Public Release of MorphOS 2.6 & Introduction of PowerMac Support

[ferrellsl]

Thanks Karlos. I have a GTX 295 in my Windows tower and even it is a couple generations behind and a new GTX 480 runs rings around it.  Nice to see that there are a few people on this forum who still keep up with PC hardware specs and don't go thru life wearing Amiga or MOS blinders (or goggles)......It's really annoying when one of them gets on here and trys to convince me that his Amiga or MOS video card with 64MB of RAM (which is just one step above a dumb framebuffer) can compete with anything currently on the graphics market.

[ferrellsl]

I'm sorely tempted to get a 480 as I got a bit hooked with CUDA on the 275. With the full speed double precision, increased cache and full IEEE 754 support, it looks a real computational powerhouse

Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about!

Wouldn't it be cool if Nvidia developed a multi-core CPU based on their GPU technology and then wrote their own OS for it?  That would be MY dream Amiga!

[ferrellsl]

I'm sure I can find some specific ones, but just look back on all the X1000 pre-release hype.  What a let-down once the real specs were made public in the forums.  The X1000 devs wanted to whip up as much enthusiam and excitement as possible and intentionally misled people by making statements about how powerful the X1000 co-processor would be.  Turns out it probably won't even be used at all and it isn't useful for desktop computing anyway.  It was just a marketing gimmick to get old school Amiga enthusiasts excited.....ala the original Amigas which used co-processors for sound and video.  And of course there are plenty of MOS fans in this thread trying to convince me that MOS is just fine for office use......sadly, it isn't.  I cannot import/export MS Office files or OpenOffice files.  As for browsers, many of the web sites I need are protected using SmartCard technology and use custom java and javascript apps written for the military.  Not to mention the web sites that use Flash 9 or greater.  Before I bought my PegII and MOS back in 2007 I lurked in the forums and read as much as I could about MOS and the positive comments outnumbered the negatives in regard to just about everything.   Several people metnioned that I should be patient and that office apps would surely arrive.  It's 3 years later and I'm still waiting.  And I'm willing to bet that in 3 more years, I'll still be waiting for decent office software.  And I'm not even talking anything as huge as OpenOffice.  What about AbiWord and GnuCalc for starters?  I'm not going to use classic Amiga software developed in 1990s on my PegII and be satisified when I've paid 2007 retail prices for the OS.

[ferrellsl]

It'd be interested to hear where MorphOS developers have posted misleading information or false advertising. Care to elaborate?

I'm not talking about the official MOS dev team.  I'm talking about some members of the fan base who can be "over enthusiastic" about MOS and its uses and some who write their own MOS apps.  Don't get me wrong.  I REALLY like MOS, even better than I like OS4, but I simply can't continue to support it with my cash when it doesn't offer me any way to recoup my investment.  Perhaps that's my mistake for assuming that it was more than a hobby OS.

And the official MOS dev team has been nothing but helpful.....my apologies if I've upset anyone.

[ferrellsl]

You are quite correct to be upset with my scam statement.  My ire wasn't direct at the MOS dev team or you, but at folks in this forum who go out of their way to argue points that simply aren't true.  Like the guy earlier in this thread who was trying to get me to believe that an ATI 9250 is even close to modern GPU performance.  I'll try to be clearer the next time that I'm being rude.

[ferrellsl]

Save yourself a bit of cash and buy two or three 460s instead. ;-)

I'll meet you half-way and buy two 470s!

[ferrellsl]

Firstly, what software on MorphOS runs too slow on ATI 9250? Don't get me wrong, I would also like to see some that do :-)

Until we have significant amount of software that's too slow, I'd say it's "good enough"

Secondly, wasn't the discussion about ATI 9000, rather than 9250? (At least you mentioned specifically 9000 in some of your posts) Sure, both lose to modern gfx cards, but 9000 is quite a lot faster than 9250.

And even if cards are "good enough" (for now), there's availability problem. Best (of the supported) models, like 9000 are almost impossible to find as new (but available on ebay etc.) while worst models, like 9250 are quite a bit easier to find (sometimes even new). And for most, even that is enough. For now.

Exactly my point.  What software?  There really isn't much beyond 68k software and a web browser.  Sure, those run pretty fast because they don't use or need 3D acceleration or anything else we've come to expect from current GPUs and systems.

[ferrellsl]

Ok, second round.

We could really use faster gfx cards even with the software/games we have currently. Here are a few examples games or applications:

- Blender
- Stellarium
- Freespace 2
- Homeworld
- Aquaria
- Quake 3 and all its (more heavy) mods
- Return to Castle Wolftenstein and Wolftenstein: Enemy Territory (not released yet)
- Warzone2100
- UFO alien invasion
- Neverball
...

Most of them run good enough on Radeons, but it wouldn't hurt to have faster gfx cards to run some of them with higher details/resolution/whatever.

And by the way, OWB would benefit of an hw-accelerated cairo too (but there's no 3d stuff involved there).

Sure, 5 yr old hardware should run 10+ yr old games quite well.  I won't dispute that.  And I'm sure the "newer" games run fine too albeit using a subset (TinyGL) of a VERY old release of OpenGL.  Maybe version 1.1 or 1.2.  The current release of OpenGL is 4.1.  So if you're a retro gamer who likes to play on retro-hardware, then knock yourself out.