3DfxTweaker requires a Macintosh equipped with a PowerPC processor and at least System 7.5.2. The use of MacOS 8.1 or later is highly recommended.
Installation:
There's no special installation procedure required. Just copy the contents of this archive to your harddisk and double-click on the 3DfxTweaker icon. You don't need to put 3DfxTweaker in your Extensions or Control Panels folder !!!!
What 3DfxTweaker offers:
• Adjustment of screen refresh rate
To optimize the cards display for your specific monitor, and to provide flicker-free video output.
The screen refresh rates that a 3Dfx card can generate are: 60Hz, 70Hz, 72Hz, 75Hz, 80Hz, 85Hz, 90Hz, 100Hz and 120Hz.
If your monitor doesn't support the selected refresh rate, the card will revert to 60Hz.
This setting does not affect the heat of the graphics chips on the card.
• Adjustment of graphics clock rate
To let the graphics processor on the card run faster and achieve higher frame rates, but with the drawback of possible texture errors and the fear of overheating the card.
Normally a 3Dfx card is clocked at 50MHz, but most cards can run a lot faster. 57MHz is a common speed that almost all cards can handle, 60MHz is the recommended limit, and some cards can even go faster. The maximum speed for your card depends on a number of parameters, mostly the speed of the RAM chips on the card, and the temperature of the graphics processor. It is therefore recommended to install a heat sink or a fan on an overclocked card. Read this Mac-specific page about installing cooling fans on 3Dfx cards:
http://www.sirius.com/~flyman/tweaking.html
• Adjustment of swapbuffer interval
To minimize the time between two consecutive frames, in order to gain a higher framerate. This does not affect the heat of the graphics chips on the card.
• Other parameters may follow in later versions.
Sorry, gamma correction won't be included in the first release. This has proven to be non-trivial.
What 3DfxTweaker can't do:
No matter how nice you ask, 3DfxTweaker will never be able to help you regain lost resolutions caused by an Apple Multiscan monitor and a low-quality pass-through cable. To remedy this problem you should download the Multi-Resolutions control strip module from http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/cgi-bin/NewSearch?key=multi-resolutions, which will give you those resolutions back, or obtain a special pass-through cable for Multiscan monitors from Techworks.
How 3DfxTweaker works:
The GLIDE library which is used by the operating system to access the 3Dfx card, is nearly the same for MacOS, Windows, DOS and Linux. But since the MacOS doesn't have an environment variable scheme like the other three operationg systems, the GLIDE library for MacOS doesn't offer the parameter adjustment available for these other operating systems. 3DfxTweaker tries to offer the same environment variables that are available for Windows, DOS and Linux in an easy-to-use application. It does this by altering parts of the GLIDE library in main memory (It does NOT alter the GLIDE library on the harddisk !).
What the main benefit of 3DfxTweaker is:
SPEED, for the fps-hungry among us.
This table shows some frame rates in Quake 3Dfx, measured with a Diamond Monster3D card on a PowerMac 7300/166/80:
Before you send e-mail and ask, YES, I'm using a Diamond Monster3D. It's a stock card for the PC, and it works fine in a Mac, if you use the drivers from Techworks. I can not encourage you to buy such a card, because the Techworks Power3D is a fine card, and it's not more expensive either. I had to buy a Diamond Monster3D because Techworks cards are very hard to get over here in Europe.
Why you might won't see any improvement:
There are several reasons why 3DfxTweaker might not show any improvement.
The best possible case is a game, which requires very little CPU power (i.e. it plays fine even on slow machines), so the game is spending most of its time waiting for the 3D card to finish it rendering job. In this case, tweaking the cards performance with 3DfxTweaker will show very good results.
But there are other games, which are not limited by the performance of the 3D card, but rather by the speed of the CPU. So no matter how much you tweak the card, the framerate of the game won't get any higher.
Another reason why you don't see any improvement with 3DfxTweaker might be that the game already does some of the tweaks internally. For example, the Swapbuffer interval is application defined. Some games use the recommended value of 1, so tweaking it with 3DfxTweaker to 0 will show a big improvement. However some games might already use 0 internally, so there's no possibility for improvement.
Therefore I can not guarantee any kind of performance improvement for your favourite game. Either your CPU is too slow (which is the case if you have a 7200/75 or a 7200/90), or the game just isn't tweakable.
How to use 3DfxTweaker:
Start it up and adjust the settings. The settings will NOT be preserved after a restart of your computer. If you want your settings to be applied after each restart, you need to save them to a settings file. To do this click on 'Save Settings file...' and choose a filename and location. Your settings will be stored in the file, which you can then put in your Startup Items folder.
You can also make several different settings files, for each of your games. Double-clicking such a file is all you need to do to start 3DfxTweaker and have those settings applied.
Version history:
1.0b1 <27-Feb-1997> (expires on 01-Jun-1998)
• Found the problem that caused so many people to keep 3DfxTweaker open all the time. The reason was that you need to have the 3Dfx_2D3D_Swap extension from Techworks installed, which will preserve the settings.
• Added a check if the 3Dfx_2D3D_Swap extension is present, with a direct download link.
• The current settings are now shown after 3DfxTweaker has started.
1.0b0 <26-Jan-1997> (expires on 01-Mar-1998)
• First public beta release.
Thanks and acknowledgments to:
Coming later...
Legal stuff
3DfxTweaker is copyright (c) 1998 by Andreas Varga.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
The author, Andreas Varga, makes no warranties, either express or implied, regarding the fitness of 3DfxTweaker for any particular purpose. Use 3DfxTweaker at your own risk. The author claims no liability for data loss or any other problems caused directly or indirectly by 3DfxTweaker.
3DfxTweaker is e-mail ware which means that if you like it you should send me (the author) some e-mail. If you want to, you can also send me money or other precious gifts, I'll accept everything :). But all I ask for is a nice little e-mail. If you don't have access to the Internet or an online-service, you can send me a postcard or a letter if you like.
Be sure to tell me where you got 3DfxTweaker from.
Please feel free to report any bugs, and tell me if you have some suggestions for improvements or other comments.
Send all e-mail to: e9426444@stud1.tuwien.ac.at or sid@mars.tuwien.ac.at
Postal mail address:
Andreas Varga
Hauptplatz 1
A-2460 Bruck/Leitha
AUSTRIA/EUROPE
If you send the e-mail you'll be added to a list of users and will automatically receive information about new versions of 3DfxTweaker. (If you don't like to get these messages, please state it in your e-mail, and I won't include you in the list).
Sorry, but I can't distribute new versions of 3DfxTweaker via mail.
The 3DfxTweaker package may be distributed freely, but it must remain in its unmodified entirety. It can be put on ftp-sites, BBS, and on disks and CD-ROMs that charge a reasonable fee for the cost of distributing it. I would appreciate a copy of any such disk or CD-ROM so that I know what it is being distributed on, but it is not a necessity. I do require that you ask me first before distributing 3DfxTweaker on a CD-ROM. Thank you.
I also ask that you contact me if you want to distribute 3DfxTweaker, so that only the latest version is distributed. The latest version is always available at this WWW page:
http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426444/3dfx/
Andreas Varga
email: e9426444@stud1.tuwien.ac.at
http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426444/3dfx/
The SID Homepage: http://stud1.tuwien.ac.at/~e9426444/index.html
