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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: MarkAshley on November 12, 2005, 11:03:04 AM
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Sorry if this is a stupid question :-)
I'm using an A1200 with a Blizzard 1240, Mediator and Voodoo 3000. I've got a hi-res wallpaper but it takes ages to load it. Also my icons take a long time to appear when I open a drawer. I have downloaded Exoticons for my WHDLoad installed games and they take even longer to load.
I'm guessing this is because I have a middle of the road processor, but I thought the Voodoo would help. Is there any way of improving the performance of Workbench with this setup?
Thanks
Mark
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I have the same issue on my Cybervision64. There is one solution that works fine for me - using a simple color palette with a monochrome bacground (I use that nice Amiga Forever boingball background).
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Heh, I didn't spend £150 on a Mediator and Voodoo so I could have a monochrome backdrop :lol:
I seem to remember this happening before when I had my A1200 with AteoBus+Pixel64 graphics card. The desire to have a beautiful wallpaper with amazing looking icons was soon replaced by a desire to have drawers that open in less than a minute :roll:
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MarkAshley wrote:
Heh, I didn't spend £150 on a Mediator and Voodoo so I could have a monochrome backdrop :lol:
I must agree with that... :-D
You said what is your CPU speed?
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Blizzard 1240@33. Thinking of overclocking it to 40 but I'm scared :-) and would it make a significant difference to Workbench performance if I did this?
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Updating the datatypes might help speedup backdrop rendering, especially with the warp datatype system for max speed as apposed to the junk that comes with os35/39.
Unfortunalty mediator coupled with the equally slow p96 doesnt help matters. cgxv4 would have been much better to support, but because p96 was easier for elbox to simply bundle at no cost to them, it got the drivers instead :/
icons / backdrops and just about everything was faster under cgx and bvision Also ppc helps no end for speedy backdrop rendering if nothing else ;)
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Mad-Matt wrote:
Updating the datatypes might help speedup backdrop rendering, especially with the warp datatype system for max speed as apposed to the junk that comes with os35/39.
I thought anything with "Warp" in the title was PPC only... I take it the Warp datatypes are optimised also for 68040 then?
Mad-Matt wrote:
Unfortunalty mediator coupled with the equally slow p96 doesnt help matters. cgxv4 would have been much better to support, but because p96 was easier for elbox to simply bundle at no cost to them, it got the drivers instead :/
No chance to get CGX working with a Mediator then, even if I buy it?
Mad-Matt wrote:
icons / backdrops and just about everything was faster under cgx and bvision Also ppc helps no end for speedy backdrop rendering if nothing else ;)
Would be great if I could afford a bvision :-(
Thanks
Mark
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There is a free cgxv3 driver , but doesnt have as much hadware acceleration as v4 :( with the bvision, youd also need the ppc card :|
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MarkAshley wrote:
I thought anything with "Warp" in the title was PPC only...
And how about WarpEngine? It sure isn't PPC... :roflmao:
Sorry, I couldn't resist... :-D
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@MarkAshley
The WarpDT picture datatypes is for 68k CPU's also
from '020 or '030 and up
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Is the speed increase significant with WarpDT?
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Not significant but very noticeable.
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To speed up background images on 3.x on 680x0
1) make sure you choose a nice easy to decode format, eg IFF, PNG etc.
2) make sure that if your datatype supports dithering (such as warpdt datatypes), turn them off for 15/16 bit screens. It doesn't look as good but error diffusion dithering from 24-bit to 15/16-bit takes *ages*.
If you have a PPC card with OS3.9, both of these issues are mitigated somewhat as the 3.9 picture.datatype can use PPC to do the colour reduction/dither and many datatypes come in PPC flavours.
If you want backdrops to look good in 15/16 bit modes (without dithering by the picture datatype), you can take your original 24-bit image and dither it down to 15 or 16-bit in a paint package first and save it in a non lossy format. You can't beat precalculation ;-)
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@MarkAshley:
As the limiting factor when displaying the image most likely will be the cpu, the following things will help:
1. Make sure the image has the same resolution as your Workbench in advance so you can disable the slow scaling in WBPattern.
2. Save the image as a not-too-compressed format like TIFF (not TIFF with JPEG compression) or PCX (the 040 performs bad with large and highly compressed images).
3. Install the appropriate WarpDT for the format of the image.
Also, dont be afraid to try different formats!
/Patrik
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@MarkAshley
In order to speed-up the drawing of the Workbench
contents, you can use the following programs(only WB3.5+):
ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/util/boot/fblit.lha
www.stephan-rupprecht.de/downloads/WBCtrl.lha
Put it in your startup-sequence somewhere after the
Setpatch command.
C:FBlit
C:Wbctrl IMT=ICONFAST
Also, it's best to use a backdrop picture in the same
resolution as you Workbench and make sure it's in
IFF/ILBM format.
I use this settings with my A4000/060/PIV and the
Workbench backdrop (24Bit - 800x600) loads within 2 seconds!
:-)
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FBlit with a GFX card? i don't think so! ;-)
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@Framiga wrote:
FBlit with a GFX card? i don't think so!
Well, it sure works fine for me though! :lol:
Fblit comes with a GUI to change the settings.
:-)
EDIT:
Read the docs carefully. then you'll see it's possible
to use FBlit with a GFX-card. (I use it with P96 drivers)
FBlit can be used with WB3.0+ and WBctrl with WB3.5+
:-)
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Doesn't "C:Wbctrl IMT=ICONFAST" make the icons load in fast ram? I thought you could do that anyway in 3.9?
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AmiDude
used to use FBlit since 3.0 here with AGA . . no need to read anything :-)
With GFX cards . . . still a nonsense to use it.
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@MarkAshley
The "C:WBctrl IMT=ICONFAST" in combination with
the FBlit command loads any imagedata in FastRam,
so not only icons but also your backdrop picture.
And it's speeding up the loading process.
:-)
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fblit is totly redundent on gfx cards and will only hurt the system, as the p96 or cgx will be patching the same stuff to speedup there own blitting.
Setting icons fast though still works a treat.
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@Framiga
I've used FBlit before I had the P-IV installed
in my A4000. When I later installed the GFX-card,
the commands where still in my startup-sequence,
and the system was running fine with both the FBlit
and WBctrl commands. I know it makes very little
difference if used with a GFX-card, but without
GFX-card it sure increases the loading of Worbench
and icons.
:-)
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Thanks for the replies everyone. I have converted my 24bit JPEG background to a 24bit IFF. This matches the colour depth of my Workbench. It still seems to take a long time to load though.
I put WBCtrl in my startup-sequence and icons to seem to load a bit faster. Exoticons still take forever to load. Would making the icons a bit smaller help?
Thanks
Mark
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Are you sure your workbench is 24 bit deep? Most cards use 32-bits as the alignment allows for faster rendering.
That said, IFF should be fast to decode anyway. You could also try PPM if you have a suitable datatype, but the file will be very large (probably take longer to load than rendering will).
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its a while the i don't use P96 anymore (it was on CV64 and a 040-30Mhz)
Have you set in PVS(?)
Plane2Fast
and in Prefs:Workbench Images to Other Memory (or so)
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Karlos wrote:
Are you sure your workbench is 24 bit deep? Most cards use 32-bits as the alignment allows for faster rendering.
According to ScreenMode Prefs it is set to "Voodoo: 1024x768 24bit BGR" and the slider is set to 16M colours (but is greyed out and thus not adjustable).
Framiga wrote:
Have you set in PVS(?)
Plane2Fast
What are they?
Framiga wrote:
and in Prefs:Workbench Images to Other Memory (or so)
Yes I have done that.
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is one of the Variable for P96.
Don't you have PVS program in Prefs: dir?
or goto "SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/Picasso96/" and check if the "PlanesToFast" variable is set to YES.
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MarkAshley wrote:
Karlos wrote:
Are you sure your workbench is 24 bit deep? Most cards use 32-bits as the alignment allows for faster rendering.
According to ScreenMode Prefs it is set to "Voodoo: 1024x768 24bit BGR" and the slider is set to 16M colours (but is greyed but and thus not adjustable).
That sounds nasty, generally it is reported as 32-bit BGRA (or little endian 32-bit ARGB if you think about it). Anyway the point is, if you are using some sort of packed pixel mode that genuinely has 24 bits for each pixel (not 32) you can expect a performance hit for graphics operations. Generally you only need to use 24-bit modes like this if you are short of memory or you don't have the bandwidth to show a high refresh rate. Neither of these apply to the voodoo.
Perhaps your settings are awry, the voodoo I have handy always shows 32-bit BGRA
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@MarkAshley
erm . . . are you 100% sure to have P96 installed and not CGX3?
http://www.globaldialog.com/~bandr/AU/brad/001022
interesting readings!
(scroll down to E L B O X C O M P L A I N T R E V O O D O O )
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@Framiga
I definitely have P96 installed.
@Karlos
I don't really understand what that means. Should it be using 24bit or 32bit? And should the BGRA bit be there or not?
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MarkAshley wrote:
@Karlos
I don't really understand what that means. Should it be using 24bit or 32bit? And should the BGRA bit be there or not?
Ok, I guess I should rephrase it a bit :-)
Your screenmode preferences / screenmode selectors should preferentially show 32-bit modes for voodoo rather than 24 bit ones. If it does, most probably, the 32-bit ones will be labelled as "32 bit BGRA".
If it definately says 24-bit BGR, you are likely using what is known as "packed pixel format", where every pixel uses exactly 3 bytes. These can be slower than the 32-bit modes because of alignment issues. 32-bit modes don't actually give you any more useable colour depth than 24-bit ones but it is usually the case that both hardware and software drawing is faster.
I am not sure where you will find it but there is likely a env variable somewhere that 'enables' the 24-bit modes instead (or maybe as well as) of the 32-bit ones. You'd ideally want to turn this off.
Whilst you are about it, there is another env variable that controls wether or not the 15/16-bit modes are 'PC' (little endian, basically) or not. The voodoo3 supports both formats and frankly there is little reason to use little endian 'PC' modes if you can use the big endian ones instead.
I don't actually remember what these env vars are off hand, but someone here might do :-)
Remember, God will kill a kitten for every little endian access on your amiga ;-)
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Ok, I still don't understand fully but it sounds like what I am after is the 32bit BGRA screenmode?
I went in to P96Mode and changed the TrueColour depth from TrueColour to TrueColour & Alpha (what I presume is the A in BGRA?). Rebooted and the "Voodoo: 1024x768 32bit BGRA" screenmode had appeared. Selected this screenmode and tested it, it displayed fine. Saved the screenmode and rebooted for good measure.
The backdrop does seem to load a bit more quickly (I have also made some other changes like converting to IFF etc), but large icons like Exoticons still take a long time to load. Would scaling them down make any difference?
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Yes, it sounds like you got the 32-bit mode now. It uses 25% more video memory but the speed increase for graphics.library etc is more than worth it.
Scaling down icons may well help. For 3.x, however, nothing comes close to the speed of the original 4 colour icons (nasty as they are)
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Cool, thanks for your help. I don't care about memory, I've got loads. I just want it to be fast ;-)
What software can I use to scale the icons? I tried Iconian but it just locks when I try to save the icon :-(
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Hmm, tricky. Not sure, I'd generally use iconian, but if it is crashing :-/
You might just go for a smaller icon set if you can find one. Some people have reported that the png icon patch is faster on their classic systems than colourmapped icons. The way the icons are rendered on screen likely has something to do with that, but there is also the png decode time to factor into it.
You could try it, just on some dummy folders full of junk files first - AFAIK converting an icon to png format is irreversible.