Dual 486 Board - What can use it?

[Raven]

What good is it? If it would let me run two Am5x86-133 chips together and run Quake at a more acceptable pace, I'd be hunting one down. They don't support proper SMP from what I understand, so NT boxen won't utilize them.. so what can? Can early NT boxes use this alternative multiprocessor setup? Did it require special software? Was it targeted at *nix?

 

[linuxlove]

Quake runs solid on a single Am5x86 133... I've played a few times on my Am5x86 box and while it hasn't been Pentium level, it's played quite well.

 

[Unknown_K]

Most likely a special MP version of UNIX with drivers from the boar manufacturer. Early pre P2 dual processor machines were not meant for gamers.

 

[Raven]

Quake runs solid on a single Am5x86 133... I've played a few times on my Am5x86 box and while it hasn't been Pentium level, it's played quite well.

Presario 425 box only gets ~7FPS on it with an Evergreen 586 (Am5x86 upgrade adapted chip, 133Mhz).

What's the secret? I was under the impression that the FPUs in a 486-class chip just weren't up to it..

I'm actually preparing a compile environment for the original Quake, going to see if I can't make it go faster on a 486 for nutjobs like myself.. :D

 

[linuxlove]

Well that;s interesting. I did a video of my 486 and also demoed it running Quake. It gets enough FPS to be playable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwxolOlbDRs
It's also a PC Chips M919 which has no L2 cache on board.

 

[Raven]

That's the EXACT SAME CASE that my Voodoo box is in... (which now holds that LS-120) (Edit: Here's a pic. :D http://imgur.com/LMl7t)

Looks ~3-5fps below playable on your video (skipped ahead to see the quake.. going back now to watch the rest and see what's in there).

I see you have a PCI video card, I think mine's VLB (it's onboard, hard to say, unless somebody knows how to tell/detect), both run at 33Mhz (in this case, anyway), so no real difference there.. What video card is that, for curiosity sake?

Edit: Oh man I love those BIOSes. :D Oh, and write-back cache refers to the L1, I thought, not the mobo L2..? I like how the scanlines on the monitor appear to go from the bottom right up to the top left.

Edit 2: Hrm, Quake on Win95 - I ran mine on DOS - I wonder if that actually makes a positive impact depending on the system in question? Interesting!

 

[TheLazy1]

Try pairing it with a Voodoo2.
Then you can see the difference between software raster vs cpu limited 3d setup.

Although I'm not sure what driver versions started using Pentium instructions, I think older ones work on a 486 though IIRC.

 

[deathshadow]

Without proper SMP few OS will support it properly, though I can think of one OS that would be SWEET on that.

BeOS. The Be4 or 5 would leverage it pretty decently, though don't expect a lot of gaming utility from that.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I'm pretty sure BeOS actually required a Pentium or higher. As well, the original Quake wasn't SMP-aware, so it wouldn't care about a second CPU.

 

[Raven]

It might work, BeOS is targeted as a Pentium for the x86 version, yeah, but only due to the power and speed from what I've read - perhaps it doesn't literally require it due to special instructions or anything?

BeOS actually is still rather popular in a little niche group - it has DOSBox, Quake, etc., so probably wouldn't be too bad for gaming.


It would be nice to look at in the multi-CPU Pentium arena, perhaps. The machine could always dualboot to 9x or DOS, or even other more modern OSes (Linux, XP, ?), so no reason not to try it if I do get my hands on such a box.

 

[Agent Orange]

Quake runs solid on a single Am5x86 133... I've played a few times on my Am5x86 box and while it hasn't been Pentium level, it's played quite well.

Thanks for that bit of info! I'm glad I'm not the only one out there who likes QUAKE on a 586-133.

 

[Raven]

I just tried it again, on my 425 w/ the Evergreen 586 (Am5x86-133 upgrade). It runs at a TECHNICALLY playable speed, and maybe 80% of the time it runs GREAT, but when things get busy, the game starts making particles or thinking about too much AI, too much model position/lighting calculations, who knows what exactly it is - and the lag begins. If you goto the console and type "showturtle 1" it will show a little turtle icon whenever FPS drops below 10. I used the spawn area of level 2 (after stepping backward to the wall) for FPS testing, because when you look away from the level it has zero lag, and when you look toward the enemies and such it lags. If you run "timerefresh" it spins 360 degrees and tells you the average FPS. At that place I received 12.78fps.

I would really appreciate it if you (Agent Orange and linuxlove - or anybody else with Quake on a box at the moment, just for comparison sake, even if it's a Pentium, etc.) would both do the same at least twice and let me know what the result is on your systems where you find Quake playable on a 486. It would be even more helpful if you can tell me the video card, amount of RAM, and if you have L2 cache (and if so how much).

With that information, if your FPS is more playable, perhaps we can see what about my system isn't cutting it. That or perhaps you all get the same performance and are just more accomodating about lagspikes than I.

I tried like.. every console command ever.. last night, and found that the only way to improve performance was to either disable 3D enemies and weapons ("entities") being rendered (not acceptable) or to turn off all texturing on the world itself (also not really acceptable). The world texturing being off made a much larger difference, leading me to believe that it could be my video card to blame - thus the questions. My box has a built-in Cirrus 5420 (iirc the model number) with, I think, 512K RAM, so it could be that you're all using 1MB cards and that makes enough of a difference to make it faster.. who knows, before we examine the datas. :D

If I don't find an alternative solution, I'll be editing the source code to change much of the math to integer (as you know it's float heavy, thus the Pentium dependence), reduce the particle count, and maybe add some more configuration variables so that this version can be scaled up or down for classic systems (things like completely disabling particles, turning on flat lighting and DISABLING dynamic (no way to do that, even though you can enable flat lighting..), etc.). Unfortunately the Quake source was released without a DOS makefile, but the code necessary is there, and one person has got it to compile.. I've had experience screwing with Makefiles so I should be able to pull that off without *too* much trouble.

 

[Unknown_K]

Playable means different things to different people. I find anything under 30FPS to be too choppy for gameplay, others don't seem to mind it. For real smooth action 60FPS is best for me, anything higher isn't noticable.

13FPS is pretty much unplayable to me.

Later today I will dig out my 486-160 PCI system and see how bad it is with Quake 1 (shareware version). Let me know what settings you guys use.

 

[Raven]

I leave it on the default settings (320x200 non-VESA software). There weren't any to turn down, or I would have.

 

[linuxlove]

64MB RAM
AMD 5x86-133 CPU
"Trident SuperVGA" (no idea what it actually is)
Sound Blaster 16

Fullscreen at 320x200

Got as low as 7 FPS and as high as 15 FPS. I seem to be averaging about 10 FPS.-

 

[Raven]

Is that from the same spot I was standing, just behind the spawn pad in level 2? Did you use timerefresh?

Realized I need to post my specs and such..

Presario 425
20MB RAM
Evergreen 586 (Am5x86-133 in upgrade format)
Cirrus Logic GD-5420
Sound Blaster 16 Value
Quake 1.08 Registered
FreeDOS with custom configuration to maximize memory and performance
JemmEx memory manager
320x200, Non-VESA
12.78fps at designated spot, average, calculated with timerefresh command.

 

[linuxlove]

I did multiple timerefresh tests in various locations around E1M1 and E1M2. Yes, I did timerefresh at the spawn point in E1M2 and it gave me 11 FPS.

 

[JDT]

not completely on topic, but as someone who played in those days (every saturday night in a custome LAN gaming atic)
Quake 1 was quite playable on a 486 DX4-100 w/ a 2mb PCI video card (software graphics) good enought to play multiplayer with a bunch of other people.
My AMD 5x86-133 setup & 4mb voodoo 1 PCI card made quake 1 EVEN MORE AWSOMER! =)

 

[TheLazy1]

If I don't find an alternative solution, I'll be editing the source code to change much of the math to integer (as you know it's float heavy, thus the Pentium dependence), reduce the particle count, and maybe add some more configuration variables so that this version can be scaled up or down for classic systems (things like completely disabling particles, turning on flat lighting and DISABLING dynamic (no way to do that, even though you can enable flat lighting..), etc.). Unfortunately the Quake source was released without a DOS makefile, but the code necessary is there, and one person has got it to compile.. I've had experience screwing with Makefiles so I should be able to pull that off without *too* much trouble.

Take a look at the DS port of Quake.
I'd imagine the work would be similar since the DS has no FPU at all.

 

[Raven]

not completely on topic, but as someone who played in those days (every saturday night in a custome LAN gaming atic)
Quake 1 was quite playable on a 486 DX4-100 w/ a 2mb PCI video card (software graphics) good enought to play multiplayer with a bunch of other people.
My AMD 5x86-133 setup & 4mb voodoo 1 PCI card made quake 1 EVEN MORE AWSOMER! =)

Valuable input, to be sure - means that if you have good enough video hardware it can be run well. Unfortunately the box I'm trying to get to run it has ISA slots only, and the video card is built into the motherboard, and has a special edge connector on the front of the mobo that hooks to the screen. It's conceivable to take some other mobo and mod it into the tray, make my own adapter for the connector, and even get a Voodoo card in there - that's something I might do to my spare 425's mobo tray, but not the current topic.

Take a look at the DS port of Quake.
I'd imagine the work would be similar since the DS has no FPU at all.

Thank you I will look at that - may save some work..