Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-22, 13:07:

I did find 45.23 drivers (which do support SSE2) to be faster than both 30.82 and 40.72 on my Athlon64 + GeForce4 Ti4200 system.

I can't say with certainty whether it was due to SSE2 or not, but the game benchmark scores are noticeably better. On a side note, 3D Mark scores were higher with older drivers, but actual game benchmarks (both Direct3D and OpenGL) were better with 45.23.

Interesting... but I do notice something very strange in your results, though: the Quake 2 Software benchmark which apparently has more performance with 45.23 compared to 40.72.
I've never ever seen a driver influence in such a big way the performance of Quake 2 when running in software mode (and it wouldn't make much sense either). In your particular case, it seems like the CPU performance was a bit faster when testing with the 45.23 driver.

Not sure if that's the case for you, but I've encountered a similar bug on certain VIA platforms (in combination with certain VIA drivers): 2 out of 5 restarts, the apparent CPU performance changes for the better.

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-22, 13:19:

Interesting... but I do notice something very strange in your results, though: the Quake 2 Software benchmark which apparently has more performance with 45.23 compared to 40.72.

I found this very odd as well, and (re)ran those tests many times. The results were consistent, with no variation between restarts and such.

Quake 2 software rendering is noticeably better with 45.23 compared to 40.72 drivers (or lower). Not sure if it matters, but my particular Athlon64 is based on the NewCastle core and supports SSE2 but not SSE3. Also, all benchmarks were made using the 3DNow! optimized version of Quake 2.

Well, seems like we have a mystery on our hands and we need to get to the bottom of it. 😁
I will try and do more tests as soon as possible. IIRC, I think you were complaining on another thread about not finding relevant GeForce FX 5900XT benchmarks anywhere, so will take this opportunity to thoroughly test that card as well (on multiple platforms). 😀

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-22, 13:34:

IIRC, I think you were complaining on another thread about not finding relevant GeForce FX 5900XT benchmarks anywhere, so will take this opportunity to thoroughly test that card as well (on multiple platforms). 😀

Nice! 😀

I mean, there are some 5900XT reviews out there, but they mostly test games like FarCry, Halo and Half-Life 2. These may be period correct titles, but they are too new to be of interest to a Win9x retro gamer. The reason why we use those cards is to (nearly) max out older games.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-22, 13:46:

Nice! 😀

I mean, there are some 5900XT reviews out there, but they mostly test games like FarCry, Halo and Half-Life 2. These may be period correct titles, but they are too new to be of interest to a Win9x retro gamer. The reason why we use those cards is to (nearly) max out older games.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I had that problem myself with many of these cards which aren't exactly Win98 cards per se, but we use them as such. 😁

eh nevermind

Another advantage of the FX series over its predecessors is that you could enable high settings of AA and AF without much of an impact on FPS, whereas doing so on the GF4 would have a much more notable impact on performance.

As for compatibility with older platforms and slower CPUs, it's my opinion that it's best to stop at the GeForce 3; not because the newer GPUs aren't faster on paper, but due to problems with drivers with this older hardware. For example, I was able to get the best performance out of a GeForce 3 on a K6 system I was testing on, because this was the latest hardware to be supported for the "fastest" driver I could find after thorough testing. All drivers after this version, even for the same card, would tank in performance.

This might be a dumb question, but would these features be of concern if the system is complimented by a Voodoo 1 or 2? I was under the impression that the Voodoos would cover it. I guess performance may be an issue for some titles.

It would only be covered if the game has support for Glide. The Voodoo 1 and 2 can't do Ditect3D or full OpenGL ICD.

The Banshee and Voodoo 3 can, up to DirectX 6. I don't know how well they support OpenGL.

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:32:

This might be a dumb question, but would these features be of concern if the system is complimented by a Voodoo 1 or 2?

You would have to run the games which need these features on the Voodoo card, but otherwise there would be no issues.

The Voodoo 1 is not great in terms of performance though, and starts to struggle with games made in 1998 and later. A Voodoo 2 or a Voodoo 3 would be noticeably faster.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:45:

The Voodoo 1 and 2 can't do Ditect3D or full OpenGL ICD.

Not true. Even the Voodoo 1 can do Direct3D.

The Banshee and Voodoo 3 can, up to DirectX 6. I don't know how well they support OpenGL.

The Voodoo 3 has full OpenGL ICD support in the latest official driver. I think even the Voodoo 1 got the ICD at some point, but it's been a while since I checked that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:46:

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:32:

This might be a dumb question, but would these features be of concern if the system is complimented by a Voodoo 1 or 2?

You would have to run the games which need these features on the Voodoo card, but otherwise there would be no issues.

The Voodoo 1 is not great in terms of performance though, and starts to struggle with games made in 1998 and later. A Voodoo 2 or a Voodoo 3 would be noticeably faster.

Are there many games that have these features where a Voodoo 2 wouldn't be fast enough?

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-07-28, 01:04:

Are there many games that have these features where a Voodoo 2 wouldn't be fast enough?

All of the currently known games which use these features should work fine on a Voodoo 2.

You can find the game lists on the Vogons wiki here and also here.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:49:

Not true. Even the Voodoo 1 can do Direct3D. […]
Show full quote

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-07-28, 00:45:

The Voodoo 1 and 2 can't do Ditect3D or full OpenGL ICD.

Not true. Even the Voodoo 1 can do Direct3D.

The Banshee and Voodoo 3 can, up to DirectX 6. I don't know how well they support OpenGL.

The Voodoo 3 has full OpenGL ICD support in the latest official driver. I think even the Voodoo 1 got the ICD at some point, but it's been a while since I checked that.

I stand corrected. I only use these cards very rarely, so I probably shouldn't have weighed in on this.

I didn't know that the Voodoo 1 and 2 could do Direct3D though!

Cards don't do D3D/OGL/glide/etc. They do much lower level 3d operations.

The question is has a driver been written that implements a particular API for a given card.

You could write a glide driver for an nvidia card if you wanted. E.g. dgvoodoo.

kolderman wrote on 2022-07-28, 08:08:

You could write a glide driver for an nvidia card if you wanted. E.g. dgvoodoo.

I think a distinction should be made between a driver, a wrapper and emulation.

They all do things differently, with emulation utilizing the CPU to make up for any features that the GPU lacks.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-28, 10:24:

kolderman wrote on 2022-07-28, 08:08:

You could write a glide driver for an nvidia card if you wanted. E.g. dgvoodoo.

I think a distinction should be made between a driver, a wrapper and emulation.

They all do things differently, with emulation utilizing the CPU to make up for any features that the GPU lacks.

Actually it's not unusual for drivers of all kinds to do certain things on the CPU when the hardware is lacking. You see this from network cards to sound cards to graphics cards. I don't know how much exactly dgvoodoo emulates vs wraps, but I believe it's more of the latter.

I've started doing tests with the GeForce FX 5900XT, and I've encountered a pretty weird issue (one that I now remember seeing in the past with other GeForce FX 59xx cards, but never investigated it further).

NFS Porsche does not work properly (controls freeze, either in the main menu, or randomly in the first minute of the actual race).
Initially I thought it was a speed sensitivity problem (I'm testing it on an Asrock 775i65g rev 2.0 + a Pentium Dual Core E5800 @ 3.73 GHz).
But then I realized that I had tested this game multiple times on even faster platforms and it had worked fine. Anyway, I downclocked the Pentium Dual Core to 600 MHz, no improvement.

So after some research, I narrowed it down to the... video driver (very weird): I was using 45.23. I also tested 56.64, same issue.
Also found this thread where other people complained about it 20 years ago.

It seems that all (previously thought) good drivers that work with GeForce FX cards are affected by this (4x.xx / 5x.xx). The last driver that I know of which definitely works with NFS 5 Porsche is 30.82.
I even tested a GeForce 2 MX with the same 45.23 driver, on the same platform, and the behavior is the same. So I downgraded the driver to 7.76 and, of course, all issues are gone.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is a universal bug. It might still be a combination of platform + nVIDIA Detonator version. Can anybody else test their GeForce FX card on other platforms and see if you get the same behavior in NFS5?

bloodem wrote on 2022-07-29, 09:23:

I'm not entirely convinced that this is a universal bug. It might still be a combination of platform + nVIDIA Detonator version. Can anybody else test their GeForce FX card on other platforms and see if you get the same behavior in NFS5?

Does this issue occur in the demo version of Porsche Unleashed as well?

I don't own the full game, but I could test the demo on my Athlon64 + GeForce4 Ti4200 system. From what you've described, this affects older cards as well, if they use 4x.xx drivers?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-29, 09:44:

Does this issue occur in the demo version of Porsche Unleashed as well?

I tried it now and the demo fails in a different manner (the game crashes after clicking the "Race" button). So this one has other older bugs as well (possibly also related to the video driver itself, or to things like the DirectX version - I'm using DirectX 8.1).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-07-29, 09:44:

I don't own the full game, but I could test the demo on my Athlon64 + GeForce4 Ti4200 system. From what you've described, this affects older cards as well, if they use 4x.xx drivers?

Yes, on this particular platform that I'm testing it seems like older cards are also affected (at least the GeForce 2 MX that I tried surely is) with the 45.23 drivers.
It's still hard for me to imagine that this issue occurs on ALL platforms when using Detonator 4x.xx or newer. I would think that such a bug with what was a very popular game would've been discovered by now.
If this turns out to be the case, then it's a major point in ATI's favor in my book. 😀 The X850 XT (and older cards like 9800 PRO) work perfectly in NFS 5 Porsche (and all other NFS games) with Catalyst 6.2.