Unable to get FAST Z-II mode working

[Leifern]

Hi there,

I recently got a DCE Cybervision 64/3D to use with my Elbox ZIV busboard. My hope was that I would get a better performance out of the setup as both the busboard and the DCE cybervision support the fast Z-II mode (which is supposedly about twice as fast as ZorroII). I'm running an A1200 with Blizzard 1260@66.
There is a jumper on the busboard to enable and disable fast Z-II mode but sysspeed shows the exact same results with the jumper closed or open.
Am i missing something? Is anyone here familiar with the setup and perhaps can help me troubleshoot?

Compared to sysspeeds A2k , picassoIV module my graphics setup is about half the performance (which is also a bit strange), and compared to my other CV64/3D in my A3000 (030@25) my A1200 setup is about five times faster. I assume the CPU is bottlenecking the A3000. The DCE has the wire jumper (that should signal it's ready for fast Z-II) and the busboard was recently recapped. Both are working flawlessly and stable in every other way. I would really like to unlock this fast Z-II mode but I'm not sure what to do here.

All thoughts and ideas are welcome

[Leifern]

Update:

I managed to get fast Z-II working with my Buddha 20th anniversary via the fastZII switch in ROM. It went from 2.3 mb/s to about 3.5 mb/s. Nice boost!
Now I just need to figure out how to get it working with my cybervision 64/3D.

[Leifern]

Yes, it is plugged into the first slot, the two first are potential Fast Z-II slots.

I've run sysspeed's graphics test and several game comparisons (Quake68k timedemo performs exactly the same in ZII and Fast Z-II mode), all testes and comparisons in games and programs are exactly the same, shile performance should be increased across most if not all of them. I'm getting exactly no performance increase 

[Leifern]

could it be that the cpu is the limiting factor here and not the graphic card speed ? just a wild guess...

The 060 @ 66 mhz? Seems very strange that it would be a limiting factor.

[Leifern]

Yes, the zorro-II bus is a severe bottleneck for most RTG-cards (not designed exclusively for Z-II). Sysspeed shows that an A4000 with an 060 and CV3DV in Zorro-III is about 5 times faster then my setup (graphics). Fast zorro-II was designed to decreese this performance gap. I dont have a zorro-III machine with an 060 yes myself so I am unable to test the CV3D on Zorro-III myself but i teust the sysspeed modules. According to elbox fast zorro-II is twice as fast as Zorro II on paper. I don't expect that kind of performan e bump but nothing at all seems wrong.

The ZIV busboard clearly says it supports fast Z-II and i got a healthy performan e increase with my buddha, and DcE's version of CV3D is the only RTG card i know that advertises to support fast Z-II. The CV3D cards with the red jumperwire are supposedly fast Z-II ready. Mine has such a wire.

[Leifern]

maybe my cv64/3d is not fast zorro 2 enabled.

Ive gone back to using my bvision anyway

At this point I'm wondering if any of them are.
The BVision is pretty damn sweet!

[Leifern]

It appears that CV64/3D might not support fast-ZII at all:
https://forum.icomp.de/index.php?thr...=7280#post7281

I guess the hardware databases should be notified about this.