"Alan 'A.J.' Franzman" said:
I'm in the process of copying my Windows 98 SE installation from an old
computer to a somewhat newer model, and I find that GLquake (I) looks better
(fog actually works right) but has a slightly lower framerate, but Shadows of
the Empire does not work properly. Starting the game, the overlayed yellow
text "crawl to infinity" does not appear over the star background. Entering
the first level, the only things visible are the background sky and snow
textures on flat surfaces, plus the overlays when in first-person view. No
friendly, enemy, laser, terrain contour, or other 3D models appear. Running
the Shadows.exe file directly to access the FPS test sequence gives a solid
bluish-white screen, though the music and blaster sounds can be heard and the
test terminates normally, giving a somewhat reasonable 37.2 FPS or so. I have
tried both the original and patch 1.1 SOTE executable files with the same
results.
Computers:
original-
1996 vintage Packard Bell PB680 (=Intel Orlando/Tampa) mb w/ MR BIOS,
PowerLeap adapter, AMD K6-III 400 MHz CPU, Voodoo3 3000, DirectX 9.0c (also
worked properly under 7, 8.0a, and 9.0a), 128MB RAM
"new"-
ASUS A7V400-MX mb, Phoenix BIOS 1009, AMD Sempron 2800+ 2.0 GHz CPU, onboard
VIA/S3 KM400a UniChrome graphics (drivers 4.14.10.39 and 4.14.10.45 tried),
DirectX 9.0c, 512MB RAM
I can't figure out if this problem is in the game software, drivers, hardware,
mb BIOS settings or what. I'm on the edge of trying the Voodoo3 in the new
system, but swapping it over will be a bit of a PITA and I don't see how it
can possibly be any better than the ASUS onbard video - isn't the Voodoo
several years older?
Please help.
TIA
Getting games to run is always a trying exercise. It took me
several hours to get the last game demo I downloaded, to
run properly. As you observe, the hardest part is the not
knowing what exactly is busted in your configuration.
Built-in graphics, like the Unichrome, are not usually leading
edge designs. Due to the power constraints, the Northbridge
only has room for a few watts worth of digital circuitry, which
will not be able to compete with 70 watt high end video cards.
One problem with the built-in graphics, is you sometimes cannot
get any concrete info as to exactly what level of hardware
support is in there. I would expect a built-in to have T&L
and maybe hardware support for DirectX 7 - and that is likely
enough for your game.
One issue with games, is the graphics API used. Games can use
Glide (3DFX proprietary), D3D (Microsoft), or OpenGL. You will
find occasional skunkworks efforts, to make translation software,
like MESA offered to give OpenGL abilities, and I think there
might also be the odd Glide project around somewhere (openGlide?
- search on sourceforge.net).
If your game was using Glide on the Voodoo3, Glide will not exist
on your KM400. Only one of the shunkworks projects can add missing
APIs.
In the little reading I've done on the subject, it seems D3D is
supposed to emulate missing functionality, while OpenGL drivers
declare what functions exist, and then a game can use an alternate
rendering method if something is missing.
In terms of drivers, I see 98&me5-10-146-0.zip and 4IN1.zip :
http://au.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7V400-MX&Type=All
This page explains what you get in the Via chipset drivers 4IN1:
http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/4in1/HyperionDriverInstallationGuide2005.htm
When you moved the disk from the old computer to the new, did you
uninstall the old video card software, just before shutting down the
old PC for the last time ? When moving disks from one machine to
another, I like to have a scratch disk, so I can clone a backup
copy, in case of emergencies. Then, if a transition step needs to be
redone, I have something to work with. Removing the old video
driver, will result in the new machine booting in some 640x480
VGA mode, but as soon as your chipset drivers and video driver
are added, the functionality should improve.
One thing I'm not sure of, is how the built-in graphics hardware
looks like to a game. For example, if you plug in a 3D graphics
card into the AGP slot, the AGP bridge gets used on the Northbridge,
and there is an AGP GART driver, where the GART translates AGP
addresses from the video card, into addresses inside main memory.
The built-in graphics may not go through the same translation
steps, and since some games seem to know a little too much about
the hardware underneath, this may prevent certain games from
running properly, if at all.
On one of my older computers, I do remember one game demo ending
up with a lot of graphics distortions, after I upgraded DirectX
versions, so I could run another game. And Microsoft doesn't
officially spport downgrading to older versions, so a clean
install is the only practical answer for that. So much for backward
compatibility...
This article discusses the state of integrated graphics. While the
KM400 is not discussed here, it will have similar performance
characteristics to other built-in graphics solutions. (I cannot
find a spec for the KM400, that describes its feature set in
any detail, so this is as close as I can get.)
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030903/index.html
As for your Voodoo3 3000, in Google I see mention of both
PCI slot and AGP slot versions of the card. Apparently, 3DFX
didn't really use the AGP features that much, so the AGP slot
was likely only offering a little extra bandwidth for commands
and data. From a slot perspective, if your card is an AGP
card, your AGP card will have a slot cut in the edge card,
indicating operation at 3.3V only. The AGP slot in your
motherboard has a key for 1.5V only (or universal card) operation.
A 3.3V card should not plug in there, due to the key preventing
it. If your Voodoo card is PCI, then there won't be any drama.
(Don't forget to unplug the computer, before adding or removing
any hardware - unplugging prevents damage via +5VSB.)
If gaming is important to you, you could get a low end
AGP video card, starting at about $50-$60. There is a list
here, that allows comparison of basic features. To do better
than your built-in graphics, I would want a card with
DirectX9 hardware support (something that might come in
handy if you were to run Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn
operating system).
This page lists the characteristics of the cards. If the first
link is dead, use the archived version. A card better than or
equal to Radeon 9500 is an option, while in the Nvidia camp,
an FX5200 or better would work. (I have a FX5200 in one of my
computers, and it is not a high performance card, by any
stretch of the imagination. I got it because it is fanless,
so allows a quiet office PC to be constructed. I've tried
a couple of old games and it wasn't too bad with those.)
The DirectX9 cards differ in which version of programmable
vertex and pixel shaders they use, and the supported version
is shown at the bottom of this page.
http://www.benchmark.pl/artykuly/zestawienie_GPU_2/skala_wydajnosci.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20041012...ykuly/zestawienie_GPU_2/skala_wydajnosci.html
This article will allow you to rate the actual performance of
the cards:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html
Maybe you could try running DXdiag from Start/Run ? Dxdiag is
included with DirectX, and has some test buttons you can play
with. Maybe Sisoft Sandra or Lavalys Everest utilities can
tell you more about your hardware.
HTH,
Paul
