Doom Frame rates on various systems?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by desiv

Based on the youtube vids posted in this thread of Doom playing on 486 class machines, I think that is more of that rose colored glasses specs. (I'm guilty of that myself. More than a few times I go back to see a game I loved and it runs slower than I remember.)

A 486DX33 with a fast VLB card would be around 15/16 FPS... and an SX25 slower still...

Perhaps you are right. I only remember that it was much smoother on the 486SX-25 than my 386DX-40 with ISA bus VGA card.

On my A1200 with 50MHz 030 25 fps feels very smooth, but of course to get that I have to run it in a small window. Normally I run it 2 sizes down with low detail and get 11-20 fps (~15 fps on average), which is plenty fast enough and a satisfactory window size for me.

A 386DX-40 should get similar results to my A1200, and a 486 would be faster so with those settings 20-25 fps seems believable.

[TjLaZer]

It is capped at 35 fps. If you do run it in higher resolutions you can benefit on faster processors. I get ~11 at 640x400 on Vampire A1200. Of course 35 fps at 320x200 & on the 060/50+ the same. Not quite as high at 640x400 but close.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Some Oak cards were better than others. In this test of Quake in 320x240 on an Athlon XP2200+, an OTI 037C only got 9.2fps, slightly ahead of a Trident 8800 at 8.7fps and behind a Trident 8900B at 11.5fps. However an OTI 067 got 21fps, and an OTI 077 got 26.8fps. The fastest ISA cards (surprisingly including a Trident 8900CL) got 36fps.

I don't know how fast my 25MHz 486SX was, only that it played Doom very smoothly so I'm guessing it was around 20-25fps.

Certainly would not be with an ISA bus card.

His 386 was ISA as he bought it in summer 1992, VESA Local Bus was pretty much 486 only in 1992 and pretty top end in the UK. Another friend of mine got a 33mhz 486 when I got my 25mhz 486 around Autumn 1992 and it did have VLB motherboard and I think a TSENG labs card so it was better at Doom. We both got a Gateway PC later in 1995 and he got the 133mhz and I got the 120mhz version of the exact same PC hence I know you need more than 120mhz to play Super Stardust on PC with zero frame drops but 133mhz is fine.

My 486 wasn't bad considering it was the cheapest money could buy at the time, it did about 22FPS for F1GP and Actua Soccer was fine on it too. It just wasn't quite enough for smooth 2D scrolling games the A1000 didn't even break a sweat doing. At some point I bought a Gravis Ultrasound for it and a CD-ROM. Still have the Gravis actually.

I had quite a few PCs over the years, my fav' was a Packard Bell iXtreme which had an Athlon XP3000 or better CPU and it looked like something out of the movie 2001 with that cool curved white plastic case and touch sensitive DVD ROM tray eject buttons. Of all the PCs I have ever owned that was the nicest, the fan was near silent so great for watching movies on the TV via the ATI Radeon 9000 card with composite video output. Also had 5.1 audio output. I miss that PC. The only bad side was I had to use Windows on it.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

His 386 was ISA as he bought it in summer 1992, VESA Local Bus was pretty much 486 only in 1992 and pretty top end in the UK.

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

I can't remember if this was when my friend had found a cheap VESA Local Bus 386 motherboard though or if this was using his ISA motherboard from 1992.

I guess your memory got better.

VL bus 386 boards were available in 1992, but if you say he only had ISA then we have to believe you. All I can say is that every benchmark I have seen puts a 386DX-40 with ISA card (even the ET4000 in my post above) at less than 10fps. Of course this is with standard settings (full window with hud, high detail).

We both got a Gateway PC later in 1995 and he got the 133mhz and I got the 120mhz version of the exact same PC hence I know you need more than 120mhz to play Super Stardust on PC with zero frame drops but 133mhz is fine.

That agrees with my own experience. 3D games are generally fine because the frame rate can vary quite a bit without being noticeable. Smooth scrolling 2D games are more picky. Shearing was a common problem on PCs when the frame rate wasn't synchronized. Some cards didn't even have a vsync signal, which made frame sync impossible. I notice the same thing in YouTube videos - a game that is perfectly smooth on real Amiga hardware looks choppy in the video.

The other thing most people don't talk about is how jerky and inaccurate a PC mouse was/is. Most VGA cards didn't have a hardware pointer so it had to be rendered in software. It would often flicker while the screen was updating, and sometimes leave 'mouse droppings' on the screen. The ET4000 was infamous for this if you used the standard VGA driver.

Even on my 'modern' PCs I have difficulty getting the mouse movement right. On this Linux box the 'acceleration' was way too fast and I had to type a command in to reduce it. Sometimes the mouse freezes up when the machine is heavily loaded with virtual memory - which can take 20 minutes or more to clear!

In comparison, even a slow old A500's mouse pointer is rock solid and accurately controllable. This is very important when eg. trying to draw stuff in a paint program.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by desiv

I think that's a bit off...
From what I remember, and doing some googling, it looks like Doom probably ran about 13-18FPS on a 486SX33...

That still felt pretty impressive at the time...

There a vid on youtube showing that same video card on a 486DX2/66 and it ended up with about 25FPS...
[ Show youtube player ]

https://thandor.net/benchmark/32
Doom benchmark score for 486DX2-66 with SiS6326 PCI card is 31.37 fps.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by gimbal

The graphics card does not matter for DOS Doom, it is all CPU. Your friend's computer must have been magic, I played it on an Intel DX40 as well at the time and it only became marginally playable in the low resolution mode and in a reduced screen size.

The statement "The graphics card does not matter for DOS Doom" is FALSE.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by hammer

https://thandor.net/benchmark/32
Doom benchmark score for 486DX2-66 with SiS6326 PCI card is 31.37 fps.

Only problem with that test is that the SiS6326 PCI card was released in 1998. These results using the faster VLB cards at the time put a 486 DX2-66 around 29 FPS: https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/misc/doombench.html

[grelbfarlk]

Adoom on my A4000 with Ragnarok and Voodoo 3 I get ~70FPS @ 640x480x8bpp.
Prboom with fancy smoothing on the same system gets ~57FPS @640x480x8bpp.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by hammer

The statement "The graphics card does not matter for DOS Doom" is FALSE.

No, it's mostly true. What matters is how quickly you can write to the video ram. And for the swipe effect at the start and end of a level, how quickly you can read ir too.

[malko]

Originally Posted by TCD

This video is quite interesting about that topic: [ Show youtube player ]

Thanks for the video. Factuals and really interesting tests

[Calabazam]

I don't have the FPS i once measured before but one sure thing is that on my A4000, any Doom port flies with 68060/50MHz + AGA or RTG compared to my bridgeboard side with 486SLC2/50MHz + STB Nitro VGA with 2 MB which is an excellent SVGA card. With this bridgeboard setup, Doom is ok to play but the Amiga experience is way faster and smoother.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Karlos

No, it's mostly true. What matters is how quickly you can write to the video ram. And for the swipe effect at the start and end of a level, how quickly you can read ir too.

As per usual the truth is in the middle, making sweeping statements is mostly a bit of fun to pull people out of the woodworks Unfortunately just saying "you're wrong" doesn't really... matter.

[Karlos]

@gimbal

You know how it is. We all love to argue about the strengths and weaknesses of our platform by comparing software that was never intended to run on it and assumes a completely different graphics architecture. We're sensible like that.

[TCD]

If you guys want to check out what playing classic Doom in 2024* feels like, I recommend having a look at Simulacrum which was released this month: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topi...i-and-myolden/

*Might not work on either a 486 or an A4000

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Just type "doom XXX benchmark" in a search engine. It's a rather popular game and been benched to death.

Except on the Amiga.

OP wants fps counts for Doom 1 on:-

Amiga 68040
Amiga 68060
Mac 68030
Mac 68040

I am also interested in those, especially stock A4000 with 25MHz 040 and 25MHz 030, and Mac 68040.

Please don't bother us with results from souped up Amiga systems with 80MHz overclocked 060s, Vampires or PiStorms. This isn't a pissing contest.

Estimating frame rates off YouTube videos is difficult and error-prone. To be a fair comparison people should benchmark their current machines (using doomattack on the Amiga, or adoom if that's all you have) on standard settings, noting any details that may be relevant such as the turbo card installed, CPU clock speed, doom version etc.

I agree that we don't need more benchmarks for PCs, though if you have any the numbers could still be interesting (I will benchmark my 386SX-16 once I get Doom onto it).

Settings to use for Amiga Doom benchmark:
320x200 screen mode, NTSC (if not possible then specify screen mode used)
Window: 2 steps down from max
Detail: high
CLI command: doomattack -forcedemo -timedemo demo3
fps calc: 2134*35/realticks (valid only if gameticks = 2134)

https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/misc/doombench.html
https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=9136
https://thandor.net/benchmark/32

complang.tuwien.ac.at:
Nextstation 68040 33MHz 9.8 fps
IBM ThinkPad 486SLC-50 12.3 fps
Amiga1200 68040-40 adoom 0.5 13.4 fps
I486-50 OTI077 ISA 15.3 fps
AMD486-66 Cirrus Logic 5428 VLB 20.8 fps
Pentium-75 S3 PCI 23.2 fps
Amiga 1200 68060-50 adoom 0.9 24.6 fps

Vogons 'ultimate 486' Doom benchmark:
486SX-25 12.2 fps
486DX-33 16.3 fps

Thandor.net:
i386 SX25 (WDC ISA) 3.4 fps
Am386 SX33 (ALi M1217) 3.86 fps
Am386 SX40 (ALi M1217) 4.68 fps
Am386 DX33 (ETEQ) 7.47 fps
Cx486DLC 33GP (ETEQ) 7.86 fps
Am386 DX40 (MX83) 8.24 fps
i486 SX25 (UMC PCI) 14.06 fps
i486 DX33 (UMC PCI) 18.3 fps

[Mad-Matt]

Not fired up the Amiga in a longtime and had some problems to overcome to get it booting right and then displaying aga modes as its normally rtg only. But i managed to get a result out of it in the end.

Blizzard PPC 040/25 256mb ram (50ns no wait states)
Doomattack C2P_040+ MMU Routines 1+2
NTSC 320x200, 2 steps down from fullwindow, high detail, emulated midi music.

Timed 3863 gametics in 11453 realticks. (11.80fps)

Note: The timedemo demo3 moves quite sluggish and nothing like normal play which i guess has plenty of frame skipping.

AGA capture while running timedemo (Forgive quality, scandex scandoubler connected to aga output.
[ Show youtube player ]

AGA Capture playing demos with fps meter.
[ Show youtube player ]

EDIT: Timedemo demo3 With -NoSound -NoMusic
Timed 3863 gametics in 10043 realticks. (13.46fps)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A1200 Blizzard PPC 040/25 Mediator Voodoo3 P96 RTG

Voodoo3 320x200x8
Timedemo Demo3 No Music Nosound
Timed 3863 gametics in 8763 realticks. (15.42fps)

Timedemo Demo3 (with emulated midi music)
Timed 3863 gametics in 9313 realticks. (14.51fps)

Voodoo3 RTG Capture Showds timedemos and normal demo runs a few times with different settings.
[ Show youtube player ]

-------------------------
Additional note:
A good copymemquick patch helps a little for an extra fps or two. Its a bit of a minefield finding a good one though for my card. if you have issue with startup items randomly failing, WarpOs exceptions or Ramlib errors, a copymemquick patch is a potential culprit if you have one installed. In the worst case you can even have file corruption when writing.

On my system with BlizzardPPC 040
The effect on Doomattack is that the demos wont play properly. desyncing and even crashing. CMQ060, NewCMQ060 seem ok initially but crash Doomattack at some point. CopymemAIO was the worst offender even in safe mode causing what appeared to be fpu errors with triangles stretching during demo2 but usually crashed doomattack when the barrel is supposed to explode in demo1. For the benchmark runs I settled on Copymem (Matt Hey CopyMem040.safe) in safe mode with no notable issues with doomattack or AmigaOS itself.

[CCCP alert]

Hmmm Doom 1 ran OK on my cobbled together 486SX25, 4mb RAM, 11mhz 16bit ISA Oak Technologies cheap SVGA card. Not slick 20-25 fps but somewhere between 15-19 FPS in proper full screen mode. Not very scientific but some of those benchmarks look really low. On 2 steps below full screen it was smooth.