AmigaOneXE High CPU

[Matt_H]

Despite all the design problems with the XE, as I recall it the AGP port is not one of them.

The main hardware issues are:
1. DMA problems with onboard IDE
2. Possibly missing onboard sound chip
3. USB problems - manufacturing error used resistors instead of caps, or vice versa. Can be worked around using a hub
4. Using both memory slots is problematic unless very precise identical DIMMs are used

If I'm remembering correctly, the one thing with the AGP slot is that you have to choose between AGP and the adjacent PCI slot - they can't be used simultaneously. But that's a "feature" and not a bug, unlike the other issues.

Caveat: I also remember that the hardware DMA fix introduced another side effect, but I can't remember what. My board is not fixed. I'm using a Radeon 9xxx in the AGP slot.

Perhaps it's worth noting that the Radeon didn't play nice with my SCSI card. The original Radeon 7000 worked fine, but as soon as I tried a 9000-series the machine wouldn't POST. It took me years to track it down to the SCSI card. Replaced that with a different model and now everything's fine. The new SCSI card isn't detected by UBoot, so I can't boot from it, but it works fine once OS4 is loaded.

[Matt_H]

I have read that where that if you use an AGP card the PCI slot is disabled.  Is there any benefit to using an AGP since it is only x2?  I have a 9200M 256MB and trying to get the most out of it.  It seems a waste of a port that you lose a port depending on what video card you buy.

Think of it this way: there are 3 PCI slots plus one video slot in the form of either PCI or AGP. I don't know which is faster.

I have 4.1FE2U Enhancer 1.5, Radeon V2.  Would it benefit me at all to buy Enhancer 2.0?  2.0 contains Radeon V3 and Warp3d.  Do programs like Emotion, DVPlayer, and various games take advantage of the new driver?  Depending on the video played in Emotion, it varies between 50% to 90%.  If I use DVPlayer, it is 70 - 100% but pretty much 100%.   I see videos on Youtube of XEs where they are outperforming my XE running a couple windows of video.   One thing I cannot do is play Emotion full screen, flip back to WB and then pull down WB and expose Emotion of the video playing.  Should I be able to?  I see that on X5000 and SAM460XE/CEs.  I thought I had it fixed once I switched my HD to DMA.

Not sure on most of this, but I do recall from installing Enhancer that there's a *lot* of extraneous eye candy that's turned on by default, which I found taxing for the XE. I turned it all off. Enhancer was definitely designed with the newer PCIe boards in mind, which are considerably faster.