Amithlon & GFX-cards: any advice?

[Ratte]

Hi Gary,

nice to see you ...

> * ATI cards work, at least the 7xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx families do. But the driver is buggy, slower than the GeForce one, and won't be developed any further. DVI is known to work on the 7000 and 7500, but seems to be broken on anything else.

Thanks for the clear statement,I asked many times on amithlon-open and didnt get any responce.

I am using a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB and DVI works perfectly.
But I have to use "vesa-modes" for bugfree screens.
If I use hw-acceleration my mouse-pointer is trashing some pixels.
But ... hey ... i repeat my self and you got this bugreport last year ... and you promised a "bugfree" kernel for end 2006.

Now I must read your statement ...

Its  up to you .. it s your time and your hobby.
But i am a little bit angry about this "late" statement.

Btw.: I still wait for the GPL Sources from 3.10 or 3.0.0t1 ... i think we can support you.

br
Andre aka Ratte

[Ratte]

Methuselas wrote:

It was a wrapper written for WinUAE that emulates 3D acceleration with Warp3d. I'm not sure how they did it, but I tested it and it worked, rather nice. Slower than dog sh!t, running Windoze *AND* UAE, but fairly impressive, nonetheless.

It won't work here, I'm sure, since the driver requires one (or something else, rather) on the Windoze side.  :-(

You need a PCI-Virge next to your AGP-Card, AGP must init FIRST (BIOS-Setting).
And some Mediator-Files.

Uncompress the Elbox archive, and choose "Install".
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
This will trash your P96 setup. So make sure you have a backup to go back to if things don't work out, or if you just want P96 back. You have been warned!

When the install is complete, quit and restart. If all went well, you will now see the Cybergraphics logo appear on the monitor connected to the Virge, and then have Workbench appear on it. Hooray! You are now running Cybergfx, and the card is fully under the control of the Elbox driver. You can do everything with it that you could do with a "real" Mediator and Virge --- define your own modes with cgxmode, run software on it, drag screens.....

.... Warp3D (without dragable screens).

[Ratte]

I understand your point of view.

So its not easy to ask you ...
.. can you "please please" remove the (forgotten) test-routines from the RV350 part?
(i hope you remember my movie with the broken graphics after screenswitching)
The RV350 pointerbug can be fixed by picasso96 settings (softsprite NON x86-p96-code)

Can I get the kernel-sources for debugging?

[Ratte]

DrBombcrater wrote:

Can I get the kernel-sources for debugging?

Yes. My snapshot of the 3.10 source seems to be broken, but I've uploaded a snapshot taken sometime between 3.00 and 3.10 here.

3.10 source will follow when I find out why it's not compiling anymore.

Thanks Gary.
But it seems to be a snapshot of a nvidia "only" upgraded kernel.
Could you please send me an link for your latest ati kernel.
And also a hint about your "forgotten" screenswitching testcode and where I can find it.

Keep up to good work.

[Ratte]

DrBombcrater wrote:

The kernel copy I'm working on right now has the experimental memory-map patch that fails on about 90% of systems, so it's pretty much useless until I get that picked out of the code.

And also a hint about your "forgotten" screenswitching testcode and where I can find it.

Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about. What screen switching code?

I reported some differences between 3.0.0t1 and 3.10 on amithlonopen (I made a movie for you)

If I switch between two different screens (DOpus -> WB) I get some elements from DOpus drawn at the WB.
You wrote to me, that this is caused by some forgotten testroutines inside 3.10.

(amithlonopen message #5824)
Re: [amithlonopen] Re: Kernel 3.10 released!

----- Original Message -----
From: rejuvenatora1000
To: amithlonopen@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 10:26 PM
Subject: [amithlonopen] Re: Kernel 3.10 released!

> The movie is showing the 800x600 screen-mode-bug, the pointer-bug,
> screen-flip-bug and
> some graphic-bugs (p96-speed).

Okay, I'll address these one-by-one :

- 800x600 16/32-bit modes can be fixed by adding the line 'Setconfig >NIL:
P96_Widthstep 1' to your startup-sequence. The root cause of this is that
modern graphics cards require a screen width divisible by 64 pixels for
hardware acceleration to work correctly, and 800 isn't divisible by 64.

- the screen-flip/screen trash and P96 problems are down to a typo in the
driver. I forgot to comment out some experimental code... oops :-)

- the pointer bug is something I've been aware of for a while, but simply
have not been able to fix.

- on 8-bit modes in general : all 8-bit screen modes have various issues
with the Radeon driver. Avoid them for now if you can (this goes for colour
depths below 8-bit, too, as they are really 8-bit screens at hardware
level).

GC

A kernel 3.11 (3.10 without testroutines) would be very nice.


br
Andre

[Ratte]

humppa wrote:

DrBombcrater wrote:
@humppa

Edit: the kernel agruments stuff is a right pain in the bum. I spent hours wondering why the FX driver was giving me a screen full of random garbage on my laptop, it turns out I typed 'video=riva:640x480, flatpanel=1' instead of 'video=riva:640x480,flatpanel=1'.

Just adding one space caused the flatpanel argument to be ignored...

Btw, I didn't know that you can even display GFX card mem and AGP aperture size from Amithlon: "xcat /proc/mtrr".
Don't know if that could be used for anything, e.g. relocating the AGP-area to circumvent the 1GB limit. Bah, I'm talking out of my butt again.  :-P

It would help some people (including me) a lot, if we collect all known arguments, commands, processes together.

xcat /proc/mtrr
xcat /proc/pci
xcat /proc/ide/via
xcat /proc/cpuinfo
...

[Ratte]

Shadowolf wrote:
Too bad that it's not that the 6600GT is fried...

My wife went to bed early now and I just could
remove the 5900XT from her PC for a little test:


| Resolution....: 1024 x 768 x 24         |
| Depth/Colors..: 16777216 colors         |
| Testlength....: 13                      |
.============= SPEEDRESULTS ==============.
| GF4200TI                          | GF5900XT
| RectFill()..........    3818 op/s |    4676 op/s
| RectFill() Pattern..     651 op/s |     635 op/s
| WritePixel()........ 1658235 op/s | 1477204 op/s
| WriteChunkyPixels().    5964 op/s |    5956 op/s
| WritePixelArray8()..    5972 op/s |    5960 op/s
| WritePixelLine8()...  122431 op/s |  119790 op/s
| DrawEllipse().......   66897 op/s |   62853 op/s
| DrawCircle()........   66385 op/s |   62325 op/s
| Draw()..............   17519 op/s |   17418 op/s
| Draw() Hor/Ver......   43759 op/s |   55315 op/s
| ScrollRaster() X....     365 op/s |     522 op/s
| ScrollRaster() Y....     368 op/s |     526 op/s
| PutText()...........   28155 op/s |   27965 op/s
| BlitBitMap()........   23365 op/s |   26780 op/s
| BlitBitMapRastPort()   21985 op/s |   25180 op/s
| BitMapScale().......     810 op/s |     823 op/s


Now this really looks good compared to the TI4200.
So the top card to get for Amithlon now should be
some FX5900 based one - and I just got one
for me on EBay.  :-D

And while it still has a fan at least the 5900XT
we already have is a lot less noisy than the TI4200.

Have fun - Shadowolf

Radeon9800Pro 128MB / Kernel 3.0.0t1

I used 640x480 8Bit to compare it with A4000 sample benchmarks and so on ..

[Ratte]

humppa wrote:

It would help some people (including me) a lot, if we collect all known arguments, commands, processes together.
xcat /proc/mtrrxcat
/proc/pcixcat
/proc/ide/viaxcat
/proc/cpuinfo

Have a look here:

Link

You can find descriptions to these commands on many Linux-sites. Only problem is that they do not always apply to the (relatively old) Linux-kernel that Amithlon is using.

Any idea, what these commands are for:

"direct_access.c"

and how to edit it in a usefull way ...?

---

i4fff0000

nb 3=13 % serial
nb 4=13 % serial
nb 7=13 % parallel

nb 1=5 % keyboard
nb 12=5 % mouse
#nb 14=3 % IDE
#nb 15=3 % IDE

# N 5=3 % The CVPPC

# THIS IS FOR THE PCI PERMEDIA2
# mef000000:00020000=ef000000
# mee800000:00800000=e0800000
# mee000000:00800000=e0000000

#
L 00f00000:/newdisk/uaefiles/0xf00000.bin
L 00f10000:/newdisk/uaefiles/0xf10000.bin
L 00f11000:/newdisk/uaefiles/0xf11000.bin
L 00f12000:/newdisk/uaefiles/0xf12000.bin
#L 00f13000:/newdisk/uaefiles/0xf13000.bin
L 00f20000:/newdisk/uaefiles/uaehard.img
#L 00f21000:/newdisk/uaefiles/uaesana.img
L 0xf40000:/newdisk/uaefiles/fat95
L 0xf60000:/newdisk/uaefiles/links
L 00f80000:/newdisk/uaefiles/shape.rom
#L 00f10000:/newdisk/uaefiles/myrom.img

[Ratte]

Athlon 2600+ Radeon9800Pro 128MB
32Bit (24Bit not supported)

Code: [Select]


| GFX system....: Picasso96               |
| Resolution....: 1024 x 768 x 32         |
| Depth/Colors..: 16777216 colors         |
| Testlength....: 13                      |

.============= SPEEDRESULTS ==============.
| RectFill()................  13368 op/s  |
| RectFill() Pattern........    586 op/s  |
| WritePixel().............. 2315206 op/s |
| WriteChunkyPixels().......   5185 op/s  |
| WritePixelArray8()........   5188 op/s  |
| WritePixelLine8()......... 140083 op/s  |
| DrawEllipse().............  51293 op/s  |
| DrawCircle()..............  49933 op/s  |
| Draw()....................  58497 op/s  |
| Draw() Hor/Ver............  83084 op/s  |
| ScrollRaster() X..........   1570 op/s  |
| ScrollRaster() Y..........   1439 op/s  |
| PutText().................  29608 op/s  |
| BlitBitMap()..............    690 op/s  |
| BlitBitMapRastPort()......    688 op/s  |
| BitMapScale().............    485 op/s  |

[/font]

[Ratte]

I also own an GF3Ti500 64MB and in most functions it is faster compared to the Radeon.
But I have to use a CRT with the GF3, because my TFT isn´t working on GF-DVI and Amithlon.