Author Topic: Voodoo 5 FPS Question (Read 704 times)

Salvian · « **on:** June 27, 2001, 10:37:00 PM »

Does anyone know why my new Voodoo 5 5500 PCI runs as slow or slower than my Voodoo 3 2000? Even with the same video settings.

AMD K-6 2 @ 533 mhz
312 mb

Also, is there any way to get my 8 megs back that the built in video card stole from me?

Thanks

SOB · « **Reply #1 on:** June 27, 2001, 11:07:00 PM »

Do you have FSAA turned on, and if so what is it set at... 2x or 4x?

SOB

bloom25 · « **Reply #2 on:** June 28, 2001, 01:08:00 AM »

It may be possible to disable the shared video memory in the bios.

Salvian · « **Reply #3 on:** June 28, 2001, 08:03:00 AM »

FSAA? Is that anti-aliasing? If so I have tried it both ways. Is it possible that my monitor could be causing a problem?

Lephturn · « **Reply #4 on:** June 28, 2001, 02:38:00 PM »

Yes, FSAA = Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, and the V5 has great FSAA.

Likely the bottleneck is not your video card, but your CPU. That particular CPU has a crappy floating point math unit, and that is something that AH in particular relies on heavily.

In your BIOS, you should be able to disable your onboard video and get that 8 megs back.

Get into your video properties and look for the DirectX settings tab. Try it with "Fastest" (no FSAA), 2xFSAA, and 4xFSAA just to see the difference. I run mine at 1024x768 32 bit with 2xFSAA on an Athlon 700. FSAA on the V5 rocks, you'll love it trust me. I couldn't live without it.

You should be able to get to higher resolutions, color depths, and maybe even use 2xFSAA without going any slower. However, I seriously doubt the game itself will run any faster with that CPU in it. Try different settings and see what works out. I think you'll see your video quality increase, but the speed will stay the same.

I don't know right off what form factor that K6-2 used, but just about any other chip you could put in there would do a better job than the K6-2 will. A cheap Celeron would give you a nice boost in speed I'm sure.

[ 06-28-2001: Message edited by: Lephturn ]

Salvian · « **Reply #5 on:** June 28, 2001, 08:40:00 PM »

Thanks Lephturn. Your right, the voodoo 5 does an awesome job with the anti aliasing. Turning it on does slow it down a couple of fps, but well worth it. So does the voodoo 5 require require quite a bit more processor? I could swear it ran faster with the voodoo 3. Especially when I get online it gets down to 5-15 fps now, when before it was pushing 20-30.

Lephturn · « **Reply #6 on:** June 29, 2001, 01:17:00 PM »

Chances are you are running higher resolutions and color depths, plus AA is a penalty. That's going to slow you down some for sure. If you run no FSAA and the same color depth and resolution on the V5, it should be faster than the V3. I've had both as well. With no FSAA I run like 30-70 fps with the V5. With 2x it's more like 25-50, but smooth and very playable with no big slowdowns that bug me.

You need a CPU upgrade bad. I can't remember what form factor that K6-2 is in, but isn't there a Celeron that will fit in that slot? Bloom?

Eagler · « **Reply #7 on:** June 29, 2001, 02:35:00 PM »

Sal
How's your power supply? Maybe an amperage problem? Under a load it goes low... I know the 5500 is a power hog requiring it's own connection. You should have a good 300 watt supply for best results.

gl

Eagler

Grayarea · « **Reply #8 on:** July 06, 2001, 06:57:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Lephturn:
You need a CPU upgrade bad. I can't remember what form factor that K6-2 is in, but isn't there a Celeron that will fit in that slot? Bloom?

The Celeron is not compatable with the K6-2.

The best thing is to bite the bullet and upgrade MB CPU and RAM.

Grayarea.

BigGun · « **Reply #9 on:** July 06, 2001, 12:34:00 PM »

I had the K-6 series chip and definately had problems running AH. No matter what I did, I couldn't get good consistent Frame rates. I am no expert in this area, but it is suspect.

This is from FAQs from the Help directory on main page.

"Unfortunately, this is caused by the poor floating point performance of the K6 series of AMD processors. All K6 series processors (K63 included) have this problem. All you can do is try making the rest of your system faster and/or getting drivers better optimized for the 3d Now! SMI instruction set. (Voodoo chipset drivers are particularly good for this. Nvidia chipset drivers are particularly bad for this.)"

Not sure if this is applicable to you. No matter what I did, the AMD K6 chip was no good for AH for me. Good luck!!

BgMAW

bloom25 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 07, 2001, 10:56:00 AM »

I wrote that paragraph in the faq. It's somewhat outdated now - Nvidia's drivers are now 3dnow optimized and 3dfx does not exist anymore. The part about the Floating Point Unit (FPU) is still true though.

The k6, k62, and k63 all fit in socket 7. There is no current upgrade for them. The k62, while a great deal at the time, just does not have the raw horsepower to push your video card hard enough.

If you have some money available to spend on this computer, you may want to consider buying a new socket A motherboard and a Duron or Thunderbird. You could do this for less than $200 US and reuse everything else. That is if you go with a 100mhz FSB (called 200 Mhz) processor. If you go with the 133 Mhz (266 Mhz) Thunderbirds you will need new ram as well, but that is cheap now. The only downside is that you will need to reinstall windows after switching out the motherboard. This means you are going to lose everything on your system. (Just like getting a new computer.)