Doom95 on computers of the day

[invictius]

Did anyone ever get doom95 to run in 640x480 at a decent framerate? I remember spending a lot of money on a 4mb video card just to get it running smoothly, only to find it did nothing (I was much less computer-literate back then, a matter of months after buying my first pc).

[Graf Zahl]

Sure. When I bought Final Doom my current computer was a Pentium 90 Mhz which was clearly fast enough for it.

The bigger problem was that the music sounded like utter shit on that system making the whole experience intolerable.

It meant the end of Dooming for me until I got my hands on the first usable source ports with hi-res support and better music options (or to be precise, where I could hack in better music options.)

[invictius]

Graf Zahl said:

Sure. When I bought Final Doom my current computer was a Pentium 90 Mhz which was clearly fast enough for it.

The bigger problem was that the music sounded like utter shit on that system making the whole experience intolerable.

It meant the end of Dooming for me until I got my hands on the first usable source ports with hi-res support and better music options (or to be precise, where I could hack in better music options.)

Heh, I remember an awe32 being offered to me for $100 in order to enjoy what I thought at the time to be "perfect" midi music (This would have been ~98) - I didn't even know about mp3's at the time...

[Never_Again]

Yeah, I, too, spent quite a bit on various video cards in mid-to-late 90s, mainly for Q2 but also trying to get Doom95 to run at top speed. What 4MB? Peanuts. At one point I seriously considered planking down a few grand on an Oxygen card. Fortunately that didn't happen, and wouldn't have helped anyway. That was a professional GL workstation card and even with a 2MB Diamond Stealth Doom95 was entirely CPU-bound. The Oxygen piece probably wouldn't fit inside even a full tower case.

Graf Zahl said:

Sure. When I bought Final Doom my current computer was a Pentium 90 Mhz which was clearly fast enough for it.

Either your memory is hazy or your expectations were much lower than mine back in the day, because I clearly remember that a P-133 wasn't fast enough to max out Doom95's framerate at 640x400 (let alone 640x480). I don't think I saw steady 35 fps until P-233 MMX.

[Bucket]

I skipped Doom95 entirely. Tried it once or twice and I was done. I was DOS Dooming it in every version of Windows up to 2000 Pro, at which point ZDoom was available.

[SyntherAugustus]

I remember having Doom95 from the CD I found in the bargain bin. Didn't take long for me to take a liking for Dos ZDoom instead.

[Bashe]

My friend let me borrow his Doom 2 and Final Doom discs so I could install them on my brother's computer of the time, circa late 1999. Doom 2 was the regular DOS one, but Final Doom was Doom95. I forget what was in that machine, but it ran Doom95 perfectly fine, at least at 320x200. I don't really remember the other resolutions being much worse in terms of performance, but I can't remember anymore. All I really remember is immediately disliking it and wanting to stick with DOS Doom instead.

[Never_Again]

I don't think OP was asking for opinions. Everybody knows that Doom95 sucks, anyway.

[ReFracture]

Heh I remember running Doom 95 on a friend's 486 66mhz. Hoo-Lee-Sheet was the performance bad.

It ran perfectly fine on my Pentium II 300 mhz though.

[CODOR]

Never_Again said:
I don't think I saw steady 35 fps until P-233 MMX.

I don't think I've played Doom95 on anything less than a P233 MMX, cause that was the first system I had that was capable of running win32 apps.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've played Doom95 on anything more powerful than a P233 MMX :-P

[Csonicgo]

I think the major problem with Doom 95 is that Doom really didn't need a port to windows to run on windows in the first place. Given that my video card drivers didn't support DirectX until MS started packaging the most popular video card drivers WITH DirectX (that was actually a good idea) I couldn't play Doom95 at all.

That damned Mach64 card.

[Doomkid]

I don't remember exactly what computer we had but I'm pretty sure I got the full Ultimate Doom for Win95 in 1998. It ran fine at 640x480 as I recall (I would only have been about 6 or 7) but even on a Win98 machine, it still did that "hippie color' glitch all the time.. So damn annoying.