It's true that the framerate was never particularly high in Screamer 2. Certainly, it never achieved the 60fps gold standard of arcade racers. However, it shouldn't be so bad that you find the game unresponsive. I have two suggestions which might help.

Firstly, if you use the 3dfx mode - recommended due to the improved graphics - try adjusting the dosbox_screamer2_3dfx.conf file, setting lfb=write. Gulikoza - the man behind 3dfx support in DOSBox - states that this achieves the best performance [1]. I have contacted GOG.com requesting that they change the default setting in a future version of the bundle.

Secondly, if you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, try setting the properties for the bundled dosbox.exe application so that Desktop Composition is disabled. Why do this, one might ask? Disabling desktop composition helps to reduce input lag, which can be as high as 3 frames otherwise [2]. Note that Microsoft have removed support for doing this entirely in WIndows 8 [3].

Incidentally, I never had a real 3dfx back in the day and used to use software rendering. I got the best performance on a rig equipped with a Diamond Stealth video card, even though the CPU was a relatively weak Cyrix 6x86 processor. I think this was due to the VRAM performance. Even then, I had to use a DOS tool to enable write combining for the region into which the linear frame buffer was mapped. Ah, those were the days.

[1] http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/glide.html
[2] http://www.ouma.jp/ootake/delay-win7vista.html
[3] http://byuu.org/higan/user-guide/

Not sure what could be the problem, Screamer has very arcade controls (best played with keyboard) and was a lot like the original Ridge Racer for the PSX.
The original Gran Turismo also only played on a steady 25fps.

Hi there! Changing the setting lfb=write in the 3dfx dosbox configuration file does wonders as far as framerate goes.
Also don't forget to download the new version of Nglide the 3dfx emulation wrapper used in the GoG version.In the GoG version the Nglide version is the old 1.00 where now the 1.02 has been released.With a good i5/i7 and a good 3d card you can easily play the game at 60+ fps .On my pc with a 770 windforce gtx nvidia and a old C2Duo extreme i played at 1080p and full 16x aa and af at 55-65 fps depending if there were other cars on screen.

Also remember to set the sensitivity if you use a controller or a steering wheel to high -Also remember to change the setting of joystick in the dosbox configuration to 4axis if you want to use a steering wheel.Also do not forget to change the sensitivity and reduce the wheel range in the wheel profiler(depending what steering wheel you use).

I found the above little tricks improved the gameplay and control by a tenfold,through to be honest the game is simply too hard,there are still a lot of artifacts on the road viewable(probably the 3dfx emulation is not perfect ) and the game simply has not aged as well as the original has.I mean some tracks are simply kick-ass after 18 years like california/california at night,sweden and england but tracks like Egypt ,columbia,sweden and worse of all the horrible tunnel really feel 18 years old...

In any case its still a lot of fun picking the radiance(the rwd car) and playing through the nice tracks a few times.

I was experiencing some pretty choppy gameplay. I tried everything and then read this thread here. Changing the 3dfx config so it now says: "lfb=write is" an absolute miracle cure! It now runs smooth as butter. Thanks for posting that, kerframil.
I actually had the latest Nglide version lying around on my PC. Thanks for reminding me to try that also, nicolascy. I'm sure that contributed to it's smooth running too; it definitely didn't hurt the game :)