zlacker

It is funny playing titles from that era on modern hardware as it is apparent just how much the CPU was doing. Mostly due to the lack of optimization of the geometry routines past basic use of MMX - frame rate are still high just nowhere near as high as you would expect.

I remember when a friend 1st got an i7 machine and we decided to see just how fast Turok 2 would go. I mean seeing Quake 3 go from barely 30fps to up near 1,000 FPS over the same time period, we figured it would be neat to see. Turns out it could barely break the 200 FPS mark even though it was a good 8 times the clock rate compared with the PC we originally played it on at near 60fps.

No use of SSE, no use of T&L units or Vertex/Pixel shaders. It is all very much just plane rasterisation at work.

>>NovaDu+(OP)
> past basic use of MMX

MMX is fixed point and shares register space with FPU. Afaik not a single real shipped game ever used MMX for geometry. Intel did pay some game studios to fake MMX support. One was 1998 Ubisoft POD with a huge "Designed for Intel MMX" banner on all boxes https://www.mobygames.com/game/644/pod/cover/group-3790/cove... while MMX was used by one optional audio filter :). Amazingly someone working in Intel "developer relations group" at the time is on HN and chimed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28237085

"I can tell you that Intel gave companies $1 million for "Optimized" games for marketing such."

$1 million for one optional MMX optimized sound effect. And this scammy marketing worked! Multiple youtube reviewers remember vividly how POD "runs best/fastest on MMX" to this day (LGR is one example).

>>rasz+971
I was using MMX as just an off the top of my head example but you are completely right. SSE would have been a better example. ;)

Also had no idea about them paying for those optimizations but I am not surprised one bit. It is very in character for Intel. ;)