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Katarhyne

Source ports and speed issues

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I'd heard that a lot of people were having speed issues, with some ports, most notably Legacy and EDGE in software mode, and ZdoomGL in hardware mode. This intrigued me, as I have no speed problems with any of these ports, on any of my computers, and I thought I might want to offer a little advice.

For one, always always always make sure you have ALL of the newest drivers. This includes sound drivers, graphics drivers, and motherboard drivers (such as AGP vGARTd drivers and IDE drivers, too). This is likely the source of 90% of the speed problems out there, especially with AGP drivers. I've noted that a lot of users don't have the proper AGP drivers installed. This can mean a 20-70% performance hit, people! Go get those AGP drivers!

Also, make sure you're running on a relatively clean install of Windows98 or ME, if you can. Windows98 and ME are both much more stable than their progenitors. Corollary to that, make sure that you don't have any OEM crap (like Compaq proprietary software), antivirus programs, or remains of uninstalled programs (games and MS Office are notorious for this) left over in your computer. Remove as much as possible from your startup; in Win98 and later you can do this with the simple program MSCONFIG.

Other than that, make sure your system is not overheating, and make sure that you're not enabling/disabling any features that may improve or degrade performance, and if so, then adjust them accordingly. A K6-III @ 400Mhz with a Voodoo3/2000 can achieve over 60 FPS in every accelerated port out there, at 1024x768x16, and in Legacy can achieve over 200 FPS. (!) In software mode, with 128MB of RAM, it can achieve over 50 FPS in every port in 640x400x16 (or 8-bit color if 16 is not allowed). So, seeing as how the majority of DW's users have AT LEAST those specifications, I should hope we don't hear any whining about low FPS.

Oh, one last thing. 3dfx users, run Jdoom in D3D. D3D FOR GODS SAKE!

::wavies:: E-mail me if you wan' more info.

Umm, of course, I can't be held responsible if you go following my advice and break something. If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it.

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I don't have any speed problems. Not any more.

Well, that's not true.

There is such a thing as "too fast" in Doom Legacy.

:)

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"So, seeing as how the majority of DW's users have AT LEAST those specifications"

ha.

any doom source coder who slows the game down due to incompetance or laziness deserves a good tongue lashing.

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Guest Firebrandt

Yes, generally true ...unless you happen to be the owner of a Banshee card. I could get glide and d3d games to zing, however the fact I play a lot of openGL games (Q3 anyone?) has forced me to make a few tradeoffs considering perormance vs. compatibility.

The newest AGP drivers for the Banshee card are great but openGL support is almost nil. The openGL compatible drivers on the other hand provide acceptable openGL performance yet tend to slow my glide and d3d applications somewhat (particularly d3d I've noticed (not a directx issue; only happens with these particular drivers)).
I did manage to get Quake3 to run having the newest AGP installed (the ones without openGL support) by running it through a custom launch using modified mesa drivers (Voodoo1 I know, but it worked... sort of). There were transparency issues and shaders didn't display right, but at least it ran. I really dont recommend this though! It is not exactly a very *stable* setup.

Eventually GLsetup drivers were updated and I decided to stop tempting fate and use something safe... or so I thought. After installing I started to get major graphic errors and at first couldn't find out the source. I then discovered that the Banshee card was installed thrice while I supposedly had two monitors. Heh.
I'm not a n3wb13, I didn't install the drivers on top of each other. The fact that two monitors were supposedly installed proves that since I had never changed nor modified the monitor.inf file as long as I had had this computer. This must have been a glitch in the GLsetup installer (actually the readme warned of "unforseen difficulties". My advice to all is to download the GLsetup drivers manually.) but at least it was easily fixable.

After finally having everything setup properly, I tweaked as much as I safely could and now get acceptable (read: I want a GeForce2!!!!) frame rates using glide, d3d and openGL.

Before I get flamed for buying a Banshee card in the first place, I honestly thought the future was going to be glide. :|

Oh, and did you say "corollary"? ;) I'm impressed.

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Great post, Firebrandt!

What about your AGP GART drivers for your motherboard? Have you updated them? I'm not sure everyone here (not tryin' to insult anyone's intelligence or knowledge, jus' tryin' to help) even KNOWS that your motherboard needs drivers too! Even da mothaboads gotsa get sum luvin'.

Erm, you ARE using the 3dfx reference drivers, right?

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Guest Firebrandt

Actually, I'm NOT using the 3DFX reference drivers. The reason is that my Banshee card is not a pure 3DFX product (Creative 3D Blaster Banshee) and therefore the standard reference drivers don't work all too well.

As for the AGP GART drivers, I had them up-to-date when I last updated the Banshee drivers... but that was some time ago now.
Better go check just to make sure. Thanks for the reminder. ;)

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Mrrow. ::winks::

Actually, Firebrandt, I checked up on it, and the 3D Blaster Banshee is mostly a standard 3dfx reference design. It should work fine with the reference drivers.

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Uh, I think you'll find the vast majority of people here are using computers so out of date they can barely play Half-life :)

Three words for these people: get a job

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::winces::
Yeah, I've gotten a bit of e-mail to that effect.
Geez, people, quit buying food and upgrade your computer or something. ::giggles::

I guess I overestimated a bit. I based the average user's computer on an analysis of my friends' computers, which mostly consist of PII's and K6-2/III's, with the occasional Athlon or PIII stuck in there. I guess DW's readership doesn't quite fall into that category. More like, Pentiums with the occasional K6 stuck in there.

Mmph.

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NiGHTMARE said:

Uh, I think you'll find the vast majority of people here are using computers so out of date they can barely play Half-life :)

Three words for these people: get a job

Um yeah, I'm now running a p100 w/ 48mb ram.. ph33r.

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Guest Firebrandt
Katarhyne said:

Mrrow. ::winks::

Actually, Firebrandt, I checked up on it, and the 3D Blaster Banshee is mostly a standard 3dfx reference design. It should work fine with the reference drivers.

It should eh? Gotta try that sometime.

Thank you for the advice O venerable D00M M1str3ss. <bows>

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Aaaah, when Legacy´s native Macintosh version will be finished (soon), I can quit with slow PC-emulations on my Mac. Macs are allways faster than PCs. Macintoshes uses RISC-processors...
But even under emulation with PC-Dos 7.0, Legacy for me seems to be the fastest port of all which run under DOS.

The native MacDoom and MacDoom 2, both released in 1995, are both extremely fast, even on VERY large maps in high-res.

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Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, Peter, but the newest x86 architecture processors at 1.13 and 1.2 Ghz, respectively, are significantly faster than the fastest Apple G4, which I believe is at 550Mhz or 600Mhz, and I'm not just referring to clock speed. Apple likes to tout that their G4 processors can reach over 1GFLOP, but the fact is that the lowly AMD Athlon 700 can also reach 1GFLOP, as well. Granted, this is at a higher clock speed, but a lower price, as well. The AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz utterly obliviates any and every Apple processor out there. I should know. ::Winks::

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Firebrandt said:

It should eh? Gotta try that sometime.

Thank you for the advice O venerable D00M M1str3ss. <bows>

... head on over to http://www.wicked3d.com/technology/wickedGL.htm and have a try, my little brother experienced a quite good speed increase with those drivers...

"On most systems
WickedGL will provide you with performance and quality improvements
over standard drivers.
WickedGL features:
Improved visual quality
High tolerance to heavy rendering loads
Extra acceleration for high resolution high quality modes"

sounds promising, right? ;)

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bitstate said:

... head on over to http://www.wicked3d.com/technology/wickedGL.htm and have a try, my little brother experienced a quite good speed increase with those drivers...

"On most systems
WickedGL will provide you with performance and quality improvements
over standard drivers.
WickedGL features:
Improved visual quality
High tolerance to heavy rendering loads
Extra acceleration for high resolution high quality modes"

sounds promising, right? ;)

Aaigh! I forgot to mention 3rd-party drivers. Yeah, the WickedGL drivers can give a substantial speed increase for users of Voodoo chipsets before the VSA-100. However, if your card uses a VSA-100 chipset, DO NOT USE WickedGL.

However, bitstate, in some cases, the new 1.03.00 drivers from 3dfx can be significantly faster than WickedGL, since they include a full OpenGL ICD.

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Katarhyne said:

Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, Peter, but the newest x86 architecture processors at 1.13 and 1.2 Ghz, respectively, are significantly faster than the fastest Apple G4, which I believe is at 550Mhz or 600Mhz, and I'm not just referring to clock speed. Apple likes to tout that their G4 processors can reach over 1GFLOP, but the fact is that the lowly AMD Athlon 700 can also reach 1GFLOP, as well. Granted, this is at a higher clock speed, but a lower price, as well. The AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz utterly obliviates any and every Apple processor out there. I should know. ::Winks::

Even the 400 MHz G4 can go over the 1GFlop border (stated by Apple and tested also by Ziff Davis Labs). Apple spoke about the G4 some months ago as a "super-computer" which, I confess, was a bit oversized. Different cpu-architectures can not easily be compared. But even if let out the fact, that the MacOS is much more user-friendly and easier to handle (=faster), you will find Windows computers (and their users) every time when it comes to comparision on the second position. Maybe a 1.2GHz is a bit faster than the fastest Mac out there. I should not have made this negative post of mine.

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No, no, Peter, I'm glad for it! I appreciate intelligent debate, and you're right, at the same clock speed, the Apple G4 destroys the Pentium III and the Athlon. Apple merely needs to concentrate on maximizing the clock speed of the G4 architecture. A 1Ghz G4 would be truly impressive.

As for the comments about MacOS being superior to Windows, have you tried Windows 2000? It's easily as stable as MacOS, and as far as user-friendliness...I really don't think that's an issue for most serious computer users. In fact, user-friendliness can get in the way of the power user, as shown by the widespread unhappiness with Windows ME. MacOS X looks to be promising, but as it stands, the fastest operating system out there is (hehe) AmigaOS.

Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh?

In all seriousness, Motorola and AMD both make excellent processors. The only question is which is more appropriate for what you do. If you intend to primarily play games, an x86 is really the only way to go.

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Jon said:

heh I like j00r face kat :)

There's the bastard that left me at the altar!!!!!
::giggles::
Weren't we gonna get married? Whatever happened to that?

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Katarhyne said:

No, no, Peter, I'm glad for it! I appreciate intelligent debate, and you're right, at the same clock speed, the Apple G4 destroys the Pentium III and the Athlon. Apple merely needs to concentrate on maximizing the clock speed of the G4 architecture. A 1Ghz G4 would be truly impressive.

As for the comments about MacOS being superior to Windows, have you tried Windows 2000? It's easily as stable as MacOS, and as far as user-friendliness...I really don't think that's an issue for most serious computer users. In fact, user-friendliness can get in the way of the power user, as shown by the widespread unhappiness with Windows ME. MacOS X looks to be promising, but as it stands, the fastest operating system out there is (hehe) AmigaOS.

Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh?

In all seriousness, Motorola and AMD both make excellent processors. The only question is which is more appropriate for what you do. If you intend to primarily play games, an x86 is really the only way to go.

Heh, before reading your reply, I spend half an hour to finish a detailed explaination about the differences between Macs and PCs :o) No need for it - I see.

A 1000MHz G4? There is a dual processor 500MHz G4, but of course this does not provides a doubling of performance.

AmigaOS is really nice and Amigas used to top Macs in Multimedia respects at their time. Lots of processors for special purposes and a very high graphic standard.

For example the TV-series "SeeQuest" (1994) were rendered on (lots of) Amigas, which were the best solution under the SiliconGraphics class. But sadly Amiga promoted their system as a game-machine. I have an Amiga emulation on my Mac, with Workbench 3.1.

I would say that the Mac is a real quality filter for games, all excellant games are on the Mac (most).

Your argumenting and knowledge? Well, I am impressed!

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AriocH said:

I don't have any speed problems. Not any more.

Well, that's not true.

There is such a thing as "too fast" in Doom Legacy.

:)

how come on my celeron 466 with 32 megs of ram adn an ati rage pro (which plays quake3 pretty good in high rez) runs legacy in 3d great, but in software its really slow? i try to open a door and im waitign for about 2 minutes, actually its only the doors. is that a programming problem or do i just suck, no i know i suck, is it my pc?

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AriocH said:

I don't have any speed problems. Not any more.

Well, that's not true.

There is such a thing as "too fast" in Doom Legacy.

:)

how come on my celeron 466 with 32 megs of ram adn an ati rage pro (which plays quake3 pretty good in high rez) runs legacy in 3d great, but in software its really slow? i try to open a door and im waitign for about 2 minutes, actually its only the doors. is that a programming problem or do i just suck, no i know i suck, is it my pc?

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I don't have any hardware accleration, get about 20 fps and am happy with it, it's when it gets down to about 6 or 8 that I start getting pissed.

I don't match your specifications and find it hard to believe that any other person here would ahve enough money to either (otherwise on your parent's comp and that doesn't count).

I *could* get a new computer, but it would cost too much money in my opinion (and I do have a job so don't complain at my complaining), im just really good with money and would have to ahve about 5x the money it would cost saved back (in other words, im not getting a new computer for another year or two)

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NiGHTMARE said:

Uh, I think you'll find the vast majority of people here are using computers so out of date they can barely play Half-life :)

Three words for these people: get a job

I *could* play HL, but it's not worth it since it would just be in software mode and I wouldn't be able to edit it very easily (hmm, is that why I still stick with doom?)

amd333
60mb ram (4m shared with on-board video)
no 3d acclerator (not even a lousy low-level voodoo)

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Wow very nice and informative post. You wouldn't happen to know any speed tips for increasing performance on a 486 SX computer with a 33 Mhz processor, would you? No, that's not the only computer I have, but it is one that I don't have to share with my siblings and as it is it can just barely play vanilla DOOM 2 with low-detail, and I want to play it in high-detail. BTW, I know that this is an extremely bizarre question and I won't be surprised if I'm just out of luck.

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masterhassan said:

how come on my celeron 466 with 32 megs of ram adn an ati rage pro (which plays quake3 pretty good in high rez) runs legacy in 3d great, but in software its really slow? i try to open a door and im waitign for about 2 minutes, actually its only the doors. is that a programming problem or do i just suck, no i know i suck, is it my pc?

Are you playing the Windows or DOS version of Legacy? There's a number of reasons, one being that the Celeron is an EXTREMELY slow processor for the clock speed; though that's likely not the problem. More RAM would probably help, but if you're only getting it on the doors then it's likely either a driver problem. Answer my question, and I'll see if I can do more for you. ::smiles, wavies::

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geekmarine said:

Wow very nice and informative post. You wouldn't happen to know any speed tips for increasing performance on a 486 SX computer with a 33 Mhz processor, would you? No, that's not the only computer I have, but it is one that I don't have to share with my siblings and as it is it can just barely play vanilla DOOM 2 with low-detail, and I want to play it in high-detail. BTW, I know that this is an extremely bizarre question and I won't be surprised if I'm just out of luck.

Well, perhaps.
::winces:: >_<

Uh, something you could do, if your processor uses a ZIF socket, which I doubt it does, (ANYWAY) is replace it with a 486DX processor. This will give an incredible speed increase, as a 486DX has a math co-processor (I.E. the FPU) on-chip, whereas the 486SX is lacking one.

Failing that, make sure your memory is being managed well. What operating system are you running?

Really, to be honest, I don't have a lot of experience with computers prior to the Socket-5/DOS 5 age, and so there's not much I can help you with at that level. I will say that if you can perhaps save up some small amount of cash, AMD Duron systems are disgustingly cheap. (400$! And there's a 400$ REBATE!)

Also, I know this is sacrelige, but go check out http://www.theunderdogs.org / for some great older games that should run just fine on your computer. I realize that this doesn't help you any with your problem, but it may alleviate some boredom for a few days.

::wavies::

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sirgalahadwizar said:

I don't have any hardware accleration, get about 20 fps and am happy with it, it's when it gets down to about 6 or 8 that I start getting pissed.

I don't match your specifications and find it hard to believe that any other person here would ahve enough money to either (otherwise on your parent's comp and that doesn't count).

I *could* get a new computer, but it would cost too much money in my opinion (and I do have a job so don't complain at my complaining), im just really good with money and would have to ahve about 5x the money it would cost saved back (in other words, im not getting a new computer for another year or two)

My specifications?
No, I doubt you match MY specifications, especially since I'm using a video card which isn't even released yet. ::tight-lipped smile::
The computer I listed in the primary post is one of my older ones. I don't know about everyone that reads this site, but I'm confident in saying that among middle- and upper-class Americans, this is a pretty average computer. I think I already said, in one of my other replies, that I made a mistake in assuming this held true for Doomworld's constituency.

As far as the too much money issue...go check out www.pricewatch.com and build your own. My brother built himself a Duron 650Mhz, with 128MB of RAM and a Voodoo4/4500, including a 17" monitor, Soundblaster Live! soundcard, and a 10/100 NIC for well under $1K. I'd have to ask him exactly how MUCH under $1K, but I'm willing to bet it was near $750 or $800. And that computer SCREAMS, compared to the system I listed in the post.

::scratches her head::

And if you're really good with money, then why do you need 5x the price of the computer to buy one?

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masterhassan said:

how come on my celeron 466 with 32 megs of ram adn an ati rage pro (which plays quake3 pretty good in high rez) runs legacy in 3d great, but in software its really slow? i try to open a door and im waitign for about 2 minutes, actually its only the doors. is that a programming problem or do i just suck, no i know i suck, is it my pc?

Yes, software mode Legacy running extremely slow was one of my original concerns about Doom Legacy on my old Celeron 300@338 (it had 256 megs of ram).

10 to 16 fps wasn't an acceptable speed, heh.

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