From: Steffen H�user SHaeuser@quark.de To: amiga-news.de team@amiga-news.de Subject: H2 News Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 14:02:10 +0100 Hi! (Any replies please to MagicSN@Birdland.es.bawue.de) I recently tested the latest Beta Version of Heretic II (i am Betatester) concerning speed, and did a speedtest, where i compared the speed with the speed on the PC of my little brother of the PC Version of Heretic II. In both cases the SOFTWARE RENDERER was used. Hardware Data: Amiga: Cyberstorm PPC 604e 150 MHz (yes, only 150, i have a lowend 604e Board...) Cybervision/PPC OS: AmigaOS 3.0 (3.5 is ordered, but not yet arrived)+ WarpOS V4 PC: Pentium II 300 MHz Riva TNT (TNT 1) Based AGP-Bus Graphics Board OS: Windows 95 Remember: All speed is done with SOFTWARE RENDERER, for both systems, for fairness :) The values (i tested at different places, but of course PC and Amiga version were always tested at the same place): Level Amiga Speed (150 MHz) PC Speed (300 MHz) dmandoria 31 fps 60 fps oglemine1 35 fps 72 fps oglemine1 different location with 24 fps 45 fps lots of monsters visible hive1 (lot of transparency FX) 9 fps 27 fps no typical situation for the game And now some values in a higher resolution: Startlevel in 400x300 24 fps 41 fps Startlevel in 640x480 10 fps 19 fps On an average i was usually (in 320x240) at: 25-30 fps around 50-70 fps I estimate on a 233 MHz the average should be around 40-50 fps in typical situations... What do we learn of this ? 1. On an average the Amiga Version has the same speed like the PC version (at least if we had a PC with the same MHz-number, 31*2 = 62 fps for example, where the PC version had 60 fps, the Amiga Version 31 fps (first example) 2. Massive Transparency Effects are the death for every software-renderer, no matter if Amiga or PC. Luckily these effects are not displayed all the time. Situations like at the start of hive1 only happen in very few situations (hive1 is actually the slowest level in the whole game, it seems, at least at a certain position in the level) 3. The speed value of Heretic II is actually quite nice, even on a lowend PPC like mine, on a 233 MHz you will have values around 233/150 times as fast. 4. We can expect much more from 3D Hardware (Warp3D Support) (On PC there was a REALLY HUGE speedup for 3D Hardware, especially when Transparency was involved) 5. PCI/AGP did not give that much more speed than PowerUP-Bus/Zorro 3 (i did not do actual speedtests of Z3, but it is not that much slower than on Zorro 3. Also WB Window Mode is also not that much slower - though of course slower) I was also told by Hyperion that they are currently making much progress for the 68k version, and that it looks good that probably 060+software renderer will be fast enough to get the game playable. Steffen Haeuser
