I am having a funny little discussion with a friend of mine, who swears that GF2MX 'will own' V5 5500 in Quake 2, so he starts a Q2 timedemo on a sempron 2600+ rig in 640x480 and delivers ~1066 fps
http://img222.imageshack.us/i/quake000.png/

Can you beat this score?

I have approximately 777 fps with glide on a athlon XP ~1.8Ghz and KT133a SDRAM board. Use V5 5500 (PCI/AGP) with a faster CPU and upload it to imageshack so that we prove our point?  8-)

Just for fun, of course! :) You can download a Q2 demo shareware here:
http://download.cnet.com/Quake-II-demo/3000-7563_4-10243474.html

To run the test, install and run Q2 demo and
0) change video device/render to Glide, resolution 640x480
1) Enter the Multiplayer menu
2) Start network server (start any map)
3) press '~' to open console, type "cl_entities 0" and press enter
4) type "timerefresh" and press enter

At this resolution the GF2MX and the Voodoo are CPU limited : so we can't say that the GF2MX owns the V5 5500...

I don't have Voodoo5 5500 benchmarks with Quake 2 but I do have others: thandor.net - object - V7100 Pro 64.

In this link the ASUS V7100 Pro 64 (GeForce 2 MX400 64MB) is stacked up against the Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. The red bars are for the GeForce (and some games are only benchmarked with the GeForce 2), the grey for the Voodoo.

Narmounet wrote on 01.05.11 at 18:40:54:

At this resolution the GF2MX and the Voodoo are CPU limited : so we can't say that the GF2MX owns the V5 5500...

Yup, thats why I said - bench it with a faster (read: as fast as possible) CPU please :-)

Thandor, your link is just fine, but this is a challenge of Quake2 'timerefresh' and also, its impossible that the GF2MX has such a miserable score in UT'99 flyby - your driver must have been broken or smth.

elfuego wrote on 01.05.11 at 22:18:15:

Thandor, your link is just fine, but this is a challenge of Quake2 'timerefresh' and also, its impossible that the GF2MX has such a miserable score in UT'99 flyby - your driver must have been broken or smth.

Wait- I didn't benchmark the GeForce 2 MX400 with Unreal. I benchmarked with Unreal Tournament 2003 FlyBy ;).

Thandor wrote on 01.05.11 at 22:23:13:

elfuego wrote on 01.05.11 at 22:18:15: Thandor, your link is just fine, but this is a challenge of Quake2 'timerefresh' and also, its impossible that the GF2MX has such a miserable score in UT'99 flyby - your driver must have been broken or smth. Wait- I didn't benchmark the GeForce 2 MX400 with Unreal. I benchmarked with Unreal Tournament 2003 FlyBy ;).

Oh. My bad, sry  :-X

Cmon guys, activate your epic gaming rigs and gimme some fps ;-)

I will try to do this this week with trhe rig in my sig. :)

Thanks Ultima! Also, OC as much as possible, if possible at all. I was also hoping someone with a core i5/i7 or at least a core2duo would be willing to try it out. Anyone?  ::)

if someone can point me to windows 7 64bit drivers for voodoo 2, then I'd be happy to test it on my X3 720 @ 3.6Ghz :)

Should beat that setup quit easily LOL.

http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16033

I did not test it personally,so use at your own risk.

but those are xp64 drivers, and xp drivers aren't compatible with windows7.

but I'll give it a try nonetheless.

thanks for the link

many xp drivers work fine under win7 (and vista)-for example,voodoo2 sli works flawlessly under win7 32bit with the latest koolsmoky's driver..so yeah,try it,and hope it works.

Running that benchmark is pointless. The result will be inconclusive and cannot be compared to anything else.

Quake II uses current desktop color quality for its own rendering color depth. That is, if you are using a 16 bpp desktop resolution, Quake II will run on 16 bpp. If you are using a 32 bpp desktop resolution, Quake II will run on 32 bpp. This option can't be selected anywhere inside the game.

There are other options that can be modified within the game, and will also affect the benchmark result: screen size (it is not the same as screen resolution), texture quality, 8-bit textures, and maybe more. Both sound effects and music should be disabled before running any benchmark.

Timerefresh is a very inaccurate benchmark per se. It usually finishes in such a short time that any event in the background will spoil the result. It also depends a lot on the map place where you run it. Large, open areas with many visible items will give low numbers, while small, closed areas will greatly improve those numbers. You must run it exactly at the same place to get comparable results. There are other Quake II benchmarks much better suited for unbiased comparison, like demo1, demo2, massive1 and crusher.

Another inconsistency: your friend's GF2MX gave him 1066 FPS at 640x480 resolution, that is, 1066 (frames/sec) * 640 * 480 (pixels/frame) = 327475200 pixels/sec. GF2MX's theoretical pixel fillrate is 175 MHz * 2 pipelines (each one with 2 TMUs) = 350000000 pixels/sec. This benchmark allows your friend's card to almost hit its theoretical maximum performance, so actually he is not CPU limited at all. But your Voodoo5 got 777 FPS * 640 * 480 = 238694400 pixels/sec, while its theoretical fillrate is 166 MHz * 2 pipelines (actually 4, but each one with a single TMU) = 333000000 pixels/sec. Far from hitting its theoretical limit. You have a bottleneck, he doesn't. Apples and oranges.

If you are not interested in a fair benchmark, and just want to beat your friend's score, launch Quake II from a 16 bpp desktop, disable sound and music, locate a hidden corner in a small area, grab a grenade and run timerefresh. The secret room where you find the grenades for the first time is a perfect place. And if you don't mind to cheat, overclock the Voodoo5, enable all the aggressive optimizations, replace Quake II's 3dfxgl.dll with a faster driver, and tweak some console variables (cl_gun=0, cl_lights=0, gl_ztrick=1, gl_picmip>0, and so on). Your friend seems to be already using cl_gun=0, by the way. I can't see his laser gun. Or, for an instant win, look down at the floor and run timerefresh. Yes, it's that easy. Timerefresh sucks.

For a much more interesting GF2MX vs Voodoo5 match, you'd better run demo1 or demo2 at 1024x768x32bpp. This benchmark will stress both fillrate and bandwidth, and the poor GF2MX will bite the dust against the Voodoo5.

Absolutely true !

On a sidenote: I'm looking for a Voodoo5 PCI now, once I have one, I will post some benches coming from my CoreI3 @ 2x 4,76Ghz watercooled  ;)

Why aren't you using the in-built q2 demo's ?

oldskool wrote on 25.06.11 at 21:35:57:

Why aren't you using the in-built q2 demo's ?

Couse I only have Q2 shareware demo version.