• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Quake won't run on 486-100, is it just me?

Alright I'll give the onboard and then the STB a shot, see which one runs Quake more bearably - lol. I'll let you guys know when I do so, for the records.

I'm not running Windows on this box, so if I could find a Tseng that'd be fine - but I don't have one.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the video card has little bearing on a 486's Quake performance. We're talking 320x200 here. The bottleneck will be the CPU and memory performance, I think.
 
Well if that's the case then my MediaGX that's coming soon should have the best shot at running it that any 486 (barring the Pentium Overdrive) has at it, due to it's slightly superior FPU and the FPU's importance in 3d math.

The integrated sound and video should provide a benefit as well, being tied directly into the CPU might increase video throughput, making it a bit lighter on the system.
 
Raven said:
Well if that's the case then my MediaGX that's coming soon should have the best shot at running it that any 486 (barring the Pentium Overdrive) has at it, due to it's slightly superior FPU and the FPU's importance in 3d math.

The integrated sound and video should provide a benefit as well, being tied directly into the CPU might increase video throughput, making it a bit lighter on the system.
Click to expand...

I've run some tests on the Intel 486, Am5x86 and Cx5x86 CPUs. I have a end-of-the-line 486 mobo with PCI and it supports all CPUs. The results showed that Cyrix 5x86 is indeed a bit faster at the same clock for FPU. At 120 MHz it is a good bit faster than a Am5x86 160MHz FPU. However, the 160 MHz Am5x86 is the fastest chip for everything else.

I also tested the weird Pentium Overdrive for Socket 3. ;) The one I had would do 100 MHz and it just dusts everything else when it comes to floating point. That CPU really is a curiosity with its Pentium core on a 486 interface and with the same 32KB total L1 cache size as a Pentium MMX! But it has compatibility problems with just about every motherboard. On my test board the L2 cache wouldn't work with it. The L2 was enabled but it seemed to be bypassed somehow because it didn't show up in any memory tests. As a result, while PODP is super fast for FPU calculations, its memory and integer performance lag behind the Am5x86 160 and the system felt somewhat sluggish.

I put a Voodoo3 in that system to test 3D game performance and used Jedi Knight as my test subject. By using the Voodoo3, I kept the 3D card from being a bottleneck and the CPU had no time to rest. The Pentium Overdrive @ 100 was the clear winner. The 160 MHz Am5x86 and 120 MHz Cx5x86 produced similar results as I recall (hard to tell them apart).
 
Last edited:
Just out of curiosity, you do have the original version right? Not one of the enhanced/rerrendered graphic versions? I don't quite remember when Quake came out but I think I was on a pentium system by then though I remember games like Terminal Velocity had options of 486 or pentium depending on your system specs. My comment is just that if the pentium was more common when the game came out (yeah I know I should look it up) it may haven't really been meant for 486 playability in full screen mode.
 
If you go read about the inner workings of the Quake engine, it becomes very clear that the Pentium was the intended target for it. It is heavily optimized for Pentium's parallel execution capabilities (more than one instruction per clock). It also works specifically around instruction latencies on Pentium, neglecting other chips and hurting their performance in the process. Quake is a Pentium / Pentium Pro engine.

The 486 simply isn't really capable of this level of 3D world complexity and that's why they didn't spend the many man hours trying to tweak it to the limit. With a 486, programmers usually stayed clear of the FPU because it is slower than going straight integer. But there was a lot of anger when Quake came out and people discovered that 486/5x86/K5/6x86/K6 are well behind a Pentium per clock with Quake. The fact of the matter is that Pentium was superior for 3D rendering and it sold better, so it got attention from id while the other CPUs did not.

Apparently P6 (PPro) works enough like Pentium that the optimizations work on it too because that CPU was a Quake monster. Could also just be the FPU improvements and ultra fast cache coming into play.
 
Last edited:
I wouldn't be surprised if the video card has little bearing on a 486's Quake performance. We're talking 320x200 here. The bottleneck will be the CPU and memory performance, I think.
Click to expand...

Normally that's true, but when a significant amount of CPU time is being dedicated to drawing stuff on screen (which was a typical trait of Trident cards), then the CPU bottleneck is going to be that much worse.
 
barythrin said:
Just out of curiosity, you do have the original version right? Not one of the enhanced/rerrendered graphic versions? I don't quite remember when Quake came out but I think I was on a pentium system by then though I remember games like Terminal Velocity had options of 486 or pentium depending on your system specs. My comment is just that if the pentium was more common when the game came out (yeah I know I should look it up) it may haven't really been meant for 486 playability in full screen mode.
Click to expand...

I have v1.06, which came from Steam - original graphics and game, etc. - but 1.06 patchlevel. The newest I think is 1.09, dunno why they distribute an older one.

The Pentium Overdrive is a cool chip, and I'd like to get one, but the Cyrix 5x86 is the most powerful 486-esque design (I realize it's a redesign) without just being a Pentium crammed into a 486 socket - that's why I'm going with the Cyrix MediaGX. It's a Cyrix 5x86 at it's fastest - 133mhz - with SB and VGA built-in.

Thanks for doing those benchmarks, btw, swaaye - did you record the framerates? If so, can you post them? If not, were the Am5x86@160mhz and/or the Cyrix@120mhz playable (at least 10fps, preferably 15+)?
 
Raven said:
Thanks for doing those benchmarks, btw, swaaye - did you record the framerates? If so, can you post them? If not, were the Am5x86@160mhz and/or the Cyrix@120mhz playable (at least 10fps, preferably 15+)?
Click to expand...

I did those tests years ago and I don't think I actually recorded the numbers. You can see some 5x86 results in this link. 15fps is probably the best you can hope for. The Cyrix 6x86 isn't exactly a barn burner either and is surely faster than 5x86.
http://web.archive.org/web/19961223112037/www.cam.org/~agena/quake.html

Remember that while Cx5x86 is more advanced than Am5x86, it can't clock as high. When you put a Am5x86 at 40x4, that's one speedy 486 and I think is the Cx 120's match overall.
 
Last edited:
Well in my ValuePoint my Am5x86 could only get up to 101mhz, and in other boxes I was running it at 133mhz stock. The Cyrix will be 133mhz as well, so I expect a bit more push out of it than any 486 I've experienced before, at least for floating point.
 
Yup that bit of extra clock speed will help, but :D. Let me know how it goes!

I think that machine will be a good box for older stuff as long as the audio has good SB compatibility and the video's VESA support is decent.
 
The VESA is supposed to do all VESA modes up to 1280x1024x8 and 1024x768x16, so I think that'll be fine. As for the SB, I've read in some lawsuit papers from Creative about the marketing of the MediaGX that it's not 100% compatible, but it's like 2% of games that won't work, so I'm sure it'll do fine for my needs. The only worry I have is that the MPU-401 support for MIDI is disabled by default in Compaq units, purportedly, so I'll either have to look at enabling that, or hope my games don't use MIDI (I don't think they do, they all use FM Synth and Digitized sound afaik). However, it's also supposed to support hardware MIDI, so there should be a header for that and I have a daughterboard hooked up to one of my soundcards, maybe it's compatible - but if not, I can buy one.

I also read that the chipset has an ISA and PCI bus, meaning that if I get super-adventurous, I can figure out how to make an adapter for an expansion chassis and wire up a few PCI and/or ISA slots and solve any issues that I might have with compatibility. ;D

The idea is really not to screw with the system though, so I'd rather avoid that unless purely for fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top