HOw To boost the Voodoo2

[perer]

On koolsmoky's TODO list stands that he wants to make his glide compatibel with Voodoo2, or he wants to optimize the original voodoo2 glide (glide 2.56+3.01). Well lets start to optimzie it if you are not already doing it. I know that I want to get max performance out of my Voodoo2, but how is the question. I wonder if the drivers can  cause such a big performance increase except compatibility with newer opengl and directx and image quality, Which is not a priority for me.
I WANT SPEED. one way is to code it in Assembly but that wil take to long, I am thinking of giving the CPU more influence in glide so it wil decrease the task of the Voodoo2 but not keep it sleeping.
No I want to make Glide in such a shape that heavy duty stuf wil be calculated by the CPU and then are send to the Voodoo2 so that it wil run at 100%, but know you can get an higher fps because the system won't have to wait for the Voodoo2. Offcourse it would be stupid to make glide this way, without some sort of tweaker in the registry, so
if you have a athlon 1000 you can make the settings in such a way that
You dont put everything on the CPU, but if you have an Athlon 64fx-51 you can put al lot more things on the CPU, so that you're system is in balance.

Some people will think what is the goal of this because there are no Glide games made anymore ( I think ), Wel because Glide is the thing for VOODOO's, so ther must come a wrapper that can change direct9 or opengl into GLIDE (the modified offcourse;)), But if this whole thing failes I will make a wrapper for the regular GLIDE.

[amp_man]

Do you realize the intent of a voodoo 2? Originally, it's intention was to add 3D support so that good old Pentiums and P2s could have 3D acceleration, to take the load off the CPU. For what Glide games there are out there, a V2 will perform just fine, a pair in SLI or V5 would do even better, even just relying on the voodoo as it does now. If you want to do Glide in the CPU to remove the necessity of a powerful voodoo, why not remove the voodoo altogether, replacing it with a nice 9800XT and a Glide wrapper? I think ps47 knows a good one. V2s in powerful systems are obsolete, if you go that route. My point is, if you are going to remove the acceleration from the 3d accelerator, why even bother having it? Seems rather useless.

[perer]

Have you ever seen  a cpu faster than a voodoo2(SLI). I mean so fast that he can do ALL the tasks without Voodoo2(SLI). And I sad the keep the system in balance that is always faster. WickedGL uses the same thing, Thats what the high resolution support is all about, just helping not taking over cause it is not fast enough. Well why don' t buy a radeon 9800XT?
Well money does'n grow on my back unfortunately. But I do have money to buy a new fast CPU.
So if you have a fast CPU you can gain more in games. That is what we all want. But old CPU' s know have a problem. But there is another thing with old, the game itself if the cpu can hardly run the game don' t think it can help the Voodoo2(SLI).
But still the key factor here is If you want to use the ew feature than use it if don' t than don't. So We get what we all want.

[amp_man]

But think about this. 3dfx has been out of business for a little over 3 years now. In that time, I very much doubt that many Glide-based games have come out. In 2000, I think the Pentium 3 was top of the line, and the best P3 you can get is 1.3ghz, I think. We now have CPUs moving at three times that speed, not to mention DDR ram. Glide games were designed to run on these older of systems, and usually not aimed at the top of the line, but closer to the middle, like 500-800mhz, for a good gaming experience. Heck, my overclocked p2 and v5 runs unreal tournamnet at around 50fps. Anything much higher than that and the human eye can't tell the difference anyways. So, why bother to worry about getting much higher than that? You are correct, optimizing the drivers can help, but doing all the work to move the instruction set from the video card to the CPU, that would not be worth the performance increase. Do you have 2 V2s, or only one? On the other hand, this could be quite usefull for APIs where the Voodoos can't keep up, namely DirectX and OpenGL, but I think the voodoos should perform fine under Glide stuff. Also, you mentioned originally an OpenGL/DirectX->Glide wrapper? That would be ridiculous. Glide is 3 years old, there's no way you could put all of the stuff DirectX 9.0 includes, like pixel and vertex shaders and TnL, and move them into Glide, although I think I've seen a DX7->Glide wrapper somewhere. As for your other suggestion, I think one of the developers can probably talk more about the feasibility of such things.

[NitroX infinity]

and the best P3 you can get is 1.3ghz
Make that 1.4GHz

We now have CPUs moving at three times that speed
Make that two times. Fastest CPU currently available runs at 3.2GHz

[amp_man]

Okay, so I exagerrate a little in my rantings but I think my point is still clear...but a 1.4GHz P3? I haven't seen/heard of it.

[perer]

Amp_Man a voodoo1->5 does not support Pixel en Vertex shaders why bother  to bring it to glide. Just disable pixel and vertex shader.
Or you can let it emulate it. Are Pixel and Vertex such  a requirement, if you want absurd quality yes. Somethimes all these sharp looking games make it harder to spot enemies in games. And if Glide is not possible than we just have to make it possible don' t we.
But about pixel  shaders we just have to use the textures flat without shading effects, the same counts for vertex shaders.

[perer]

He amp_man just look at 3D-analyze it is possible to disable vertex/pixel shaders and stencils. If we  make the wrapper so that it furst disables the pixel/vertex shaders and other calls. And then change the remaining calls into GLIDE.

[amp_man]

I'm aware that the voodoos don't support the shaders, but I think for some reason that the VSA100 do support stencils. I think, though, that if you took a look at the limitations of Glide, you will find that putting all the crap from DirectX (even the stuff the Voodoos do support) into Glide would be quite a feat. But don't let me discourage you from trying. From 3D Mark 2001SE, my V5's feature support:

Texture Formats
Pixel Format: 32-bit ARGB [8888]
Pixel Format: 16-bit RGB [565]
Pixel Format: 16-bit ARGB [1555]
Pixel Format: 16-bit ARGB [4444]
Pixel Format: 8-bit RGB [332]
Pixel Format: 16-bit ARGB [8332]
Pixel Format: 8-bit Indexed()
Pixel Format: 8-bit YUV [800]
Pixel Format: 16-bit AYUV [8800]
Pixel Format: 8-bit AYUV [4400]
Pixel Format: FourCC [DXT1]
Pixel Format: FourCC [DXT2]
Pixel Format: FourCC [DXT3]
Pixel Format: FourCC [DXT4]
Pixel Format: FourCC [DXT5]

3D Capabilities
Additive Texture Blending
Bilinear Filtering
DXT Compressed Textures
Factor Alpha Blending
Multiplicative Texture Blending
Point Sampling
Positional Lights
Rendering to a Window
Specular Gouraud Shading
Stencil Buffers
Subpixel Accurate Rasterizing
Subtractive Texture Blending
Table Fog
Texture Alpha Blending
Texture Clamping
Texture Mirroring
Texture Wrapping
Trilinear Filtering
Vertex Alpha Blending
Vertex Fog
W-Fog

You must remember that Glide will work with cards clear back to the original Voodoo Graphics, whereas DirectX has evolved and dropped support for these cards. So, Glide probably doesn't support all the latest hardware features, in order to keep compatability with older voodoos. You can try disabling all these features, but after that, I think it will be very ugly in some cases. So, I think you might have a tough task ahead of you, but I sort of hope that you continue anyways, this is a great idea in theory, especially since the Voodoos kick ASS in Glide versus other APIs.

[perer]

But still I am woried about what version of Glide to use. Because not all versions are compatible with all voodoo's

[amp_man]

well, your best bet is to use the latest Glide revision, it probably would support the most features (not being a programmer myself, I have no real idea what features exactly Glide does support, or even what version the latest Glide is). You will probably need to focus first on the VSA-100, then find out what you can do with earlier model cards. Probably your V2 would be a very grey area for this, although I suppose anything is possible with a little voodoo magic.