Quake3 To-the_Max(c) competition. Let's make a respectable showing for PPC!

[DearthnVader]

The retro computer folks over at the Vogons are running a Quake3-To-the_max competition to see who can get the highest frame rate out of Quake3 given the contest rules.

Competition! Win a 3DFX Voodoo3 Graphics Card. ----#Quake3toTheMax---- \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org

They have allowed Macs to compete, but we are a bit hampered by the fact no DDR Macs ever shipped before the cutoff date of Jan 1st 2000. However they have allowed all the G4's to compete, so those of us with QuickSilver and MDD Mac should pull together to make a respectable showing for our retro Macs.

They have also allowed the GeForce 2 MX cards to compete even tho they shipped after Jan 1st 2000.

Right now the leading PC is getting 390+ FPS with sound and networking enabled per the rules. It is an nForce2 motherboard with 340Mhz DDR ram and they are using a GeForce 256 DDR graphics card. Quake3 loves memory bandwidth, pure and simple, if it be system RAM bandwidth or VRAM bandwidth, so I don't think we'll be able to take the top spot due to out limitations of non-true-ddr G4's, but let's make a good show of it.

I have a QuickSilver G4 and have ordered a GeForce 2 64MB MX 400 I plan on flashing to the Mac, I'm shooting for a bus overclock of the QS to 150Mhz and I'm looking for a G4 933Mhz CPU that I can clock @5.5x the Bus for a max clock of 825Mhz to stay within the rules of G4 867Mhz Max CPU speed for the Macs in the competition. I chose the 933Mhz QS CPU because it has the large 2MB L2 cache that should help overcome some of our memory and bus limitations in bandwidth.

If you have a MDD system with a 167Mhz bus and PC2700 DDR Ram, you might consider under clocking the CPU to get under the 867Mhz limit. We should be able to overclock the bus on the MDD to 200Mhz so at least we could get the RAM up to that speed even tho it won't be running in DDR mode.

The GeForce 2 MX 400 maybe a limiting factor as well, I've gotten conflicting documentation as to if the VRAM is DDR or SDR and as to if the VRAM bus on the card is 128bit or 64Bit. Does anyone know for sure?

Also if anyone has a G4 933Mhz CPU from a QS they are willing to sell or trade to me, please PM me.

Also, as we must run with sound, and at least on the PC side sound cards and drivers can make a reasonable speed improvement in FPS we need to investigate the best sound card for the G4's to compete.

Please see the full rules at the link, and let's do our best to make this Quake3_to_the_Macs!?

 

[Amethyst1]

They have allowed Macs to compete, but we are a bit hampered by the fact no DDR Macs ever shipped before the cutoff date of Jan 1st 2000.

PCs didn't use DDR RAM before 2001 either (never mind pre-release hardware from 2000). What the rules are referring to is a GeForce 256 GPU with DDR VRAM, which shipped in 1999.

Also, what's with the "Windows 95/98/ME only" rule? AFAIK Quake III runs great on Windows 2000.

 

[DearthnVader]

PCs didn't use DDR RAM before 2001 either (never mind pre-release hardware from 2000). What the rules are referring to is a GeForce 256 GPU with DDR VRAM, which shipped in 1999.

Also, what's with the "Windows 95/98/ME only" rule? AFAIK Quake III runs great on Windows 2000.

hmmm.. looks like that nForce 2 motherboard shipped in 2003?

They didn't restricted the motherboard on the PC side, only the CPU's. I did try and get them to allow the G5 1.6Ghz running in bus slew mode( ie reduced mode ) because that would put the CPU @800Mhz and bus at @400Mhz and we would have DDR Ram running at 333Mhz, just to make things fair, but the person that wrote the Mac rulz would not allow it and said I was complaining and being selfish, then threatened to disqualify Mac's altogether.

We already know someone with A Geforce 256 DDR and a system board with true DDR Ram is going to win the contest, let's just do our best to make a respectable showing.

 

[Amethyst1]

hmmm.. looks like that nForce 2 motherboard shipped in 2003?

Yeah.

I don’t really get their CPU restrictions either since both “maximum” CPUs were released after January 1st, 2000…

 

[DearthnVader]

Yeah.

I don’t really get their CPU restrictions either since both “maximum” CPUs were released after January 1st, 2000…

I guess it's just he GFX card that must be vintage pre-2000 HW, but whatever. PC's can use low spec. CPU's in newer motherboards. We're really fighting with one arm tied behind our backs because Motorola never shipped a G4 with a true DDR compatibility and they don't want us to put our 64bit G5's against their weak 32bit CPU's, even tho that really doesn't give us any advantage in a game that can't use more than 2GB of ram anyway.

The only place we do have advantage is AltiVec.

 

[bloedmage]

Just tried it to benchmark quake 3 on my Quicksilver.
It has a sonnet 1.8Ghz upgrade and Geforce 4 though, still have my old 800mHz CPU card, but dont have a geforce 2 so it wont fit the requirements.

Running quake 3 1.32b with lowest setting at 640x480 results in 100fps
with additional tweaks of config file FPS rises to 205

Running ioquake 1.36 results in 203.5fps

 

[Amethyst1]

It has a sonnet 1.8Ghz upgrade and Geforce 4 though, […]

GeForce4 MX or Ti? There’s a pretty big difference between the two.

 

[LightBulbFun]

it says you can use any motherboard etc, the only limits on the mac side seem to be a GeForce 2 MX and an 867Mhz G4

so an MDD logic board clocked to 172Mhz is what I would do with a 5x CPU multiplier, and then edit the L3 SPD ROM to lower the L3 clock ratio as low possible to get the highest L3 clock speed (and swap the L3 cache chips for the fastest ones you can get)

although reading the rules, it only limits macs to up to a PowerPC G4 to 867Mhz and a 7448 is a PowerPC G4 so one of those running at 867Mhz might be a good option

another interesting option would be an interposer board to install a 750GX G3 (again lower then a G4!) onto an MDD CPU card, with its 1MB on die L2 cache like a 7448, and better 4 stage pipeline, that would put up a formidable fight (you would lose a little bit of memory bandwidth with its 60x bus over the G4 Max bus tho)

(although this all depends on if Quake 3 uses altivec or not?)

 

[originaldotexe]

the sad thing about this competition is that the prize is a voodoo3 but we all know that with these rules, whoever wins will have spent about 4x that on old vintage rare ebay hardware in order to get high fps

 

[ervus]

Would a voodoo3 even work on mac? I would say that the prize is a "respectable showing for PPC" and some fun with the challenge. I don't know much about quake3 so I downloaded it from the garden and tried it on my powerbook with info from that vogons thread:

That is already well behind the top scores (even with better hardware than allowed), but tweaks to the quake settings and maybe even the quake executable are allowed. I guess the source is available for quake3 so maybe some compiler options or newer compiler could yield a faster executable.

This shows 184fps is possible with an 800MHz G4, which is on par with a 1.6GHz P4:

barefeats.com/pm02.html

He also mentions tweaks like s_chunksize set 2048, s_mixahead .07, cg_scoreplums 0

Is anyone an expert on quake3 tweaks?

 

[originaldotexe]

Would a voodoo3 even work on mac? I would say that the prize is a "respectable showing for PPC" and some fun with the challenge. I don't know much about quake3 so I downloaded it from the garden and tried it on my powerbook with info from that vogons thread:

View attachment 2006492

That is already well behind the top scores (even with better hardware than allowed), but tweaks to the quake settings and maybe even the quake executable are allowed. I guess the source is available for quake3 so maybe some compiler options or newer compiler could yield a faster executable.

This shows 184fps is possible with an 800MHz G4, which is on par with a 1.6GHz P4:

barefeats.com/pm02.html

He also mentions tweaks like s_chunksize set 2048, s_mixahead .07, cg_scoreplums 0

Is anyone an expert on quake3 tweaks?

there were 3dfx drivers for classic mac os, im not sure if the voodoo 3 works specifically though as it's a 3d & 2d card with agp as opposed to a 3d only card with passthrough to your primary 2d card like the voodoo 1 & 2 which worked on classic mac os were

 

[originaldotexe]

Would a voodoo3 even work on mac? I would say that the prize is a "respectable showing for PPC" and some fun with the challenge. I don't know much about quake3 so I downloaded it from the garden and tried it on my powerbook with info from that vogons thread:

View attachment 2006492

That is already well behind the top scores (even with better hardware than allowed), but tweaks to the quake settings and maybe even the quake executable are allowed. I guess the source is available for quake3 so maybe some compiler options or newer compiler could yield a faster executable.

This shows 184fps is possible with an 800MHz G4, which is on par with a 1.6GHz P4:

barefeats.com/pm02.html

He also mentions tweaks like s_chunksize set 2048, s_mixahead .07, cg_scoreplums 0

Is anyone an expert on quake3 tweaks?

i guess in theory since they said the source code could be modified, you could just comment out all of the code that actually renders things and get like 1,000,000 fps

 

[DearthnVader]

Would a voodoo3 even work on mac?

Yes, 3dfx released a Mac firmware with a flasher of the classic Mac OS.

 

[DearthnVader]

it says you can use any motherboard etc, the only limits on the mac side seem to be a GeForce 2 MX and an 867Mhz G4

so an MDD logic board clocked to 172Mhz is what I would do with a 5x CPU multiplier, and then edit the L3 SPD ROM to lower the L3 clock ratio as low possible to get the highest L3 clock speed (and swap the L3 cache chips for the fastest ones you can get)

although reading the rules, it only limits macs to up to a PowerPC G4 to 867Mhz and a 7448 is a PowerPC G4 so one of those running at 867Mhz might be a good option

another interesting option would be an interposer board to install a 750GX G3 (again lower then a G4!) onto an MDD CPU card, with its 1MB on die L2 cache like a 7448, and better 4 stage pipeline, that would put up a formidable fight (you would lose a little bit of memory bandwidth with its 60x bus over the G4 Max bus tho)

(although this all depends on if Quake 3 uses altivec or not?)

Yes, Quake3 uses Altivec, it's a huge speed boost.

 

[ervus]

There's a 933 Quicksilver on ebay right now:

www.ebay.com/itm/354066241467

I think this would have L3 cache, but it would have to be set slower to meet the rules.

 

[DearthnVader]

There's a 933 Quicksilver on ebay right now:

www.ebay.com/itm/354066241467

I think this would have L3 cache, but it would have to be set slower to meet the rules.

Yes, I'm watching that one, but I have like 5 QS's already. I just need the CPU and I hate to give $85+ shipping for the whole unit, but then I just sold a Radeon 7500 from one of my QS's for $100 because they are one of the better graphics cards that will fit in the Cube and still have ADC and OS 9 support.

I also normally get $70 out of the QS PSU's, so I likely could sell those out of this unit if I buy it and make most of my money back.

 

[Project Alice]

I don’t totally understand the requirements here.. and the link in the OP is written in Engrish.

867Mhz G4 or lower; and nothing above a Geforce2 mx? Would this make a Radeon 9200 illegal? Because I have a Beige G4 that this would be fine to participate in but it has a Radeon 9200 in it. I guess I could stick a Rage 128 in it but the Rage 128 does not fair very well with the IDtech3 engine (nor does the Geforce2 mx for that matter)

Edit:
Also looking at that other forum, it specifies no Tualatin PIII’s but allows PIII’s up to 900Mhz.. weren’t all PIII’s after like 550-600MHz Tualatin’s?

 

[originaldotexe]

I don’t totally understand the requirements here.. and the link in the OP is written in Engrish.

867Mhz G4 or lower; and nothing above a Geforce2 mx? Would this make a Radeon 9200 illegal? Because I have a Beige G4 that this would be fine to participate in but it has a Radeon 9200 in it. I guess I could stick a Rage 128 in it but the Rage 128 does not fair very well with the IDtech3 engine (nor does the Geforce2 mx for that matter)

Edit:
Also looking at that other forum, it specifies no Tualatin PIII’s but allows PIII’s up to 900Mhz.. weren’t all PIII’s after like 550-600MHz Tualatin’s?

no, there are P3 coppermine cpus at 900mhz.
geforce 2 mx was released in mid 2000 and radeon 9200 in 2002. radeon 9200 is more comparable to a geforce 4 mx or something, so i think it is probably against the rules of their competition. if you want to know for sure though then i would just contact whoever runs the competition

 

[Amethyst1]

[…] weren’t all PIII’s after like 550-600MHz Tualatin’s?

What you’re referring to are the Coppermines — which replaced the original Katmais that topped out at 600 MHz. Coppermines topped out at 1.13 GHz but that was really pushing it. 1 GHz was a more reliable ceiling.

With that being said, there are mobile ULV Tualatins that run at 300 MHz (with SpeedStep) or 700 MHz (nominal).

 

[Project Alice]

What you’re referring to are the Coppermines — which replaced the original Katmais that topped out at 600 MHz. Coppermines topped out at 1.13 GHz but that was really pushing it. 1 GHz was a more reliable ceiling.

With that being said, there are mobile ULV Tualatins that run at 300 MHz (with SpeedStep) or 700 MHz (nominal).

Yeah I googled it after I posted my last reply?? I was thinking of coppermine.

I feel like this “contest” while I will probably try to participate in just for the fun of playing with people; is kinda counterintuitive with its requirements. It would make sense if they wanted only like 1997-2000 hardware but allowing any motherboard, CPUs up to basically 900MHz and DDR memory systems but then limiting the GPU is just.. bottlenecking the rest of the system.
Like if I do this I’m thinking I’ll either use my Pismo, which is a 550Mhz G4, or my Snow iMac which is 600MHz and has a 16MB Rage 128 Ultra.
Either of those or I’ll have to dig out a lesser Rage 128 Pro and stick it in one of my quick silvers or something.

And my retro gaming PC is an AMD Athlon XP that runs Windows 2000 and Windows 98; but the CPU alone disqualifies it (nevermind the Radeon X850 XT it has in it lmao)

 

[Amethyst1]

And my retro gaming PC is an AMD Athlon XP that runs Windows 2000 and Windows 98; but the CPU alone disqualifies it (nevermind the Radeon X850 XT it has in it lmao)

You could unlock its multiplier and underclock the CPU LOL

 

[Project Alice]

You could unlock its multiplier and underclock the CPU LOL

I mean yeah I could but at that point.. I’ll just use my Pismo so I can play on my couch lol

 

[DearthnVader]

Yeah I googled it after I posted my last reply?? I was thinking of coppermine.

I feel like this “contest” while I will probably try to participate in just for the fun of playing with people; is kinda counterintuitive with its requirements. It would make sense if they wanted only like 1997-2000 hardware but allowing any motherboard, CPUs up to basically 900MHz and DDR memory systems but then limiting the GPU is just.. bottlenecking the rest of the system.
Like if I do this I’m thinking I’ll either use my Pismo, which is a 550Mhz G4, or my Snow iMac which is 600MHz and has a 16MB Rage 128 Ultra.
Either of those or I’ll have to dig out a lesser Rage 128 Pro and stick it in one of my quick silvers or something.

And my retro gaming PC is an AMD Athlon XP that runs Windows 2000 and Windows 98; but the CPU alone disqualifies it (nevermind the Radeon X850 XT it has in it lmao)

I didn't see the competition until people had already started submitting results by the rules they had already set, so it's hard for me to argue now that they never should have allowed DDR systems to compete. I did try to get them to allow Mac's with true DDR buses like the G5's running in bus slew mode to put the cpu under 867Mhz, but they just felt that would give us too big an advantage have a newer 64bit CPU.

Mac users always wanted to upgrade theirs systems to the latest and greatest CPU's and graphics cards because the Mac OS always stressed we needed these things to take advantage of new OS features. What happened to all the GeForce 2 MX cards we upgraded? They got sold, tossed, or recycled.

There were just so many GeForce 2 variations and it's hard to get the pure specs of them all. What cards had DDR VRAM and 128bit VRAM interfaces?

I ordered a PC GeForce 2 MX 400 that should have been NV11 GPU a die shrink go the NV10 used in the GeForce 256 DDR with half the rendering pipelines, but it was NV10. Sadly I soft bricked the card flashing the Mac ROM to it and I need to recover it and write a compatible FCode ROM for it.

The exists an Open Firmware script for recovering cards from a bad flash that renders the card "invisible" to a PC or a Mac, I'm just having a hard time finding anyone that still has a copy of it.

There had to be some hardware limits put on the contest, it's a retro thing, so there was always going to be a top system with a top GPU, but they had to set the limits somewhere. We don't have a Mac FCode Rom to support the GeForce 256 DDR, tho I'm pretty sure the drivers from OS 9 and OS X support it. It wouldn't be too hard for me to write one, but the 265 had an NV10 clocked at 120Mhz GPU, while the later Geforce 2 MX 400 that we are allowed to use clocked in at 200Mhz GPU. The 265 clocked in at 150Mhz but that is 300Mhz effective on a DDR bus with a 128Bit data path.

The GeForce 2 MX 400 I have is 128Bit data path with DDR VRAM clocking in at 177Mhz, but that is 354Mhz effective.

Also I have 64MB VRAM vs 32MB for the 256 DDR.

I'm not sure if my extra pipelines are cut or masked. If they are masked I can likely unmask them, but most of this competition is about modifying Quake3 for some much speed it may not make any difference.

I don't think I can win with a Mac without true DDR, but I should be able to put together a respectable showing for PPC, so that is my goal.

The current leader said his system with a stock Quake 3 and stock Q3.config got about 100FPS with sound and networking enabled, so even my QuickSilver G4 800Mhz isn't too far behind that with a Radeon 7500 32MB. I may take a little hit going back to a GF 2 MX 400 but it won't be that big, the issue is sound, we don't have optimized sound hardware and drivers for Quake 3 like exist on the PC side. They lose about 10FPS with sound enabled and I lose about 50-70FPS, but I can't set my sound hardware to anything lower than 32Khz audio, while on the PC side they can. We need to find some sound hardware we can set to 11khz audio, does anyone know of any?

 

[ervus]

with additional tweaks of config file FPS rises to 205

This is the best result so far. If you post your config file we could try it on some different hardware.

 

[DearthnVader]

I just ordered a dual cpu 867Mhz MDD so I'll be working with that to see if we can make a respectable showing. Just didn't find any 933Mhz CPU's for the QuickSilver.

I think the dual 867 MDD only has 1MB L2 Cache and I know it's only 133mhz bus with PC2100 RAM, but I can use that as a test bed submission to the contest, then overclock the bus to 167Mhz and add PC2700 RAM.

PPC Overclocking Station - The House of Moth

A consolidation of (eventually) everything regarding overclocking a PowerPC Mac. Updated hi-res graphics and detailed instructions where needed.

thehouseofmoth.com

Does anyone know the CPU multiplier setting for 5x the bus for the MDD? (5x167Mhz=835Mhz). @LightBulbFun