Voodoo3 and Quake3, horribly inconsistent framerates

[Leo V]

OK, I tried the Wicked3D drivers, and they're a LOT faster in worst-case situations. They finally made Quake3 playable on the network. I still had to keep gibs off (Q3 1.09 seems to splatter blood everywhere, taking a 5X overdraw/performance hit). Apparently, slow alpha blending is a Voodoo3 limitation. But otherwise, it's much better now!
--Leo V

[lost1]

Leo V-
Where did you get the Wicked drivers? My Voodoo 3 is also a dog on Q3.
Thanks

[Andrew]

http://www.wicked3d.com/

[lost1]

Thanks Andrew! /forum/wink.gif

[Leo V]

Hi,
My friend just got a Voodoo3 2000/AGP (he has P3/450 with 128MB). When he walks around the Quake3 maps, he gets mostly ultra-high FPS, but as soon as there are one or two opponents and a couple of rockets fly, the FPS suddenly drops to barely over 10FPS! This also happens in some specific sections of The Longest Yard map even without opponents present.

The problem persists with both Quake3 1.08 and 1.09. Windows 98SE was freshly installed. We tried all the 3dfx Quake3-compatible drivers we could find. Switching to my USB mouse didn't help. Overclocking Voodoo3 to 175MHz and P3 to 560MHz didn't help much. (No texture memory was not limited to 2MB or anything like that). Neither did turning off most of the video options and reducing the resolution to 800x600.

The crazy part is that his Timedemo1 score (54FPS/1024x768/most options on) are as good as another friend's overclocked TNT2 Ultra. It's just that he gets 100FPS in some places and 11FPS in others. In actual multiplayer games however, I do better with my Voodoo2 (TWO) and my P3 UNDERclocked to 300MHz (just to see) -- I still get 20-30FPS at 800x600 in fights and he gets 10FPS.

Is this normal of Doodoo3? Please help.
---Leo V.