Indepth Glide Wrapper Comparison
by F.D.B.K.
Love Malmquist
Axion Man
Rolf


STB nVIDIA TNTATI Rage Pro 3dAti Rage 128Riva 128
FEEDBACKLove MalmquistAxion ManRolf


Since I do not use my ATI Rage Pro card anymore I just update the TNT section. Love Malmquist does the ATI Rage section and Axion Man does the Ati Rage 128 sectiom. Rolf's done his section on the Riva 128 card.

I have changed cards twice now and really see the difference between the two (three, actually) cards. There are a variety of Glide Wrappers now and it really becomes hard to distinguish which is best for you, as an older version of a wrapper might work better than a newer version and vice versa. The cards I use for this survey are a:-
  • STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb (the best buy I made!)
  • and an ATI Rage Pro 8mb

All in all I think all the wrapper author's deserve credit because each wrapper is unique in it own way... (even though some were made from the Let Glide source. :-). Also, if you do not own a 3D accelerated card.... (like the S3 Trio 64+ that I chucked out) then there's no point in trying to use a glide wrapper. I would also recommend that your card has more than 2mb ram. This is my hardware config:-

  • Pentium 2 450Mhz
  • Windows 98
  • TBS Montengo II 3D 64bit Sound
  • STB nVIDIA TNT (RIVA TNT) 16mb SDRAM with latest drivers(0.48)
  • ATI Rage Pro 8Mb with latest Non-Beta drivers.

Enough now! On To the Comparisons:-

  1. XGL200.01a
  2. XGL200.02g
  3. GlČide Rev A, B, C
  4. OpenGlide
  5. Clide 2.2
XGL200.01a
Card Drivers Results
STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb Vendor supplied 4.0 This wrapper was the first wrapper I tried after XGlide. I found the difference amazing. You could actually see Mario and his face wasn't all black either. The head at the start of Mario 64 was black however. You could see the castle and the game ran at about 25 fps although I'm not too sure.

Crusin USA actually started with XGL! and didnt hang at startup. The windows of the cars were transparent and whenever you bump into another car the screen suddenly turned blue and green and went back to UltraHLE and when you tried to start Crusin USA again UltraHLE would exit. The crashing bug was fixed, however in a later version of XGL. It ran usually at 6.0fps

I finally got down to getting Zelda 64. This wrapper ran somewhat like the latest version with some minor graphic gitches. Something unsual was the sound skips in the beginning of the game when you see Link riding on the horse. I got text with this wrapper and minor performance decrease on things such as moving platforms (Jabu-Jabu's belly) as well as when jumping into the water, diving and playing the Ocarina. The sun bug was actually a bug with ultraHLE and Not with XGL.... Leplebian@usa.net (He didn't say his name) confirmed this as he uses UltraHLE with a Voodoo 2 and he still gets the same Sun glitch. When you look up at the sun or when the sun is setting you can see two suns instead of one.

I decided to get Mario Kart as well. All I could say is that it was near perfect.

STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb nVIDIA's 0.48 latest drivers There was not much of a difference between the two drivers in Mario 64, but Crusin USA ran at 12fps... A small performace difference but made the game more playable. The game still crashed when you hit another car however.
ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Latest non beta drivers This worked great with Mario 64! The edges of the water looked better than before. The face at startup wasn't black either. However, somehow this wrapper gave Mario long sideburns and you couldnt see the yellow (gold?) buttons on him. The game worked at about 20fps, but I'm not too sure about this either. You could hear Mario and could hear the sound which skipped quite often.

Crusin USA worked with the usual bugs, crashing when bumping in to another car, seeing through the windows which were transparent, It ran at about 5,6 and even 7fps (sometimes). The sound however, didnt skip at all and if it did it was probably infrequent.


This wrapper is old now and you cant get it anymore (you wouldnt want to get it anymore), but it is the Only wrapper of Scotts that gave me Mario with the correct face on the ATI. The latest version of Scotts wrapper, which is also reviewed here , also work great on the ATI Rage Pro cards as well as Riva TNT's.

XGL200 0.02g
Card Drivers Results
ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Latest Non Beta drivers This is an excellent wrapper for ATI Rage chipsets. Mario looks perfect and there is a huge performance increase between this wrapper and the old version 0.1a. Mario's face is black now, but you can still twist it. The water is sometimes transparent. Especially in the moat aroung the castle when you change view. You still can't hear the Princess' voice at the start.

Crusin Usa crashes less and the music dosent skip! at an odd 20 fps. Some parts of the cars don't show up like they do in GlČide. You can also see the text in Zelda. This version comes with a confguration utility and supports a variety of cards although it works best on a G200. In my humble opinion, ATI users would get the best out of XGL200 0.2e. The speed and graphics are better and sound skips less. I get Mario 64 at 25fps on 0.02e.
ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Beta OpenGL drivers The beta OpenGL drivers dont make much of a difference. At least they didnt on my Rage Pro. The face at startup on Mario 64 was not just black but blackish red, white etc. So I play Mario 64 with the beta OpenGL drivers. The drivers dont make much of a difference on other games, but maybe a small performance increase on Zelda 64, or so I heard.
STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb nVIDIA's latest 0.48 drivers This is the best wrapper in my opinion for RIVA TNT users. Although the TNT users have a variety of options, XGL200 0.2e gives me about 35fps with Excellent graphics. The water is transparent (I just love transparent water in Mario 64) and Mario looks perfect. The sound, still skips, but not so often.

Crusin USA now runs at 29fps and graphics are excellent too. It dosent crash with this wrapper. Riva 128 users, though might have to use Clide instead for XGL200 0.2e.

This wrapper worked great with both Zelda 64 and Mario Kart. Mario Kart had no problems/ glitches and was near perfect. Zelda had some sound skips when entering a town. WCW / nWo Nitro didn't work at all.


This wrapper is best for ATI users and it works great on my TNT, Rage 128 and Riva 128. It has good graphic qualtiy and stable (at least 25fps) speed. ATI users will get the best results with this wrapper with or with-out beta drivers. Scott has put a lot of effort into this wrapper and it looks like a shoo in for the best wrapper. No other wrapper is more compatible over such a variety of cards. If you havent used a wrapper before try this one first (comes with a GUI - configuration utility).

GlČide Rev A, B, C
Card Drivers Results
STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb Latest nVIDIA drivers (OpenGL is included) 0.48 This wrapper worked well on my TNT with small graphic glitches like in Mario's face. It wasn't black this time, but looked like it was running in Software mode. (Didn't have 3d effect like the one in XGL200 0.02e) Mario with the metal cap looked different too. The castle textures sometimes blinked and looked quite uneven, yet when you looked up at them (C^) they looked ok.

Performance with this wrapper was quite fast with 22 - 24fps and most games, Zelda, Crusin USA were playable. It worked well with all combinations on the TNT and I think you get better performance with this on Rage 128, but Riva 128 users might find this wrapper slow, depending on their machine and drivers.

Crusin USA runs at 25fps and graphical quality is good but crashes when you bump into another car. It dosent crash often this wrapper, though. Riva 128 users, though might have to use Clide or instead for GlČide.

ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Latest Non Beta drivers GlČide is EXTREMELY slow on ATI Rage Pro chipsets with the non beta drivers. It runs at about 2-6fps. Not playable and Definately NOT the choice for ATI Rage owners. The graphic quality is excellent with transparent water. Something the ATI owners have never experienced yet, as none of the wrappers show transparent water. Some RIVA 128 owners on the forums told me that GlČide was slow for them as well and they used Clide because of the less sound skips and the faster game play.
ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Beta OpenGl ICD drivers The ATI on my P2 450Mhz gave me 16-20fps on Mario 64. The graphic quality... (rather like no quality at all) was hopeless. ATI Rage Pro has a long way to go in OpenGL. I do not know of the Rage 128's results with GlČide.

Crusin' USA was one game I enjoyed playing with the beta drivers as I didnt mind the graphics, I just wanted to finish the game... (which I didn't). The beta drivers suck with GlČide and are not worth getting.


The ATI owners should forget about GlČide for now. At least until they get a better OpenGL ICD driver. The RIVA TNT owners: This is quite a good wrapper for you. Give it a shot before trying the others. I am also trying to follow the developments of this wrapper closely. By the way: I just enable all options in GlČideconfig.exe Except for the Goldeneye fix.

OpenGlide
Card Drivers Results
ATI Rage Pro 8mb Latest Non Beta Drivers I tried using ATI's GLQuake driver, but this wrapper still wouldn't run. ATI still has to work on the ATI OpenGL driver as games as well require OpenGL and the ATI Rage Pro owners might have to try to use Direct3D(if the GL Quake drivers don't work). Hopefully ATI will continue to work on ATI GL drivers and not just on ATI Rage 128 chipset drivers, as the 3D Rage Pro is currently more popular because several systems come with an ATI in their hardware config.
ATI Rage Pro 8mb Beta OpenGL driver This worked as bad as GlČide with ATI Rage Pro. The colors were messed up. Mario 64 title did not show. (You could only see the 64). The textures and polygons were screwed up and you could see through walls and Mario would be seen 2 steps from his position. I didnt bother testing any other games. This was the time period when I had Goldeneye. By the way - Goldeneye only worked with GlČide Rev. C.
STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb nVIDIA's latest 0.48 drivers The OpenGlide wrapper worked on the RIVA TNT with a few color glitches and pallete problems. Otherwise it ran well at an even 20fps. The color glitch was in Mario when he jumped up his head had transparent dots (very tiny ones though). Has anyone else had this problem?

OpenGlide has yet to mature and has considerable progress. I have not tried the latest version yet, but someone told me that it worked at 25fps on his Riva 128. I cannot confirm this though.


I tried using th GL Quake drivers with ATI. Still no luck. The only success I had with the GL Quake drivers was running Quake 2 with default OpenGL in 16 bits. This uses OpenGL and again, the ATI Rage users are left out unfortunately.

Clide 2.2
Card Drivers Results
STB nVIDIA TNT 16Mb Latest nVIDIA drivers (OpenGL is included) 0.48 This wrapper worked fast on the TNT with Crusin USA. The music played smoothly at 24fps and the cars ran fast as well. It made the game playable for once. The graphic quality wasn't as good as GlČide though. I used this to get 21 stars in Mario is a short time.

Had some minor performance increase (speed again) and about 29 even fps with Zelda 64. There were a few texture glitches and transparency problems but that was basicly all. However Zelda was playable on all wrappers at a reasonable fps rate, although it was generally faster with Clide.
ATI Rage Pro 8Mb Latest Non Beta drivers Being a Glide to D3D wrapper it will work without the Beta OpenGL drivers. The performance on my ATI was the same with or without OpenGL drivers. Except the OpenGL drivers made it faster and there wer some graphical bugs/glitches. This wrapper worked on Crusin USA, but the bug with the cars crashing and the screen displaying weird colors still existed and came up quite often.

Clide is another option for ATI users although it dosent have the graphical qualtiy that XGL200 0.02x delivers on the ATI chipset.


Clide is another wrapper that I want to follow the development of closely. It is extremely fast. I once got 30+fps on Mario 64 with minimal sound skipping. It is worth a look to see whether it works as fast, as it did for me. Rage 128 users would get better performance (just speed actually) with this wrapper, than with GlČide.


Card w/ Drivers 1st Best Wrapper 2nd Best Wrapper
ATI w/ Non Beta Drivers XGL200 0.2g Clide 2.2
ATI with Beta OpenGL XGL200 0.2g XGlide 0.3a
STB nVIDIA TNT XGL200 0.2g GlČide

Email me with any requests, suggestions, comments, criticism etc.

Thanks,
Glen Fernandes (FDBK) lamer from New Zealand.



by F.D.B.K

Glen Fernandes
6-April-1999

 

Love Malmqvist´s section

 

Phew. Finally the testing is complete. The card I have used is an ATI Xpert98 with 8 Mb RAM. During testing I have focused mainly on the OpenGl driver, and it proved not to make much of a difference in performance and image quality when I switched to the factory default driver. The rest of the hardware used is :

  • Pentium II 350Mhz
  • Windows 98
  • Cheap A3D soundcard
  • 64 Mb SDRAM

And the emulator is, of course, UltraHLE with ini file rev. 10.

 

 

Using ATI´s beta OpenGl driver

 

XGlide 200.01a

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 13-18 fps

The wrapper can not handle certain texture effects, as for example the smoke in the witch´s room. It also drops textures during animations. Sound skips are infrequent.

Mario 64 15-20 fps Peach´s intro voice is distorded, and minor texture seams appear. Few in-game soundskips.
Zelda 64 12-17 fps

Major texture loss and no readable text. In-game sound skips were small however.

No available settings. This is an old wrapper, used mainly for comparision.

 

XGlide 200.02e

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 14-18 fps

Some texture loss appears. Minor texture seams and nearly no sound skip.

Mario 64 15-20 fps Mario´s intro head looks normal. Peach´s voice is not hearable. Some texture seams appear and noticeable sound skips occur.
Zelda 64 10-20 fps

The horse´s kneecaps appear as they should. No text however, and noticeable soundskips.

A usable wrapper for Ati Rage Pro owners. Settings : Rage pro def., triple buffering, real-time priority.

 

XGlide 200.02f

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 14-20 fps

Noticeable texture loss, minor texture seams and nearly no sound skips.

Mario 64 12-18 fps Normal intro head, Peach´s voice unhearable. Some texture seams appear, and there are noticeable soundskips.
Zelda 64 10-20 fps

The horse has kneecaps. Bad text when using standard settings. When 'Ati text fix' is checked, the text appears as it should. Noticeable soundskips.

Another usable wrapper for Ati Rage Pro owners. Settings : Rage pro def., triple buffering, real-time priority.

 

MGlide 1.246D

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 13-18 fps

Can not handle smoke effects. Very minor texture loss and nearly no sound skip.

Mario 64 12-18 fps Bad eyes,but intro head looks good. Peach´s voice is unhearable and some texture faults occur. Noticeable soundskips.
Zelda 64 12-18 fps

Horse´s kneecaps missing. Bad textures, no text and noticeable soundskips.

Seems a bit sluggish and may not be the primary choice. Settings : D3D-HAL, full screen.

 

Clide 2.2

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 15-20 fps

Minor texture loss, visible texture seams but nearly no sound skips.

Mario 64 20-25 fps Black intro head, no eye whites, Peach voice is clearly hearable. Visible texture seams and nearly no sound skips.
Zelda 64 10-20 fps

Horse has no kneecaps, good text but noticeable soundskips.

Great performance, and may be the choice wrapper for Rage Pro owners. Settings : 16-bit buffer, 16-bit color depth, single buffer.

 

Conclusion:

For best visual experience, use XGlide 200.02e or f. For best performance, use Clide 2.2.

 

Using standard 82440 driver

 

XGlide 200.01a

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 13-18 fps

Same as with OpenGl driver.

Mario 64 15-20 fps Same as with OpenGl driver.
Zelda 64 10-15 fps

Somewhat slower.

No available settings. This is an old wrapper, used mainly for comparision.

 

XGlide 200.02f

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 14-20 fps

Same as with OpenGl driver.

Mario 64 12-18 fps Same as with OpenGl driver.
Zelda 64 10-20 fps

Text works even when 'Ati text fix' is unchecked.

Another usable wrapper for Ati Rage Pro owners. Settings : Rage pro def., triple buffering, real-time priority.

 

Clide 2.2

Rom Speed Results
Banjo/Kazooie 15-20 fps

Same as with OpenGl driver.

Mario 64 18-23 fps Somewhat slower than with OpenGl driver.
Zelda 64 12-17 fps

Somewhat slower than with OpenGl driver.

Great performance, and may be the choice wrapper for Rage Pro owners. Settings : 16-bit buffer, 16-bit color depth, single buffer.

 

It seems as if the texture seams were less of a problem with the 82440 driver. Small performance decrease, otherwise there were no difference between the used drivers.

Love Malmqvist
6-April-1999

Axion Man's section on the ATI 128 Chipset

Hardware Configuration:-

Pentium II 350mhz
64mb Ram
ATI 128 with latest ATI Drivers
Crap Sound Blaster
DirectX 6.1

XGL200 0.02h
XGlide 0.1.4
XGL200 0.02g
MGlide_1_2_46E
Gl2ide Rev. C

XGL200 0.02f

This Wrapper has its ups and downs, Mario 64 quality has dropped incredibly with a speed decrease and several new graphical glitches. On the other hand, Goldeneye has improved 100% and now has excellent graphics and great speed increase. Goldeneye runs at around 25-30fps, and Zelda about 25fps. In Zelda Graphics have improved, but menu text is still unreadable. Overall a small improvement from previous version, but according to www.glideunderground.com it has more compatibility which unfortunately i cannot test. 8.5/10 for this one.

XGlide 0.1.4

Much Improved Wrapper from Previous Versions, but still not as good a quality as other wrappers. It Runs Mario at around 17-22fps, which is easily playable. There are still several graphic glitches involving text, and The Castle. Zelda and Goldeneye both run at around 15-20 fps nearly flawlessly. The Concrete in Goldeneye is blue, but not really noticeable. The sound quality is excellent in Goldeneye, and fair in Zelda. Overall i would give it a 6/10

XGL 200 0.02g

Good Speed increases from the previous version, but not vastly different. Xgl200_0.02f was the first wrapper for me to actually give the correct colour for the concrete in Goldeneye, and now this has switched back to blue again. it runs Mario at around 25fps with less sound skipping and fixes many text problems. Zelda runs a little slower than in previous version (around 20fps) but has improved graphics. I would rate it 8/10

MGlide_1_246E

I wouldn't Reccomend this for UltraHLE as there are two many graphical Glitches and make it hard to play the games. Mario And Zelda both have very poor sound. Mario's face has black spots and the river around the castle has many glitches. Zelda has no menu options and cannot be started unless u know where to press the button. Goldeneye gets to the Title then runs at 1fps. This is a quality Wrapper for games other than UltraHLE, but is not worth using for UltraHLE. Overall i would give it a 1/10 because it can run Mario 64.

Gl2ide Rev C

What can i say, but OUCH!! This Wrapper Has quality Graphics, but is completely unplayable. It runs games at around 1-3fps and has grunts for sounds due to its slowness. I highly recommend NOT using this Wrapper, unless u have a PIII 1000mhz.

Axion Man's Conclusion

Overall I would have to say that Xgl200_0.02f is the best wrapper around. It has quality graphics and speed, and seems to fix the most graphical glitches. The Sound in Goldeneye is Good, and Zelda and Mario Sound are fair. i would Rate Xgl200_0.02f 9/10 (you have to leave some room for improvement).

aXioN_mAn
6-April-1999

Rolf's Riva 128 section

Introduction

 This is a comparison of various Glide Wrappers for UltraHLE on a nVidia Riva 128. The Riva 128 is a marvelous chipset, it is the most value card at its time, considering the price vs. performance. Despite performing in Glide, Riva 128 is way better than 3dfx's Voodoo1 in Direct 3D and OpenGL.

Riva 128 is a OpenGL card. nVidia done a good job on creating its OpenGL ICD. Even the Riva TNT uses the ICD from Riva 128. So, I recommend OpenGL Wrappers.

Riva 128 cards are identical. This means that you can buy a card from one vendor, then flash it with another vendor's BIOS. This, however, is done at your own risk and will void your warranty.

These are just my results, your results might differ. Yeah right….

Testing Environment

Hardware:-

CPU: Intel Celeron 300A, overclocked to 504 ( 112 x 4.5 )
RAM: PC100 128MB SDRAM
Video Card: ASUS 3dExplorer (Riva 128)
HDD: Quantum Fireball EL 5.1GB
Sound Card: Vibra16 ( SB16 ISA)
Joypad: Microsoft Sidewinder Pad

** I experience sound skip in every game, I heard this is due to the less L2 cache of the Intel Celeron, 128 KB as opposed to Pentium II’s 512KB.

Software:-

Emulator: UltraHLE v1.0.0, ini: V1.0.14
Emulator Accessories: UltraHLP v2.31, UltraHLE Control Panel v1.4
OS: Windows 98, Direct X 6.1, IE 5 (no integration, but got shell enhancement, according to MS)
Background: Norton Anti Virus 5
Video Card Driver: nVidia reference driver 4.11.01.0322 “Detonator” Feb/1999

Emulation

Resolution: 640 x 480
Desktop: 800 x 600, 16 Bit Color
Joypad: Enabled

Benchmark Games

(in this order)

  • Super Mario 64 (US)

Run face demo + the demo where Mario throws the monster of the edge (forgot name)

  • Zelda 64 (US)

Run demo of Link riding horse, until he was shot by magic

  • Starfox 64 (US)

Run demo until the title screen appears

Wrappers:-

(in this order, warm booted after finishing 1 wrapper

  • GlidGL64. 1b
  • Xglide 014A (990319)
  • XGl200 0.02h
  • Gl2ide A3 + the controller in C

Results:-

** I did not play any of the games using some of the wrapper, just looking at the demos. I’ve played the emulator on a Voodoo 2 before, so I know what it suppose to look like.

GlidGL64. 1b (OpenGL)

Super mario 64 - Everything is smooth, great image quality, but slow on the face demo, about normal in the monster demo.

Zelda64 - Good image quality, texture seems to be slow to appear.

Starfox - good image quality, slowdown when there are lots of stuff on screen.

Comments: Best quality wrapper, unfortunately, it is too slow. In the readme file, the author says that he developed and tested this wrapper on a Viper 330 (Riva 128). He/she also says that the face demo of mario was done in software rendering, so it might be the reason of the slowdowns.

Problems: I have no idea how to switch it to full screen. and the “esc” key don’t work to exit the game, need to use ctrl + alt + del. But then , the wrapper still refuse to close, so need a warm boot.

Conclusion: Not recommended for playing, good for viewing only. Image quality as close to Voodoo2.

Xglide 014A (990319) (Direct 3D)

Super mario 64 - Black face in the face demo, some layer errors (objects that are supposed to be at the back was displayed in front). Some texture is missing. Speed acceptable, playable.

Zelda 64 - Layer errors, some texture messed up, speed acceptable and playable.

Starfox - 2d text distorted. Some layer glitches, speed acceptable and playable.

Conclusion: Not recommended for anything, but is good for comparison for yourself.

XGl200 0.02h (Direct 3D)

Super Mario 64 - As above.

Zelda 64 - As above

Starfox- As above

Conclusion: As above

Gl2ide A3 + the controller in C (OpenGL)

Super mario 64 - a bit layer glitches in the face demo (the eyes), some very minor glitches in the layers, speed almost identical to voodoo 2 and very playable.

Zelda 64 - little glitches on layers, speed as above.

Starfox - little glitches on layers, speed as above.

Conclusion: Use this one if you have a Riva 128, too bad the author says A3 is the last release.

Final Word

These are the best performing wrappers downloaded from glide underground, I did try other wrappers, none of their quality + performance is any better then the above.

However, only OpenGL wrappers manage to get mario’s face in mario’s demo, all Direct 3D wrapper show a black head in 3D.

For future use, get a OpenGL wrapper for Riva 128, Riva 128’s OpenGL is far superior than its own D3D, trust me, I tried it on many PC games that have both D3D and OpenGL. Eg. Half-Life.

Rolf
6-April-1999

All trademarks and copyrights owned by their respective companies.