Building a Quake PC
fabiensanglard.net
Building a Quake PC
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Building a Quake PC
#2This is a fascinating read.
Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later.
I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar.
Good time.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#3This is a fascinating read. Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later. I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar. Good time.
I had pentiums with voodoos back then, when Unreal came out it did not perform particularly well on that hardware compared to nvidia and didn't have the same graphics quality. Unreal with the nvidia TNT2/GeForce 256 marked the beginning of the end for the voodoo era, if memory serves.
3dfx hay day was really quite quake-centric, you'd be remiss to not use their hardware in a vintage quake pc build.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#4This is a fascinating read. Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later. I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar. Good time.
I had pentiums with voodoos back then, when Unreal came out it did not perform particularly well on that hardware compared to nvidia and didn't have the same graphics quality. Unreal with the nvidia TNT2/GeForce 256 marked the beginning of the end for the voodoo era, if memory serves. 3dfx hay day was really quite quake-centric, you'd be remiss to not use their hardware in a vintage quake pc build.
Thanks, I do recall Unreal has a 3d fx video mode that is pretty good? Or was it bad memory.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#5[deleted]
Re: Building a Quake PC
#6> As I ranted against the '90s and "how hard it was back then to have access to information", my wife came over the workbench, looked at the HDD, and then calmly informed me the J50 was the pins on the left. Hein, mais comment tu sais ca? Then she flipped the HDD to show me the PCB pins were labeled!
Mr. Sanglard is a lucky man :-)
Re: Building a Quake PC
#7This is a fascinating read. Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later. I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar. Good time.
What a timing you have :) ! Digital Foundry did a piece just 12 days ago (https://youtu.be/npMujOQsjGQ?si=4c8fmYDTMrRzFNhl&t=503).
"When Unreal came out, it supported three renderer. Software, Glide, and PowerVR."
My MMX Pentium MMX 233MHz (512x384 with Creative Voodoo 2, patch patch 223 from https://oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/oldunreal-patches/) benchmark, the intro goes from 60fps down to 10 fps when the whole castle is seen in the intro. When I start the game, in the cell, I can see 20fps.
I think the CPU is too light for this game. Definitely a title that requires a Pentium II.
Note that all fps gathered with "stat fps". There is a timedemo (https://www.gweb.me.uk/gweb/unrealsetup.htm) that I shall give a try someday.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#8This is a fascinating read. Back in 1997 my father had a Pentium box with maybe 16MB of RAM. I was able to play Duke 3D and I stuck in E1M3 too and didn’t figure that out until much later. I wonder how well Fabien’s build runs Unreal. It was the pinnacle of classic FPS IMO. I used to drool over a voodoo card but I immersed myself playing in software rendering mode in a netbar. Good time.
I had pentiums with voodoos back then, when Unreal came out it did not perform particularly well on that hardware compared to nvidia and didn't have the same graphics quality. Unreal with the nvidia TNT2/GeForce 256 marked the beginning of the end for the voodoo era, if memory serves. 3dfx hay day was really quite quake-centric, you'd be remiss to not use their hardware in a vintage quake pc build.
Indeed, in 1998 I wanted a Voodoo for some 3D work I was going to do, and naturally wanted the best and also play with Glide.
However it had a problem with my PCI version, and the shop guy was nice to trade it back for a TNT, which not only had no issues with my motherboard, made me an early NVidia customer.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#9That Linksys card feels out of place in an over-the-top late 90s build.
As I recall it, the local LAN scene had an almost religious cult around 3com 10mbit ISA cards, that eventually morphed into a similar thing for Intel 100mbit cards.
Drivers and hardware were even more shit back in those days than today. Cards known to have worked in multiple motherboards and across multiple operating systems were held in high regard.
Re: Building a Quake PC
#10> As I ranted against the '90s and "how hard it was back then to have access to information", my wife came over the workbench, looked at the HDD, and then calmly informed me the J50 was the pins on the left. Hein, mais comment tu sais ca? Then she flipped the HDD to show me the PCB pins were labeled! Mr. Sanglard is a lucky man :-)
God tier wife. Maybe Mrs.Sanglard (if she has changed the name) should start a blog too.