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Speed Issues On Games Despite Meeting System Requirements

Luckily, everything appears to be set to 33/66. Phew.

I'm out of ideas. Hopefully the extra ram will help with performance? I don't know. I just can't explain why everything runs slower than what other people experience.

Maybe it's still to start anew and reinstall DOS.
 
Try it with the Turbo button off. On some systems pushing the switch in puts the system in slow mode. Also enable the gate A20 option in the bios.
 
I woudn't bother reinstalling Dos.

It wont increase speed but run memmaker to see if that tightens a few things up conventional memory wise. I'm assuming you are using MS Dos 6something.
 
Caluser2000 said:
I woudn't bother reinstalling Dos.
Click to expand...

No, but booting DOS without any config.sys/autoexec.bat would be a good idea for troubleshooting.
There could be some nasty TSR or whatever that is slowing things down.
Games like Doom don't need any memory managers loaded anyway, because they have their own DOS extender. Other stuff just tends to get in the way.
 
Caluser2000 said:
I woudn't bother reinstalling Dos.

It wont increase speed but run memmaker to see if that tightens a few things up conventional memory wise. I'm assuming you are using MS Dos 6something.
Click to expand...

Sorry for being a noob, but is that something I put in my autoexec file or something? Any parameters I should use?
 
Maybe your external cache is fake. What kind of VGA is in it? Did you check with a utility? The YouTube videos look more like 386DX-40 performance than 486DX2-66 to me.
 
Guybrush3pwood said:
Sorry for being a noob, but is that something I put in my autoexec file or something? Any parameters I should use?
Click to expand...
Just type memmaker at the dos prompt and follow the instructions. When it asks to if you want EMS tell it no. It'll do all the work and there will be a couple of reboots.
 
I have no idea if it's fake or not, not really sure how to tell. Also not sure about the VGA. It has Cirrus logic CL-5424 chips and it's an ASI-VLB multi IO card. I think it's made by Acer. I can post pictures if that would help. What utility can I use to check?
 
UNIVBE comes to mind.

Check your Landmark benchmark results. My Magnavox 486SX with i486DX-20, 8MB RAM, integrated CL 8MHZ ISA 256KB VGA and regular IDE HDD had:
CPU: 95MHZ
FPU: 145MHZ
VGA: 1800 CH/PM
Doom runs on this machine but not smooth. More like a 386DX-40 as well.

My IBM PS/ValuePoint 433DX/S with i486DX-33, 16MB RAM, integrated S3 VLB 1MB VGA and regular IDE HDD had:
CPU: 160MHZ
FPU: 243MHZ
VGA: 16660 CH/PM
Doom flies on this machine.

https://dosbenchmark.wordpress.com/otherbenchmarks
 
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Here is a long description of fake cache: http://redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html

To test for fake cache, run some benchmarks with cache on. Rerun with cache off. If the performance is the same, then the cache is fake.

That should be close to the fastest video card available for the time it was made.
 
rittwage said:
Agree with others here... You either have fake or defective L2 cache on the board.
Click to expand...

I'm not buying that. Like I said, when cache was disabled, the game ran terrible. When I enabled it, it ran much better. How else would you explain that?
 
PeterLI said:
UNIVBE comes to mind.

Check your Landmark benchmark results. My Magnavox 486SX with i486DX-20, 8MB RAM, integrated CL 8MHZ ISA 256KB VGA and regular IDE HDD had:
CPU: 95MHZ
FPU: 145MHZ
VGA: 1800 CH/PM
Doom runs on this machine but not smooth. More like a 386DX-40 as well.

My IBM PS/ValuePoint 433DX/S with i486DX-33, 16MB RAM, integrated S3 VLB 1MB VGA and regular IDE HDD had:
CPU: 160MHZ
FPU: 243MHZ
VGA: 16660 CH/PM
Doom flies on this machine.

https://dosbenchmark.wordpress.com/otherbenchmarks
Click to expand...

My results:



Maybe I need a new vid card?
 
Guybrush3pwood said:
Maybe I need a new vid card?
Click to expand...

It looks like your CPU/FPU perform as expected, and the video card performance is not that hot.
I would say that a CL5424 should perform better than that, so it may be some configuration issue.
It would help if you had another videocard or another system to test against, to try and rule out problems.

But first things first: have you tried a completely clean boot yet? config.sys and autoexec.bat disabled, and just running Doom.

Another thing, it shouldn't matter for Doom, but for regular DOS performance, it helps to enable all the shadow ROM settings in your BIOS.
 
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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