[Phatkil1er]

I recently built a MAME arcade machine out of a Street Fighter II arcade cabinent and an old Dell XPS T500. The old Dell came stock with:
Diamond Viper V770D Riva TNT2
Pentium III 500Mhz Socket 1

Now it took me quite some time to get sound and video drivers working but I did and the cabinent is quite impressive despite being very underpowered. I recently ordered a Powerleap IP3/T Slot 1 1.4ghz Processor which should help out the performance by around 50%.

I've had this machine for quite some time now so at one point or another I strapped on a Pentium II heatsink with some thermal epoxy to the graphics card and then loaded it up with ramsinks. Back then I ran Windows XP and I could actually overclock the V770D pretty significantly (using coolbits).

The problem is currently I'm running DOS with ArcadeOS (a popular frontend for MAME) as my only operating system so I can't use TNTclk (overclocking tool for my GPU). I've considered flashing the BIOS but it took me about 3 hours just to find out I couldn't use NVFlash and I needed DFLASH (special utility from Diamond) to flash my BIOS. I used RomDump to get a backup of my current BIOS but so far I haven't been able to open it with any BIOS editor because it's too old. If I can't edit the BIOS then I can't overclock my card and if I don't install Windows I can't overclock my card.

Anybody have any idea how I can overclock my GPU from DOS or an alternative method? I can't afford the overhead of running any Windows OS because the computer is so old and MAME games can be very demanding. I'd buy a better card but believe it or not the V770D is actually really good at outputting to an arcade monitor.

Thanks for your help and I love this site.

[funkgab]

tried rivatuner? i'd get something real cheap like a geforce2 or something, it probably would work better, and wanna help me with mame? only things i got working is zsnes and neorage =X

[Phatkil1er]

I've looked at RivaTuner but I can't run it out of DOS at all (or at least I don't think I can). Perhaps if there was some configuration file I could edit and then launch an executable in DOS to apply the settings.... Unfortunately I don't think such a program exists and I'm definitely not capable of making one.

I have a BartPE (bootable Windows XP) disc which I could use to boot into Windows XP and then run RivaTuner to OC my graphics but then as soon as I restart to get back into DOS mode I'd lose the OC. Perhaps I could use knoppix (bootable Linux disc).... The only way I can think of that I know would work is to install Windows 98 then boot into 98, apply the OC and then close 98 so I'm back in DOS. The only problem with that is that since this is exclusively an arcade computer I only have a 10GB HD and at least 8GB of it is currently games and the rest is the OS and mp3 files.

In conclusion, I probably won't be able to OC my graphics and I'll just have to make do for now. If the 1.4Ghz CPU I just ordered isn't enough power then I'll probably update to a Geforce 2 GTS (which I have lying around somewhere).

funkgab-
I added your AIM to my buddylist. I'm always on and I can probably help you set up MAME. Honestly though I'm still having problems myself. Although advMAME and NESticle are working perfectly ZSNES doesn't have sound. Unfortunately I ran out of HD space before I could try running Genecyst.

[funkgab]

gimmie your aim sn? and um cpu and gpu are different, also zsnes is cool has sound and you can play multiplayer!

[Phatkil1er]

hahah, yeah thanks for the pointer.

Since the 500MHz P3 in my arcade computer is probably limiting my TNT2 Ultra (which was actually a performance card for the time) I'm updating the CPU which should definitely improve my graphics performance. Once I get the 1.4GHz Celeron (on Monday) my graphics performance will probably be limited by the TNT2 Ultra which is why I want to OC it.

Believe it or not but Mars Matrix (whos only console port was on Dreamcast) plays amazingly well on a 500MHz P3 via advMAME in DOS.