rec.autos.simulators

I felt I would add my two cents worth to all of the discussion on the
delays behind GP2.  There have been many people who are crapping on about
how MP/SH have been waiting until faster chips come out, what a load of crap!

It has been well documented that the new Pentium Pro machines DO NOT run
16 bit code any faster than the current Pentiums.  Unless you are running
the game on a true 32 bit operating system (NT or OS/2) than there is no
gain.  Windows 95 is not a true 32 bit operating system, it has large
amounts of 16 bit code below it.  It is already documented that Windows
95 runs slower on some new Pentium Pros.

The game is written using 16 bit code, although it has a flat memory
model thanks to dos4gw.  The code is 16 bit, the OS is 16 bit, so a
Pentium 133 etc is the best you will get.  If you want any faster
performance than buy a better video card and get more system memory.

Like many others, I am patiently awaiting the release date!

Grant.

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Well, a P-166, P-180 and P-200 will all be significantly faster than a
P-133, and a P-150 may well be faster too, although only slightly if it
is.

FWIW, Marc (US half of Sim Racing News) had a play with GP2 on a Dell
166 at the E3 show. The P-166 will shift GP2 at....10fps with ALL detail
on. Switch off asphalt and clouds and it pretty much motors. Drop a bit
of mirror detail and you're into 120/133 territory, drop.....

You get the picture - we'll all be able to run it at some configuration,
with even nicer stuff to look forward to as hardware develops.

Cheers!
John

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The P5 is still being developed and M/P might well be waiting for the
_average_ machine to be a P133.

Mike

Also, looking towards MMX is a bit like waiting on a 3DCard standard.
It's difficult to write a game to use a particular card and ignore
others, or to support all cards on the market. Is there a 3D standard
emerging yet? This isn't something I've taken too much interest in
yet. With MMX, the CPU's won't be available (ready?) until the end of
the year I thought.

Entry level is a P100 these days....

Stuart

--
Stuart Booth
Somewhere in Godalming, England, UK

Crap,

DOS/4GW executables are 32 bit protected mode executables running 32 bit
instructions - using 32 bit registers, using 32 bit protected mode
interrupt handlers.  Memory access is 32 bit (when required), and bus
access can be 32 bit when the hardware is 32 bits (PCI/VESA rather than
ISA video cards).

When running on DOS, the OS is 16 bit, but the extent of OS interaction
is file system access, and VESA SVGA capabilities detection at
initialisation time.

When running on OS/2 or NT (or any real 32 bit operating system with
decent DPMI support), operating system calls such as INT 21 file access
can be handled without ever leaving protected mode.

So kindly learn the facts before you fill this newsgroup with your crap.

F1GP2 will run faster on a Sexium (Pentium Pro), but I firmly believe that
God (Geoff Crammond) will make a game that far exceeds anything you have
seen before on equivalent hardware.

--


| // There is always one more bug!                            |
| // Windows 95 : Busy or Unstable?  Don't ask me, I run OS/2 |

=> When running on OS/2 or NT (or any real 32 bit operating system with
=> decent DPMI support), operating system calls such as INT 21 file access
=> can be handled without ever leaving protected mode.

So a P6 will run game faster than P5 if the OS is NT, and P6 will run game
slower than P5 if the OS is Win95. Is this right?

=> So kindly learn the facts before you fill this newsgroup with your crap.
=>
=> F1GP2 will run faster on a Sexium (Pentium Pro), but I firmly believe that
=> God (Geoff Crammond) will make a game that far exceeds anything you have
=> seen before on equivalent hardware.
=>
=> --


=> | // There is always one more bug!                            |
=> | // Windows 95 : Busy or Unstable?  Don't ask me, I run OS/2 |

Besides it also depends on the hardware virtualisation provided by the
operating system.  For example, enabling/disabling interrupts are protected
instructions in V86 mode, and thus cause a trap into protected mode where
the DOS emulator will simulate the operation.  The same goes for hardware
I/O like to the sound card.  Some things can run faster when using
virtualised hardware - for instance I/O to an ISA bus video card will speed
up (higher bandwidth) during background/windowed execution, because the
virtual (simulated) video device will in fact be high speed main memory.

The other issue to effect P6 execution speed is code optimisation to keep
the instruction pipeline full (effectively arranging the instructions in
the appropriate order so that they can be executed in parallel).  If GP2
was already optimised to take advantage of this (not disadvantage) on a P5
then I suspect it would run just as effectively on a P6 (with little or no
pipeline stalls).  But I expect that since the program is written in
assembly by Geoff, rather than a "highly" optimised compiler it is unlikely
to use this optimisation technique - and might only get a 0.1% average
speedup (your guess is probably better than mine?).

--


| // There is always one more bug!                            |
| // Windows 95 : Busy or Unstable?  Don't ask me, I run OS/2 |

- Pentium Pro performance on 32-bit code, far better on 16-bit code.
- 32-bit AND 16-bit code optimization
- MMX technology
- Use in any 6x86 compatible motherboard (many Pentium motherboards
  are 6x86 capable). (http://www.cyrix.com/process/prodinfo/6x86/6x-mblst.htm)

Hmmmm, considering it's not here yet, "far better on 16-bit code" is a
bit speculative wouldn't you say?  Do you really think Intel would
license their MMX code to a competitor if they were the slightest bit
concerned by it?

Another one for silicon heaven methinks. I hope not, about time Intel
had some competition at the high-end of the market (where the money is
made) but I fear not.

Cheers!
John

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Let's get some basic facts right: PPro's run 32-bit code faster than Pentiums
(at the same and clock speeds). Pentiums run 16-bit code faster than PPro's (at
the same clock speed). It may be the case that a PPro X MHZ runs 16-bit code
faster than a P Y MHZ due to the fact that X is significantly greater than Y
(this is not the case for all the current speeds) - anyway, ignore this little
bit for now.

No it will not. I doubt very much F1GP2 will even run under a NT DOS session, it
will access the hardware and other such low level functions that NT will simply
not allow. Anyway, just 'cos it's running under NT doesn't mean it's 32-bit,
it's still a 16-bit app for a 16-bit OS (DOS).

F1GP2 will NOT run faster on a PPro than on a Pentium (given my top statement).
F1GP2 is a DOS 16-bit application (even though it will probably use some kind of
32-bit flat memory model like most DOS games do now). Consequently, the fastest
way of running F1GP2 will be in plain old DOS, nothing else. The current fastest
processor to run it on is a Pentium 166 MHZ - soon to be improved upon with the
Pentium 200 MHZ.

It should be noted (and most game magazine I've seen recently have run tests to
prove it), a P166 (fastest Pentium) is vastly faster than a PPro200 (fastest
PPro) for DOS based games. We are talking now Doom2 frame rates of 50+ per sec
to ~ 10 per sec.

Get a brain before making statements like this, that way you may actually be
able to learn the facts. You're not quite that dumb though, as I too am certain
F1GP2 will be the most amazing PC game there is.

Jamie

Hold on, why did you start calling the application a 16 bit app.  If it is
using 32 bit registers, 32 bit instructions, and accessing memory in 32 bit
chunks (where possible) it is a 32 bit application regardless of the memory
model (but that happens to be 32 bit flat memory model).

But 32 bit programs can still use 16 bit instructions, it is up to the
compiler optimiser to choose the instructions to use.  I am sure that NT
still has frequent 16 bit instructions in the code - not all data being
manipulated is 32 bits.

If you disagree with my definition of a 32 bit program then please tell
the world your definition.

Any technical report can be flawed or biased, and all should be read with
this in mind.  A technical report from a game magazine shouldn't be trusted
at all.

1.  What is Doom2 optimised for, 386, 486 or Pentium?  I would doubt that
    it would be optimised for Pentium pipelining.  Maybe Doom2 does contain
    many 16 bit instructions (it is still a 32 bit program though).

2.  Was the hardware setup the equivalent.  I am sure there are plenty of
    bogus PPro motherboard chipsets, simply because it is newer.  Was the
    video card the same?  Assuming the results were accurate what did they
    do to explain them - did they try running NT on the two machines and
    test for any weird performance problems.

    It is just too far fetched to expect us to believe that a PPro200 is
    less than one fifth of the speed of a P166 even when executing fully
    16 bit code.

3.  Do you really think the PPro is that pathetic?  No I haven't used one,
    but they cost a fortune and some people still buy them - because they
    need the higher performance.

4.  The PPro is probably (I don't know the facts) much faster than a Pentium
    when it comes to floating point math (as opposed to just a bit faster
    for integer math).  Doom2 would not have used floating point (it runs
    on a 386), GP2 may not use floating point either - but it is another
    thing to keep in mind when doing PPro/Pentium comparisons.

Mark

--


| // There is always one more bug!                            |
| // Windows 95 : Busy or Unstable?  Don't ask me, I run OS/2 |

________

Eldred Pickett

I am NOT paranoid.  And why are you always watching me?!?

MS> >No it will not. I doubt very much F1GP2 will even run under a NT
MS> DOS session, it will access the hardware and other such low level
MS> functions that NT will simply not allow. Anyway, just 'cos it's
MS> running under NT doesn't mean it's 32-bit, it's still a 16-bit app
MS> for a 16-bit OS (DOS).

MS> We are talking in theory, but you would have to assume that
MS> eventually NT will provide decent DOS emulation so that even games
MS> will run.  But if theory is beyond you then talk about GP2 running
MS> on OS/2.

Well, F1GP runs VERY nicely under OS/2 - faster than it does under DOS
on my machine. The Papyrus sims are much the same - no problems and with
memory problems defeated (all my sessions run with 640kb base memory, no
hassle with TSR's drivers, etc) all seems well.

Typically OS/2 in fact! If software is making "illegal" calls to the
hardware perhaps the poor software should be faulted, not the OS.....

Cheers!

---
 * RM 1.3 U0414 *  I don't do Windows, but OS/2 does.

A typical OS/2 user I see - there must be an incredible amount of "poor"
software around, since it's never the fault of OS/2. Funny, I never have
any trouble at all running that "poor" software under DOS, could it be
that OS/2 just can't emulate DOS properly?

Nah, couldn't be that could it.....

Cheers!
John