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Maes

Source ports: performance on an oldskool machine

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Since I setup an "oldskool" machine for Doom (A P133 running Windows 98SE, S3 ViRGE PCI and SB16 Vibra, 80 MB Ram), I tried it with both vanilla and some source ports, to check out what's cookin'.

So...vanilla Doom runs very smoothly either under pure DOS or "directly from Windows", the soundcard works fine with the original FM timbres etc.

So I went to try it with source ports....to my surprise it ran ZDoom and PrBoom, and at least vanilla maps played very smooth at 640*480 (well something between 35 and 50 fps, to make a comparison). Too bad that the music sucked with both ports, because the SB16 operated in MIDI mode and...ewww, that was t3h f41l.

However, as soon as I loaded one single PWAD, even something very small like CYBIE.WAD, the performance plummeted to 486, no, 386 levels, with both ports. Larger PWADs such as CYBIE2.WAD were almost unplayable outdoors, and ZDoom seemed to fare worse, in case you wondered.

I know the machine is old (that's the whole purpose...) but there seems to be something else causing that enormous speed drop. RAM shouldn't be an issue, as the machine has unusually high RAM for its legacy, and no disk trashing occured.

On request, I can test it with other source posts and other PWADs like HR or whatever you suggest to see how it fares...in the mean, any ideas/comments? Is the handling of PWADs so much different than stock IWADs?

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PrBoom is based on Boom, which is probably the most optimised port out there. It sounds like the problem isn't in the rendering itself, but rather you're lacking the processor power needed to run such large levels. If this is the case, there's probably not much that you'll be able to do.

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That's what I figured too, but it happens even with small PWADs: actually ZDoom starts crawling from the TITLE SCREEN if I load even the smallest PWAD (even the music tempo in the title screen slows down, before anything "3D" is actually rendered, especially with ZDoom) so perhaps there's also something else going on that goes unnoticed on high-end machines?

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I'd make two changes to that machine. Add an 8 meg (or so) Video card and 128 meg ram. I had a nearly identical game machine, with those two upgrades, and it was great for old school. That darn system is still out in my garage with several others.

If there are any used computer stores in the town where you live you could likely pick that stuff up for a song. Or even on ebay.

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Actually BOOM ran pretty horribly on my 486. Lee Killough made a number of changes to MBF (including restoring hardware pageflipping) to mostly restore Doom's performance on that platform, so it remains the superior choice for a DOS port for really old machines.

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If you're looking to play wads for limit-removing ports on a DOS system, then doom2-plus (info) is an option.

Regarding Boom/Prboom versions, note that these went through quite an evolution. Prboom 2.02 (the first version, and a direct Windows port of Boom 2.02) is very different from later versions; you might want to see how that works.

I still have a P75 notebook and a P120 desktop machine (both Win95) in more or less working order, so I could test how they work with some of this stuff if I got a sudden fit of enthusiasm. My normal machine for testing in a true DOS environment is a P3 750 notebook (with Win98) though.

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I have an old P166 with stats similar to the PC in the first post.
I gave most the ports a run on it just out of curiosity and of all the ones I tested, Eternity seemed to have the best performance of the 'modern' ports.

PrBoom was surprizingly bad (as in I didn't think it'd be as bad as it was), while ZDoom's performance was expectedly bad. Eternity ran nicely considering, but for whatever reason it ran better than the others, and was playable on most the pwads I tried with it. (low detail maps ran at 35fps, while with larges ones the performance varied)

Doom2-plus is the 'port' of choice on the machine, and that's mostly why I set it up in the first place. So I could use vanilla doom exes. (and other DOS games...)

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I remember playing Doom Legacy back when it was a DOS program. It was fast but had this little nagging thing.. the flats would disappear! Of course this was on a 150 MHz with 8 MB RAM and an 800 MB HD.... best little notebook I ever owned. I still have it but the DC jack is fuxx0red.

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Sorry, I can't test OpenGL stuff, I only have a PCI S3 ViRGE with 2 MB :-)

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For ZDoom you could also try changing the Column Render Mode (under Display Options). From what I remember back in the day it was an optimization to the renderer that worked wonders for high resolutions on modern CPUs at the expense of older CPU performance. Setting it back to "Original" would probably speed things up.

Also, I don't know if the Virge cards were ever really good for anything :) I know they ran 3D accelerated stuff (back when everything was proprietary) slower than in software (the argument was that the image quality was slightly higher). I remember lusting over the awesome STB Lightning 128 back in the day, but it's probably not worth the effort to track down. I think even something like a $5 ATI Rage Pro would be much faster for 2D than a Virge, though.

As for PWADs to try, I think something really simple like Return to Phobos would be a good indication of whether there really is something special about playing PWADs over the IWAD.

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Well, S3 ViRGES aren't actually 3D accelerated at all, they were just the "epitome" of "as good as 2D will ever get", and at most can "help" 3D games by frame-buffering as fast as possible :-) . I think you mean those additional 3D accelerator boards using proprietary standards like 3dfx or Edge 3D...well I'd like to test one of those, but unfortunately I'm stuck with tons of stock S3 Virges :-)

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Maes said:

Well, S3 ViRGES aren't actually 3D accelerated at all

Incorrect. They don't state what the API was, but I assume it was S3's METAL or some precursor to it. A friend bought a Virge back in the day and I saw the "enhanced" Descent 2 port running on one.

They do mention that they were fast at 2D when they came out, but they're not anywhere near "as good as 2D will ever get." I think 2D speeds really maxed out with the Matrox G400 and Voodoo3 which came out 4-5 years later.

I completely understand not wanting to waste any money on obsolete hardware, though :) Stuffing a V3 in there would be cheating.

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That 8 meg ($5) ATI Rage card would make a huge difference. I used that 8 meg card on mine when most everyone else was getting 16 meg cards and the 32 megs were just out or just about to be out. Ah the good old days :)

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I have an old machine laying around.

P200, 64 MB ram, Matrox Millenium 2 video card (4 MB), awe32 sound card, and a Voodoo 3d card.

In ZDoom At 320 x 200 it runs the regular Doom/Doom2 game levels very smoothly (86 fps). Pwads with similar levels of detail run the same.

At 640 x 400 it is still playable just not as smooth. I talking 35 - 40 fps here.

640 x 480 is pretty much the same as 640 x 400.

800 x 600 and up, fuggeddaboudit.

I have no problems with most pwads. Unless it's insanely big and detailed. I can run levels like Vrack 2 ok if I drop the res down to 320 x 200.

Boom (for dos) runs better than doom/doom2.exe

PrBoom just plain dogs it. It runs pretty badly. Legacy is better but not much.

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I kinda "upgraded" the machine to a P166 MMX from the plain P133-S it was, and I get more or less the same results you got with standard doom levels.

What confuses me is how dramatically most source ports slow down as soon as you load even the simplest/oldest PWAD, regardless of its complexity, that's what made me supposed there must be something broken in the loaders or the way PWADs (not IWADs) are handled.

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Yeah, your problem with pwads is a mystery as my system is kinda similar in power to the one you are using. Pwads work find for me.

What has me bugged is why my system can barely muster 20 fps with prboom at 320 x 200 and runs at under 10 fps at 640 x 480. I suspect it has something to do with a quirk of the millenium card or something.

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Maes said:

So I went to try it with source ports....to my surprise it ran ZDoom and PrBoom, and at least vanilla maps played very smooth at 640*480 (well something between 35 and 50 fps, to make a comparison). Too bad that the music sucked with both ports, because the SB16 operated in MIDI mode and...ewww, that was t3h f41l.


Go into options -> sound options -> advanced options, and turn on "use FM snyth for mus music" (note that you'll probably have to restart ZDoom for the change to take effect). The music will then sound much closer to that of the vanilla .exe.

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NiGHTMARE said:

Go into options -> sound options -> advanced options, and turn on "use FM snyth for mus music" (note that you'll probably have to restart ZDoom for the change to take effect). The music will then sound much closer to that of the vanilla .exe.


Do you even have a clue as to what a CPU hog that OPL Emulation is on a P200, or even a P166 for that matter? That isn't a good idea, I can assure you.

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stphrz said:
Boom (for dos) runs better than doom/doom2.exe

Is that within Windows 9x? It could be due to memory management. I don't recall how Boom is affected, if at all, but Doom gets occasional slow downs without proper min/max disk cache settings. I use this memory manager to optimize that, and to free memory.

What has me bugged is why my system can barely muster 20 fps with prboom at 320 x 200 and runs at under 10 fps at 640 x 480. I suspect it has something to do with a quirk of the millenium card or something.

I have the impression its SDL base or implementation is rather taxing and not good for older systems. Are Eternity or Chocolate Doom any faster?

You may also want to change some settings, especially the sound frequency. If it's set rather high that will certainly affect performance. Set the samplerate to 22050, if it was higher, or even lower it to 11025, to speed up performance. There's also use_doublebuffer, which I think can slow things down (although the game might look a wee bit worse without it).

In any case, these older Pentiums are usually better off using DOS engines (Doom, Boom, ZDoom 1.17c, etc.)

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NiGHTMARE said:

Go into options -> sound options -> advanced options, and turn on "use FM snyth for mus music" (note that you'll probably have to restart ZDoom for the change to take effect). The music will then sound much closer to that of the vanilla .exe.


The ironic part is that the machine has a REAL OPL3 chip, but it sounds completely different in vanilla, which controls it directly and uses good quality timbres, and under windows, which just uses it as a MIDI device with some run-off-the-mill timbres. Just to get an idea of how bad it is, the electric guitar in E1M1 sounds like a squarewave banjo :-S (well, I could do a recording for everyone to "enjoy").

Same chip, real OPL3, VERY different sound depending on how you use it.

And ofc I won't kill the CPU trying to emulate what's already in there....perhaps someone could make a source port able to directly drive a real FM chip within a windows app, without using the MIDI mapper?

I remember I used the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 OPL3 drivers on my 486 with Windows 3.1 to get better MIDI performance out of my SB16, they somehow sounded much better. I don't know if the same thing can be done with Windows 98SE, somehow.

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The soundblaster was never used to its fullest potential through windows. In fact it was Horrible, and whoever wrote the drivers should be drug outside and shot. Just my opinion!

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Csonicgo said:

The soundblaster was never used to its fullest potential through windows. In fact it was Horrible, and whoever wrote the drivers should be drug outside and shot. Just my opinion!


I'm not sure if it's purely Creative Labs fault on this one, as a Yamaha Waveforce I have, when using its OPL3 mode as the windows midi device, sounds exactly like the SB16 does, so perhaps it's just Microsoft shoving a set of crappy FM timbres down our throat, or everyone is forced to use the same run-of-the-mill set of FM timbres due to some obscure copyright/permission story or just because they are lazy....it's true that the OPL3 (and OPL2, largely) went essentially underutilized.

The two best examples of games using the OPL2 properly are Doom (Music, timbres rivaling some wavetables) and Body Blows (Music, speech).

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[quote]Posts: 596
Registered: 07-06

Sorry, I can't test OpenGL stuff, I only have a PCI S3 ViRGE with 2 MB :-)

__________________
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Hmm...I have a good feeling about this bump.

I won't even ask how you managed to quote my post count AND my sig, but I sure hope you didn't think I used that machine for my everyday job?

If 2 MB seem too little...well, they are enough to hold an 800*600 frame with 24 bit color depth. In 2D mode, as there is no texture storage or anything remotely similar, that's really all you need. Having 4 MB or more of VRAM wouldn't have hurt, though...

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