Voodoo1 capabilities in the last Glide era

[Simon82]

Hello,

Sometimes I try to recreate that old hardware past age setups we all remember. Once upon a time I've tried to run the latest and most complex Glide based game on the first Glide based hardware (Voodoo Graphics) and I've tested with incredible surprise that this game (Unreal Tournament) run in a decent way (considering that we're talking about software near the Voodoo5/Geforce age). So that was the power of Glide optimization... do you think that was the maximun combination between a video chip and a software title? What any other test would you compare with this?

Bye

 

[Dio]

I reckon UT was earlier than you think - I was working on Unreal with Savage3D and UT with Savage4 (which were up against the Voodoo2 and 3 respectively, and were only around twice the performance of the original).

 

[Simon82]

I reckon UT was earlier than you think - I was working on Unreal with Savage3D and UT with Savage4 (which were up against the Voodoo2 and 3 respectively, and were only around twice the performance of the original).

Well, I remember anyway that Geforce and Voodoo5 was often tested on it when if I remember correctly Voodoo3 Glide performance was comparable to the Direct3D Geforce ones... ahh... good memories.

 

[Davros]

The voodoo3 came out in 1998 a few months before Ut was released
At the time the savage was the only card to support the compressed texures from cd2

from the Ut readme
Minimum system requirement:

* 233 MHz Pentium MMX or AMD K6 class computer.
* 32 megabytes of RAM.
* 4 megabyte video card.

Typical system:

* 300 MHz Pentium II or AMD K6-3.
* 64 megabytes of RAM.
* 3dfx Voodoo 2 / Riva TNT class 3d accelerator.

Awesome system:

* Pentium III 500 or AMD Athlon 550 or faster PC.
* 128 megabytes of RAM.
* 3dfx Voodoo3 / Riva TNT2 class 3D accelerator.

 

[Subtlesnake]

I think you mean 1999, not 1998.

 

[Davros]

I think you mean 1999, not 1998.

for the voodoo 3 ? wiki lists it as being released in 1998
I know Ut was 1999

edit : another article on wiki has the voodoo3 released in 1999

 

[Simon82]

The voodoo3 came out in 1998 a few months before Ut was released
At the time the savage was the only card to support the compressed texures from cd2

from the Ut readme
Minimum system requirement:

* 233 MHz Pentium MMX or AMD K6 class computer.
* 32 megabytes of RAM.
* 4 megabyte video card.

Typical system:

* 300 MHz Pentium II or AMD K6-3.
* 64 megabytes of RAM.
* 3dfx Voodoo 2 / Riva TNT class 3d accelerator.

Awesome system:

* Pentium III 500 or AMD Athlon 550 or faster PC.
* 128 megabytes of RAM.
* 3dfx Voodoo3 / Riva TNT2 class 3D accelerator.

Well, awesome setup at the launch time. Lot of game are good base to test also other video card. I remember also Voodoo5 was tested in Glide with this Game.

 

[Blazkowicz]

UT was impressive on K6/2 400 with Voodoo2. the glide dll's had 3Dnow! code I think which allowed the K6 not to suck. Solid IQ and framerate for the time. the glide renderer doesn't have the extended compressed textures but it's full featured, with detail textures.

800x600 75Hz was actually decent on a 14" CRT. UT is also very tolerant of low res and lack of AA. later I had it running at 150fps on duron + Voodoo5, 800x600 16@22bit 120Hz!

 

[Simon F]

UT was impressive on K6/2 400 with Voodoo2. the glide dll's had 3Dnow! code I think which allowed the K6 not to suck.

But, IIRC, glide was just a post-transform triangle rendering API - much like the "lower level"** PowerVR library. Why would it need much in the way of 3DNow! code? Did the Voodoo lack a triangle set up engine?***


** SGL had both a high level, display list interface (used in Mech Warrior) and a low level triangle rendering interface that was used for games like Tomb Raider and Unreal.

*** PCX1/2 didn't have a pure triangle interface but rendered intersections of planes so it did need CPU assistance for conversion.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I don't know, I don't know! you're almost scaring me

Though, Voodoo1 does lack a triangle setup engine. Voodoo2 has it, which is why it worked much better than the voodoo2 even on a low CPU.

 

[nicolasb]

Voodoo 1 did about two thirds of the triangle-setup process in hardware. Voodoo 2 did all of it.

(PowerVR, of course, didn't do any of the triangle setup in hardware. This caused advocates of PowerVR to claim that it was superior to Voodoo on the grounds that it "scaled better" as you increased CPU speed.)

 

[no-X]

Voodoo 3 release date: 5th Feb. 1999

 

[Davros]

there were 3dnow optimised drivers for the voodoo2 in quake 2 (minigl) - didnt work with a v1

"The Quake2 - 3DNow! patch is a SW patch used to update a specific version of Quake2 to allow for the use of 3DNow! optimized drivers when using a Voodoo 2-based video accelerator. When AMD was originally looking to demonstrate the speed improvements possible with the 3DNow! instructions, they wisely choose a demo based on Quake2. Quake2 is obviously an extremely popular game and one where the AMD processors have traditionally been soundly beaten by the FPU strength of the Intel processors."

 

[Simon82]

there were 3dnow optimised drivers for the voodoo2 in quake 2 (minigl) - didnt work with a v1

"The Quake2 - 3DNow! patch is a SW patch used to update a specific version of Quake2 to allow for the use of 3DNow! optimized drivers when using a Voodoo 2-based video accelerator. When AMD was originally looking to demonstrate the speed improvements possible with the 3DNow! instructions, they wisely choose a demo based on Quake2. Quake2 is obviously an extremely popular game and one where the AMD processors have traditionally been soundly beaten by the FPU strength of the Intel processors."

Mhhh.. if I remember when I tested that drivers maybe with other card the run slowly compared to normal Opengl one.

 

[Davros]

it was voodoo2 only

 

[swaaye]

Well, in my experience, a K6-2 450 with a Voodoo3 3000 was equivalent to maybe a Pentium 2 350 for UT. I never personally went for a K6 processor, but used and tweaked several of my friends' K6 rigs. They ran that game poorly relative to a P2/3. They ran most (all?) FPS games notably poorly compared to Intel P2/3. The FPU, awful mobo-based L2 cache, and poor memory bandwidth efficiency / latency were the obstacles, I believe.

K6 just had cheapness on its side. I question the value though, because the K6 platform was horrible due to the motherboard and chipset quality. I still remember struggling with GeForce 2 on those boards. Hours struggling to get them going for buddies. It was a waste anyway because the CPUs weren't really able to push a GeForce-level card. Better off with your old TNT2 Ultra / Voodoo3 and buying a P3. Reminds me of my 'ol SL35D P3 450 that did 600. Blew past everything out there.

And, that 3DNow! patch for Quake 2 and Voodoo2 is about the best 3DNow! game display out there. It was done by AMD engineers as a way to push K6-2, I believe.
http://www.realworldtech.com/altcpu/subpages/k6faq2/k6faq24of7.htm

 

[Davros]

I question the value though, because the K6 platform was horrible due to the motherboard and chipset quality

funny you mention that i went through 3 mboards trying to get my k6-2 350 stable including some pc100 board that couldnt do 100mhz fsb, the bios said 100mhz but the chipset (sis) was designed for the cyrix m2 and was only designed to do 87mhz (or something) the bios would say 100mhz but it would only go to about 91mhz. Then of course i had win 95 osr2 and that didnt work with a k6-2 300+ unless you got a patch (but no one told me that) untill i was lucky enough to read about it in a pc mag then I had the trouble of actually getting it with no internet, finnally i found someone who dl'd it for me and allthough it now booted fine it was still unstable ( a mate who dual booted win98 + win 2000 said it was rock solid in win2k)
ditching my k6-2 350 for a p3-450 was one of the best things I ever did

 

[PeterAce]

Well the K6(2)/(3) look fab compaired to the nasty Cyrix or IDT Winchip CPUs

 

[swaaye]

Well the K6(2)/(3) look fab compaired to the nasty Cyrix or IDT Winchip CPUs

lol. that's for sure. They all ran in the same icky mobos though. Well, you could use most of them on a Intel 430-based mobo, but Intel kinda gave up on features for those so they became rather retro pretty quick.

 

[Davros]

i remember my k6-2 did very well in sisdoft sandra benchmarks though, i was reasonably happy with the speed it was just the instability