• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Video: Is Doom playable on a 386?

P

philscomputerlab

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2014
Messages
65
Location
Western Australia
Is Doom playable on a 386? This is the question that I will answer with this video. I built a 386DX-40 PC and benchmarked Doom at all quality and screen size settings.

What do you think? Do you think it's playable or not? Please share your thoughts!

Video link: Is Doom playable on a 386?

Video link: Playing Doom on a 386

Kh3zhFx.png
 
Last edited:
DOOM is basically playable on my 386DX-40, particularly when I got a Trident video card which significantly improved video performance (I think it has dual-ported VRAM.) DOOM II really isn't unless you crank down the quality/size, though.
 
Doom runs fine on my 386/40. Sort of a bench mark for me on this type of PC.
 
Last edited:
commodorejohn said:
DOOM is basically playable on my 386DX-40, particularly when I got a Trident video card which significantly improved video performance (I think it has dual-ported VRAM.)
Click to expand...

Are you sure it's a Trident? Those are notoriously bad.
A Tseng Labs ET4000 is the best ISA card you can get for a 386. Oodles faster than any Trident.
 
Side by side comparison is the only way to decide. DOOM may be technically playable on the fastest 386s but a good 486 or Pentium might be so much nicer that it doesn't make sense to buy upgrades these days to make an ultimate 386.
 
Scali said:
Are you sure it's a Trident? Those are notoriously bad.
A Tseng Labs ET4000 is the best ISA card you can get for a 386. Oodles faster than any Trident.
Click to expand...
I could be mistaken, it's been some time since I got down into my 386. Might be the Trident was what was replaced, I dunno.
 
I found ET4000 and cards with a chipset from WD, to be the fastest. CL is a tiny bit behind, but cheap as chips, and easy to find.

I've added another video, showing me playing the first three levels on a 386DX-40 to give you a better idea:

Video link: Playing Doom on a 386

Clearly when music and sound is playing, the 386 struggles. Quite a few pauses when the game loads sounds. Maybe a limitation of 4 MB RAM?
 
Tridents were pretty funky, and had mucho driver problems when doing anything esoteric. Esoteric to Trident was doing overscan correction, interlace video, overlays, and generally stressing the GPU in any way :}

I would think that a baseline would be an S3 based card - they were generally fast, and rock solid, with great driver support and 3rd party support.

gwk
 
Phil, what video card did you use in your benchmarking setup? I always used a Cirrus Logic card (faster than the ET4000) and I remember getting slightly better numbers than you got at larger screen sizes.
 
There are certain parts of DOOM that are more CPU bound. Complex level structures, moving plats, and active monsters can tax the CPU more than other hardware factors. This is why DOOM II works worse - it is the same rendering engine (same EXE actually!) and about the same amount of graphics, but the levels are larger, more complicated, and have more monsters.

My point is "playable" can be deceiving. You can have a machine that runs OK on the first Doom 1 level, and then slows to a crawl when you get to E3M6: Mt. Erebus :)
 
philscomputerlab said:
Clearly when music and sound is playing, the 386 struggles. Quite a few pauses when the game loads sounds. Maybe a limitation of 4 MB RAM?
Click to expand...

What sound device and what settings? If SB16, 44.1KHz, 8 voices, then yes that is going to bog down when sounds play. Try something like 22KHz, 4 voices. Or use a GUS.

You need to play 386-40 in low-res, not high res. Another video?

slows to a crawl when you get to E3M6: Mt. Erebus
Click to expand...

I admit I only ever finished E1 on the 386-40. I never played the second or third episodes.
 
Trixter said:
Phil, what video card did you use in your benchmarking setup? I always used a Cirrus Logic card (faster than the ET4000) and I remember getting slightly better numbers than you got at larger screen sizes.
Click to expand...

Cirrus Logic! But it's not faster than the ET4000. A tiny bit slower, at least in my setups.

Sound card is an Yamaha Audician 32 Plus (SB Pro 2) with Dream Blaster S1 wavetable module for General MIDI. I don't think you can change the sample rate, and I highly doubt it's even close to 44 KHz.
 
griffk said:
Tridents were pretty funky, and had mucho driver problems when doing anything esoteric. Esoteric to Trident was doing overscan correction, interlace video, overlays, and generally stressing the GPU in any way :}

I would think that a baseline would be an S3 based card - they were generally fast, and rock solid, with great driver support and 3rd party support.

gwk
Click to expand...

Ever try to play descent 2 with S3-Virge acceleration active? Chopsville...
 
philscomputerlab said:
Sound card is an Yamaha Audician 32 Plus (SB Pro 2) with Dream Blaster S1 wavetable module for General MIDI. I don't think you can change the sample rate, and I highly doubt it's even close to 44 KHz.
Click to expand...

Trixter is referring to the Doom setup, you can choose the number of sound effect channels to mix there, and I believe you can also select the mixing rate/quality for some cards.
Lowering those may improve performance on a 386.
Ultimate24.png
 
In addition to telling it to use lower mix and sample rates, if you don't have a REAL MIDI device, disable music.

Adlib music is PAINFUL to support, and sucks down a LOT of CPU time by basically just sitting around with the cpu's thumb wedged up it's backside. The same can help in some games by disabling joystick support for the same reason. Typically on a 386 just disabling music or selecting a proper midi device instead of adlib or dual OPL sound can net you 10 to 15% higher frame rates.

Pretty much if you are on a 386 do NOT choose Adlib or Soundblaster for music... AWE32, General Midi, Sound Canvas, and Waveblaster are all low overhead-- I don't have a lot of experience with GUS or PAS to say for sure, but generally if it's not a proper MIDI device the overhead is murder on lesser hardware.

Same applies for running Wolf3d on a slower 286. Turn off music and you get a wee bit more time left over for drawing the display.
 
Interesting. That might be worth investigating. The 386 is all packed up away, but I'm sure I'll get around to it one day. I did use a wavetable for these results, so that might have helped a bit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top