QEMU Wine-6.0.2 with Iris Xe Graphics -- The Ultimate Windows 98 Virtual Machine in 20W TDP
13A year-in-review video specifically made to showcase how far virtualization and 3D acceleration pass-through had progressed and the stunning 3D performance made possible for good old Windows games on modern platforms. Last year, similar video was published with AMD FX-8320 and NVIDIA Geforce GT730, a 95W CPU and 40W dGPU in desktop form-factor. Though the performance delivered was outstanding at the time, achieving those scores with desktop CPU & dGPU was truly short of sensational. I lost track of which Wine version of WineD3D was used back then but WineD3D at the time didn't do quite well on laptops iGPU/APU especially with lower version of DirectX APIs in 3DMark 99 MAX (Direct3D 6.1) and 3DMark 2000 (Direct3D 7.0). Frankly I did not expect Wine would improve lower version of DirectX APIs compared to the state-of-the-art DirectX 11/12 level APIs as Wine development model has always striven for being parity with modern Windows.
Wine-6.0.2 offered a great deal of surprise. It fixed the performance issues with 3DMark 99 & 2000 for laptops iGPU/APU, basically GPU with UMA. The improvement was significant and reflected across the board for both Intel iGPU and AMD APU in laptops including the aging HD Graphics GT2 in Haswell and Skylake. Unfortunately, Wine-6.0.2 also regressed in D3D8 performance in 3DMark 2001 SE. Except for Game 4 Nature, all 3 other Games had a significant drop in FPS. Fortunately for QEMU, this is not an issue at all. Unlike Wine on Linux, the advantage of having WineD3D as per-game user-space libraries instead of system libraries allows different WIneD3D version to be used for games easily and seamlessly. One just picks the best WineD3D version for any specific games. The concept was demonstrated in this video to keep WineD3D of Wine-5.0.5 for 3DMark 2001 SE for attaining the best scores across 3DMark 99, 2000 & 2001 and the bragging rights to the Ultimate Windows 98 Virtual Machine for retro Windows games, yeah! Real-time screen recording could have impacted real performance as high as 40% loss. So prior runs of 3DMarks were screenshot to show the real scores without screen recording.
Well, I absolutely loves competition in bringing on virtualization for games. However, with major players completely dropping support for Win98/ME virtual machine, I hereby, shamelessly claimed the **The World's Highest 3D Performance Windows 98 Virtual Machine on QEMU** by a hobbyist.
I believe the 3DMarks scores would even outshine any so-called "Ultimate Windows 98 builds" popular among the VOGONS-ers. Sure, many would value the build experience and there is nothing wrong with that. But for playing good old games, why on earth would anyone even bother which Voodoo/Geforce/Radeon to go with the build. Even the lowest rank contemporary Intel iGPU beats out the best one can scout for used junks from E-Bay without punching a hole in one's bank saving in today's inflated price for used, yester-years GPUs.
Oh and lastly, let congratulate "the other camp" for rising from the grave with reinforcement of new maintainer. I wish the project all the best and hope it would reach ground-breaking break-through in PC emulation for "everything ought to be done in software for longevity". Perhaps with Apple Silicon fueling the competition in CPU performance, software emulation may have a chance. Looking forward in excitement to see "the other camp" showcasing 3DMark2001 SE rendering in Windows 98 with CPU emulation. It would be a wonder to see GPU pixel shaders realized in pure CPU software through the muscles of threading/SIMDs/AVXs.
"Any pass-through/virtualization evangelism would be massively missing the point and often introduce variables of stability and bloat that won't hold in the long term" (TM)
http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=15196#p15196
Thanks for the trademarked joke .... from "the other camp" fanboy. A laugh a day keeps doctors away. Those similar in my age will need it.