Should be really good with an FX card.

AlphaWing wrote:

I don't know of to many early DX9 games to even test in 9x.

Far Cry, Battlefield: Vietnam (supposedly), Halo PC, Tomb Raider AoD, Half-Life 2 come to mind. Not sure how many of those will actually install/run in 9x though. Most "full" DX9 games came about a little bit later, and will outclass GeForce FX/Radeon 9 capabilities for the most part (e.g. Oblivion, Hitman: Blood Money, Unreal Tournament 3, etc).

I think 3DMark03 should also run in 9x, not that it's a game. 🤣

Got the 5950U today and it does work just fine.

I have a 300W PSU in that machine. does that seem like enough or should I keep an eye out for a higher wattage one?

running Win 98SE with a 1.47ghz AthalonXP (I was mistaken earlier its not a 1.53) and 512MB RAM I got these results benchmarking using winmark 2001SE

ti4600 = 6550 3Dmarks

5950 Ultra = 7665 3Dmarks

unfortunately I forgot to remember the driver ver.and am to lazy to go boot the thing back up but it was 85. something maybe?

soviet conscript wrote:

Got the 5950U today and it does work just fine. […]
Show full quote

Got the 5950U today and it does work just fine.

I have a 300W PSU in that machine. does that seem like enough or should I keep an eye out for a higher wattage one?

running Win 98SE with a 1.47ghz AthalonXP (I was mistaken earlier its not a 1.53) and 512MB RAM I got these results benchmarking using winmark 2001SE

ti4600 = 6550 3Dmarks

5950 Ultra = 7665 3Dmarks

unfortunately I forgot to remember the driver ver.and am to lazy to go boot the thing back up but it was 85. something maybe?

My 5800U/P4 system draws around 190W at the wall peak in 3D01; desktop idle is more like 100W. It uses a 500W PSU because it's what I had - I'm guessing 300-350W is probably on the low side, but if it's a quality unit, it should be okay as long as you don't stack tons of hard-drives, fans, etc in there. In benchmarking did you mean 3DMark2001SE? 😊 If so, your 5950 is putting up lower scores than my 5900XT and 5800U are doing with the P4; not sure if that's anything to be concerned over (I'm not a big believer in 3DMark scores). You may try switching to a somewhat older driver version or double-checking settings if you have the time, but if you have no issues in games - who cares. 🤣

obobskivich wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

Got the 5950U today and it does work just fine. […]
Show full quote

Got the 5950U today and it does work just fine.

I have a 300W PSU in that machine. does that seem like enough or should I keep an eye out for a higher wattage one?

running Win 98SE with a 1.47ghz AthalonXP (I was mistaken earlier its not a 1.53) and 512MB RAM I got these results benchmarking using winmark 2001SE

ti4600 = 6550 3Dmarks

5950 Ultra = 7665 3Dmarks

unfortunately I forgot to remember the driver ver.and am to lazy to go boot the thing back up but it was 85. something maybe?

My 5800U/P4 system draws around 190W at the wall peak in 3D01; desktop idle is more like 100W. It uses a 500W PSU because it's what I had - I'm guessing 300-350W is probably on the low side, but if it's a quality unit, it should be okay as long as you don't stack tons of hard-drives, fans, etc in there. In benchmarking did you mean 3DMark2001SE? 😊 If so, your 5950 is putting up lower scores than my 5900XT and 5800U are doing with the P4; not sure if that's anything to be concerned over (I'm not a big believer in 3DMark scores). You may try switching to a somewhat older driver version or double-checking settings if you have the time, but if you have no issues in games - who cares. 🤣

heh, yhea I meant 3Dmark 2001SE. I don't have much fancy stuff connected. 2 cd drives, floppy drive, zip drive and 1 SCSI hard drive. as for other cards all I have is the SCSI card and a sound card. plus 1 case fan.

I'll try playing around with it a little more but It seems to run the few games ive tried pretty smoothly. Also I've heard some about fan noise on the fx cards being loud but mines not very load at all and the air being blown out is pretty light. I'm assuming that's because I'm not really taxing the card.

soviet conscript wrote:

I'll try playing around with it a little more but It seems to run the few games ive tried pretty smoothly. Also I've heard some about fan noise on the fx cards being loud but mines not very load at all and the air being blown out is pretty light. I'm assuming that's because I'm not really taxing the card.

The FX cards have an extreme reputation for fan noise, especially the Flow FX (blower) models; imho it's completely undeserved, especially compared to many later cards. 😊