Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: DJS on December 24, 2010, 10:19:14 AM
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Elbox Computer wishes Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Amiga users!
For a Christmas Gift, Elbox will release the new pci.library, which allows to use the PCI gfx cards' memory (Voodoo 3/4/5 and Radeon 9000/9200/9250) as Amiga system memory also for users of Mediators for A1200. The minimum hardware requirement for this feature is an Amiga 1200 computer with any A1200 Mediator model (1200, ZIV, 1200LT2, 1200LT4, 1200SX, 1200TX), a turbo card based on 68030 with MMU and the Voodoo 3 or Radeon 9200 gfx card. In case of the Radeon gfx card (http://shop.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=706R9202) the new drivers enable adding even up to 250 MB of DDR400 SDRAM to the A1200 system memory!
For Amiga 3000 and 4000 users, Elbox extends the bundle offer (http://elbox.com/news_10_06_08.html) till the end of the year for the Mediator PCI busboards for A3000 and A4000 computers with a special 5V-only version of the Mobility Radeon 9200 gfx card with 256MB of fast SGRAM memory.
If you plan on purchasing any Elbox products in near future, do it by the end of this year. With the New Year, prices for most of them (Mediators, FastATA, memory expansions, etc.) will go up about 30%. This will be due to much higher costs of the components used in the production. Most of the necessary connectors and 5V CPLD chips are now very difficult to acquire and much more expensive than ever before.
Elbox Computer Team
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That's cool! What's the performance like when using video card memory as fast RAM?
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great incentive for all the classic users to upgrade to OS4.1 now
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I love the way the product information for Mediator still gives compatibility with Shark PPC G3 / G4 as one of the features. How many years is it now?
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(http://www.sonnettech.com/product/images/C7200g3.jpg)
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html (http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html)
G3/500 $29.95 - anyone?
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Could be nice if AOS4.1 could run on those Crescendo cards.
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Could be nice if AOS4.1 could run on those Crescendo cards.
Considering that you can pick one up for around $30, that would indeed be nice.
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I am still waiting for some news about the DRAGON 1200 project & your SHARKPPC project....
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That's cool! What's the performance like when using video card memory as fast RAM?
It will be abysmal. Much slower than real fast memory and certainly nowhere near DDR400 SDRAM performance.
Another case of misleading marketing from Elbox.
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It will be abysmal. Much slower than real fast memory and certainly nowhere near DDR400 SDRAM performance.
Another care of misleading marketing from Elbox.
Disappointing, but not massively surprising :(
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Tough crowd even on Christmas. To bad I can't try it on my Prometheus card.
Plaz
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Tough crowd even on Christmas.
Polishing turd won't make it any more appealing. It's still a turd.
up to 250 MB of DDR400 SDRAM to the A1200 system memory!
The memory might be DDR400 SDRAM on the graphics card, but there is no way the amiga could access it even remotely the actual speed of DDR400 SDRAM (3.2 GB/s). In reality the memory speed is slower than the 70ns SIMM memory on your average accelerator.
Especially reading the memory is really slow. Graphics card memory was never meant to be used for reads and this is not optimized for it.
Elbox will spin this "DDR400 SDRAM" story for months no doubt.
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I'll stick with what I've been saying for years: slow RAM is better than no RAM.
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If you plan on purchasing any Elbox products in near future, do it by the end of this year. With the New Year, prices for most of them (Mediators, FastATA, memory expansions, etc.) will go up about 30%.
30%! Geeee, that just pushes them even further out of most peoples price range. Anyone know how well the Mediators sell these days?
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(http://www.sonnettech.com/product/images/C7200g3.jpg)
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html (http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html)
G3/500 $29.95 - anyone?
imagine if amiga people brought up all the cards the ac people be angry as ...hehe
sounds like a plan
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imagine if amiga people brought up all the cards the ac people be angry as ...hehe
sounds like a plan
The Natami is going to have a PCI slot. Be nice to be able to throw one of these cards in that bad boy and maybe run OS 4.1 Classic.
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It will be abysmal. Much slower than real fast memory and certainly nowhere near DDR400 SDRAM performance.
Another case of misleading marketing from Elbox.
I hope no one expects DDR400 speed:lol:
In Zorro III you might get ~15MB/s. I can only guess how low it would be on an A1200 in real life, 500K/s maybe?
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If you plan on purchasing any Elbox products in near future, do it by the end of this year. With the New Year, prices for most of them (Mediators, FastATA, memory expansions, etc.) will go up about 30%. This will be due to much higher costs of the components used in the production. Most of the necessary connectors and 5V CPLD chips are now very difficult to acquire and much more expensive than ever before.
as if that stuff was still manufactured? really?
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My mistake, must be tired. time to go to sleep...
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I'll stick with what I've been saying for years: slow RAM is better than no RAM.
I have to agree with you on this one, because having ANY fast ram - even if it's of the slow type will open up more possibilities of what can be done on the Amiga.
But I don't think the point of using GFX card ram as fast ram is that it actually should replace any real fast ram, no I think the point is that it simply is meant for adding more to the already existing fast ram. If I understand things correctly, the GFX ram will have a lower priority than real fast ram, which means that it will only be used when it's needed.
In my opinion, it is a GOOD thing Elbox have done here (provided that it actually works that is).
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My mistake, must be tired. time to go to sleep...
And here I was ready to correct your mistake, only to find out that you already figured it out. Well that's life I guess :)
PS! God jul og godt nyttår pyrre :)
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Hey Elbox guys, are you there, say something!!!
Hmmm, maybe they already start to produce Shark and don't have time for talks! :)
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I am still waiting for some news about the DRAGON 1200 project & your SHARKPPC project....
Me Too, La Sigh ...
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I am still waiting for some news about the DRAGON 1200 project & your SHARKPPC project....
Don't hold your breath.
--
moto
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This new pci.library is romable ??
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In Zorro III you might get ~15MB/s. I can only guess how low it would be on an A1200 in real life, 500K/s maybe?
True it will be slow but if you look at it as a virtual ram solution for workbench 3.x 68K Amiga's I expect its a lot faster and more compatible than the old harddisk based virtual ram solutions on the people used with their Amigas in the 90s.
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Are these kits going to be availble trough Amigakit, Vesalia and other retailers ?
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I don't own a Mediator and at the moment (until I repair my A4000 M/B) and I won't buy it for now.
But it's in my plans, and since the Elbox guys provided this functionality, it's a good point in their favour (they are still working on "classic" Amiga hardware).
Well, they may be more fair about posting real benchmarks and tech info about their products (like Individual Computers does), but it's very good about their commitment on the Amiga side.
So thumbs up for Elbox! :)
P.S. Elbox guys, if you are here, post some tech info and comments about this: this will improve your image among potential costumers, and probably higher sales.
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Well, they may be more fair about posting real benchmarks and tech info about their products (like Individual Computers does), but it's very good about their commitment on the Amiga side.
The software for adding the part of gfx card SDRAM to Amiga system memory was already released -- and was released for free for all Mediator users. So, each user of Mediator for A1200 (or A3/4000) with any supported PCI gfx card can check this speed in his specific config.
The speed of the Radeon SDRAM configured as Amiga 1200 system memory is on about the same level as in A3000 and A4000 computers. Benchmarks of the Radeon memory configured as Amiga system memory were posted on Amiga.org in this thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53132).
The SDRAM memory on the Radeon card is accessible from three sides: 1) from Amiga processor, 2) from the busmaster PCI cards, 3) from the Radeon gfx chipset.
1) The speed of this memory from Amiga processor accesses is limited by hardware design of the Amiga 1200 CPU slot interface of the specific turbo card. This speed varies from 5 MB/s to 13 MB/s depending of the turbo card model.
2) The speed from PCI busmaster cards sitting in the PCI slots of Mediator busboard is limited by gfx card design. For Radeon 9200 based on M9+ chipset write speed is up to 128 MB/s (in the burst mode), read speed is up to about 50 MB/s.
3) The SDRAM speed when accessing from M9+ core is up to 4 GB/s.
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@ DJS
Ok thanks for replay and commitment like someone says!
And now major question if you are her to support:
Where is Shark PPC Turbo card for faster performance.?
And if you cant produce it whay you still keeping banners on your site ( 10 years almost)?