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Speed Issues On Games Despite Meeting System Requirements

Guybrush3pwood said:
Did a clean boot...yeah, doom ran pretty awesome with max detail. Ok, so something in the config or autoexec file is making things crappy. Time to find out which.
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Could you possibly post your CONFIG & AUTOEXEC? That way it'll take some of the guess work out of this.
 
Agent Orange said:
Could you possibly post your CONFIG & AUTOEXEC? That way it'll take some of the guess work out of this.
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Sure -





Though, I think I figured it out.

Using a Doom benchmarking tool, I've determined that the "smartdrv.exe" entry in my autoexec.bat was causing some of the slowness. With it enabled, I got 7.81 FPS in doom. With it disabled, I got 14.2. Still lower than I think it should be, but it's progress. None of the other entries seem to be causing any problems. Maybe there's something I need to add to boost performance? Outside of that, perhaps a new video card and a separate IO controller are in order. I also have some new ram on its way, so hopefully we'll see some improvements there as well.

Oh, but before I forget. Any reasons why I shouldn't leave smartdrv.exe disabled? Is it necessary?
 
Smartdrv is a disk cache and should make any game that needs to load more files from the disk faster. I have never seen it cause a slowdown in game performance. Maybe you have too little memory to run a cache and DOOM at the same time. From a command prompt, try a MEM /p to see how much free memory you actually have.

Not sure you need NET START since I don't see the rest of the network setup details.
 
Guybrush3pwood said:
Using a Doom benchmarking tool, I've determined that the "smartdrv.exe" entry in my autoexec.bat was causing some of the slowness. With it enabled, I got 7.81 FPS in doom. With it disabled, I got 14.2.
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Is that 14.2 fps the 'pretty awesome' speed you also got with a clean boot?
Because a 486DX2-66 VLB should be able to do much better I would say.
 
rittwage said:
You tested both internal and external on and off, independently?
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Yes, good point. The internal cache is inside the CPU, and can't really be faked. There generally is no reason to disable it, unless you specifically want your system to run slower because of compatibility issues.
It's the external cache that is sometimes faked/broken.
 
Well I'll be damned. Disabled external cache and...nothing changed. At least not in Doom. Looks like the external cache is indeed, fake. Possibly? Would I notice a difference in doom?

So, that begs the question, in order to get this puppy really flying, I'm probably going to want to switch out the mobo...correct?

BTW, here's Doom after the smartdrv.exe is disabled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGEyy2OLQmk

Here's the before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5MHJtI2VME
 
Your VLB VGA looks like an I/O & VGA combination. Separate VLB & VGA I/O should help. Ideally a S3 VLB VGA.

FYI: neither my Magnavox nor IBM PS/ValuePoint have external cache.
 
PeterLI said:
Your VLB VGA looks like an I/O & VGA combination. Separate VLB & VGA I/O should help. Ideally a S3 VLB VGA.

FYI: neither my Magnavox nor IBM PS/ValuePoint have external cache.
Click to expand...

Think it would be ok to keep the combo card and use it just for I/O work and insert a separate vga card or would that cause a problem since there would be two vga cards?
 
No idea. You can always try and find out.

FYI: my IBM PS/ValuePoint 486DX2/66 with 8MB RAM, integrated ISA VGA (ET4000), 128KB EC and regular IDE HDD:
CPU: 316MHZ
FPU: 486MHZ
VGA: 3810 CH/MS

Doom flies on this machine.
 
PeterLI said:
No idea. You can always try and find out.

FYI: my IBM PS/ValuePoint 486DX2/66 with 8MB RAM, integrated ISA VGA (ET4000), 128KB EC and regular IDE HDD:
CPU: 316MHZ
FPU: 486MHZ
VGA: 3810 CH/MS

Doom flies on this machine.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhh why is your cpu so much higher than mine?!

Is your et4000 the ax model? It's the only one I can ever find.

smeezekitty said:
External cache should make more difference than that
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Weird, so what would explain the slight change?

How do I run a cachecheck? Type in cachecheck? Lol
 
No idea. I only have OEM 286 - 486 PCs that have their VGA integrated in the MOBO (mostly ISA: some VLB). I have 1 OEM P3 with AGP VGA (also on board imbedded VGA) and 1 P233MMX with PCI VGA.
 
*sigh* It's not like I even need the guy. I have a super-cool Gateway 2000 running dos that plays pretty much everything I throw at it, BUT I CANT LET IT GO.

It's unclear what comes next. New motherboard? New video card?
 
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You have fake/non working cache.

And for some reason even the CPU cache isn't working above 4 MB. Something is screwy with that motherboard
 
So how on earth do I buy a motherboard without fake cache? How can I tell? Most of the boards on eBay mention nothing about brand or much of anything else!
 
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