Retesting posted 6/19/99 by rob ART morgan rob-art@barefeats.com )

Here's a brand new comparison list of various Power Macintosh configurations running Unreal 2.2.4b2 in the High Quality mode (everything turned on except Vertex lighting). Frame rates are captured for the Castle Flyby sequence by pressing "~" and typing "timedemo 1" and pressing "~" again. The flyby restarts itself at the entrance of the castle. Frame rates are displayed in the upper left hand corner. The average scores below are for one complete revolution.

 

Some Thoughts

  1. Anytime the frame rate drops below 16 frames per second, the animation begins to appear jerky to the human eye. As you can see, you have to have a G3/400 or faster to NEVER drop below that rate.
  2. The quality of the graphics using the Voodoo2 based board were so good, even the low quality setting was impressive. Yes, you can have speed and quality.
  3. For updates and patches to Unreal and Quake, try West Lake Interactive's Downloads Page.
 

 

Test Configurations

MACHINE
RAM
Video (VRAM)
L2 Cache
Game Render
Virtual Memory?

G3/500 w/ Voodoo2
(Yosemite G3 w/ PowerForce ZIF)

256M

Game Wizard Voodoo2 (12M)

1M (2:1)

Glide

OFF

G3/500 w/Orion 128
(Yosemite G3 w/ PowerForce ZIF)

256M

Orion RAGE 128 (16M)

1M (2:1)

Rave

OFF

G3/500 w/ Rev A RAGE 128
(Yosemite G3 w/ PowerForce ZIF)

256M

Rev. A RAGE 128 (16M)

1M (2:1)

Rave

OFF

G3/400 w/ Orion RAGE 128
(Yosemite G3 w/ PowerForce ZIF)

256M

Orion RAGE 128 (16M)

1M (2:1)

Rave

OFF

G3/400 w/ Rev A RAGE 128
(Yosemite G3 w/ PowerForce ZIF)

256M

Rev. A RAGE 128 (16M)

1M (2:1)

Rave

OFF

G3/292 w/ Game Wizard 3Dfx
(Power Mac 7500)

128M

Game Wizard Voodoo2 (12M)

1M (1:1)

Glide

OFF

G3/292 w/ Orion RAGE 128
(Power Mac 7500)

128M

Orion RAGE 128 (16M)

1M (1:1)

Rave

OFF

G3/292 w/ Xclaim RAGE Pro
(Power Mac 7500)

128M

Xclaim RAGE Pro (8M)

1M (1:1)

Rave

OFF

iMac revision B Voodoo2

96M

Game Wizard Voodoo2 (8M)

.5M (2.1)

Glide

VM=128M

iMac version B RAGE Pro

96M

RAGE Pro (6M)

.5M (2:1)

Rave

VM=128M

  • All systems ran MacOS 8.6. (Filesharing, Appletalk and Clock Display OFF)
  • MacSoft Unreal application preferred application size set to 100MB.
  • In the case of beta version 2.x.x of Unreal, you don't need the "timedemo.u" document in the System folder. Frame rates are captured for the Castle Flyby sequence by pressing "~" and typing "timedemo 1" and pressing "~" again. The flyby restarts itself at the entrance of the castle. Frame rates are displayed in the upper left hand corner. The average scores below are for one complete revolution.
  • ATI's Orion RAGE 128 was plugged into the 66MHz PCI slot in place of the standard RAGE 128 Apple ships with the Rev A Yosemite. It was also used in the standard 33MHz PCI slot in the Power Mac 7500.
  • The Micro Conversions Game Wizard and Game iWizard were used to produce the Voodoo2 figures. Unfortunately, the company has closed its doors. Hopefully, others will step forward with Voodoo products.
  • If you want even more speed from the Power3D and are willing to risk overheating it, try the 3DfxTweaker which overclocks the 50MHz board to run faster. I got it up to 57MHz graphics clock rate and zero swapbuffer interval without having graphics errors.

Unreal Test Software Provided by MacSoft

 

ATI Technology provided the Orion RAGE 128 board.

SEE OTHER bare feats SPEED RESULTS

© 1998, 1999 Rob Art Morgan.
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