Quake 1,2,3 ReBirth?

[doragasu]

IIRC, Quake I ran at 320x200 by default (not 320x240).

You did know that there was a video menu, yes? Even better, it remembered your chosen resolution! The best bit was that it reported video modes based on card compatibility. Which brings me to...

In the quotation I made in my previous post, you talk about a 166 MHz Cyrix CPU with a crappy S3 Virge video card. I know you could use resolutions greater than 320x200 with that card ONLY by using some kind of UNIVBE extender software (like SciTech Display Doctor). And I know it pretty well because the first PC I ran Quake in was a P133 with the same crappy S3 Virge card. Supposing you installed the UNIVBE extender and ran Quake at the stated resolution, 320x240, almost nothing changes, instead of "6", you get "almost 6" times the CPU needed to software render each pixel in the screen.

(800x480)/(320x200) = 6. You have to render 6x more pixels in the Pandora native resolution that in Quake default resolution. If we take the 166 MHz of your Cyrix CPU and multiply it by 6, we have almost 1GHz.

Crikey, and there was I playing Quake 1 at 1024x768 on my 366MHz AMD K6-2. I had no idea that I was unable to do that. Maybe there was more to it than CPU? Ahhh, yes:

I know there are a lot more things playing than the MHz of the CPU (specially since the port uses HW acceleration), but the comparison between the Pandora and your Cyrix machine is just pointless.

There certainly was. Your graphics card. Mine had 2MB of RAM on it and a decent set of VBE extensions. I recall a magazine article about Quake and performance of CPU/GFX combos which reported that the best available (a Matrox card with a Pentium 120MHz CPU) was easily capable of 640x480, but that 800x600 was out of reach with current hardware. Pretty certain your "a lot more things playing than MHz" is bang on the money. Graphics card fill rates and such were far more important. What were you saying about the Pandora not being able to perform software rendering at 800x480 again?

I could play Quake 1 at 1024x768 even in my P133, using SciTech Display Doctor. But of course, framerate made it completely unplayable with this machine. Even at 640x480 framerate was really poor. So of course, for sure you could play it 1024x768 with your 366 AMD K6-2 with 3D now!, but convincing me that you got 60fps at that resolution without using HW acceleration, will be difficult.


When using software rendering, the video card used didn't help too much with framerate. Of course, better graphics card offered more video modes with also better refresh rates (because of the RAMDAC speed)(also keep in mind refresh rate != frame rate), but things like the "fill rate" only matter when using hardware acceleration.

Also have in mind PC Quake has a lot of code highly optimized for x86 assembly, and AFAIK, the Pandora port is 100% C.

Oh dear. Looks like we have a pretty poor C compiler then, don't we?


D.

I don't thing GCC is a bad compiler, but even the best imaginable C compiler can't be compared with the ability of John Carmack and Mike Abrash optimizing assembly code for x86.

 

[ZXDunny]

I could play Quake 1 at 1024x768 even in my P133, using SciTech Display Doctor. But of course, framerate made it completely unplayable with this machine. Even at 640x480 framerate was really poor. So of course, for sure you could play it 1024x768 with your 366 AMD K6-2 with 3D now!, but convincing me that you got 60fps at that resolution without using HW acceleration, will be difficult.

And yet, there I was doing exactly that. I suppose you'll just have to have some difficulty - sorry about that.

When using software rendering, the video card used didn't help too much with framerate.

Good heavens. I'm just going to leave that one there for posterity!


D.

 

[doragasu]

Nowadays, it's difficult to find data about Quake performance in old computers, but the only two webs I have found showing this kind of data support my claims.


This one shows framerate in a PII 200MHz for several resolutions, with a Matrox Millennium card. You can see it gets 5,1~6,1 FPS at 1024x768. I would call this unplayable.


And this one shows framerate in a 486DX4 100 MHz, Pentium 60, Pentium 120 & Pentium 166, all at 320x200. Framerate is 31 FPS, and I would say this number is very consistent with the 42~44 FPS in a PII 200MHz reported in the first link.

When using software rendering, the video card used didn't help too much with framerate.

Good heavens. I'm just going to leave that one there for posterity!

I'm not the only one stating this, an there are technical reasons backing this aseveration, the main one is that when using software rendering, the entire rendering process is done by the CPU, into the framebuffer of the card. The only thing the card does is converting the digital data from the framebuffer to analog and output it. If you don't believe me, you can read this quote from the second link:

A decent 3D video card (e.g. Voodoo2, Voodoo Banshee, Riva TNT, Matrox G200) won't improve the original Quake much (or at all...) but the special "GLQuake" can be used with these cards to good effect.

So please stop talking about things you don't know. And if you continue rambling in this thread, please back your aseverations with data, like I have just done. Please show me a benchmark that clearly states 40+ FPS @ 320x240 are possible with any 166MHz CPU using software rendering. Or please show me a benchmark stating a 333MHz can move Quake in software mode at 1024x768 with good framerate.


I'm anxious to see those links.