vampire video speed vs dedicated RTG cards

[Motormouth]

I notice that many people are using RTG video cards with vampire 500 .

Why, is the video slow, refresh issues? etc.
How fast is the vampire video vs RTG cards.  

I guess it is possible to make a direct comparison with picasso II and some of the zorro III cards that have zorro II modes.  Anyone attempt this?
How about indirect comparisons? ie voodoo ati zorro III modes of picasso IV, cybergraphx, permedia based card, etc.

[Motormouth]

I would believe this is because many graphic cards come with an on-board blitter which helps accelarating a couple of graphics operations. AFAIK, the vampire is a frame buffer only, or has only limited capabilities as far as blitter support is concerned.

im not sure it this is still the case but initial implementation or rtg on vampire was likely simple framebuffer, without any accel laike blitter, as thomas says. now it might be they have implemented some accelerated memory copy functionality into the core, maybe even masked and such, but i dont know it.

another issue is that vampire shares the same bus to memory for cpu and rtg, so it can starve with higher resolutions and frequencies, while cpu is doing much memory access. the solution to this is as far as im aware a lower rtg frequency, as long as the hdmi display device supports it.

This is quite interesting and helpful.  I wonder if blitter could be implemented in the FPGA, this would required programing of a specific video chip, which would be tricky or a custom video chip in FPGA which would require its own, albeit virtual, VLSI layout and new picasso96 driver.

It looks like Complete testing of different video solutions would require not only comparisons of different resolution, but also effect on CPU speed and memory transfer speeds.

[Motormouth]

Here is an Apollo forum thread from 2015 showing P96Speed results for 640x480 and 800x600. Note that these are for a very old version of the core and are likely faster now.

According to a poster on that thread the Vampire was 2x the speed of a CV64 except for rectfillpattern.

http://apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=133&z=5vTxib

This is probably more than fast enough for most applications.

[Motormouth]

The ultimate is to use FPGA based gfx card, like the mnt va2000, along with vampire

Interesting, I didn't even know that this mnt va2000 existed.  The cost is high, but then again this is an expensive hobby.

[Motormouth]

Yes, it is. My comment was not meant to be taken too seriously, it's just the aspect of filling the Amiga with FPGAs that I find funny

Actually I find FPGA interesting.  In some ways they are emulation and in some ways they are actual hardware.

[Motormouth]

Nobody said they weren't interesting, i just feel like I'm "cheating" when I use hardware based on one. Like its not "real" hardware.

But the results are fascinating, and as I mentioned before when discussing ISAs, its really about what runs your software well.

@Iggy I did not mean any disrespect and you have a a great point!!!   I think I am just anxious to get any new hardware after all these years.

[Motormouth]

@darksun9210

It is interesting to hear your actual experiences with the vampire.

[Motormouth]

I am looking forward to your review/comparison.
I always find enthusiasm overruns Apollo core users like a religious sect. So they tend to publish benchmarks that specifically favour their agenda or corner cases where they can show off.

This reminds me of the Amiga vs Atari ST benchmarking, or for that matter any benchmarking Thunderbird vs. Pentium III,  NVIDIA vs ATI, etc..........
I also like darksun9210's post.  It is an honest look.  I  discusses both the advantages and disadvantages of the product.

[Motormouth]

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1060473#post1060473

Mein Deutsch ist nicht mehr gut
Luckily Google translate works very well, and yes this article is useful.

I have an A500+ with an vampire.
Can run all the tests you want to see.

Link to programs and what to test and i'll post the results here.

If you are willing it would be interesting to see how higher and higher video resolution *depth * rate effect cpu and memory performance.

I guess the easilest would be to use at least 4 resolutions @ the same 24 bit at a fast frame rate.  A control would be the same parameters only using a RTG card.

[Motormouth]

@Nickman

I agree with Gulliver and Darksun9210
This is quite useful!!!!!!  I wonder how other video card will compare with increasing resolution.  They will also have some penalty, but I image it won't be as much.

But let us put this in perspective even a "slow" vampire is still amazingly fast.....

[Motormouth]

Since the RTG drivers are not optimized for AMMX, it may be a bit premature to do speed benchmarks but the display DMA should be nearly finished in Gold 3.

@SamuraiCrow DMA will help.  I have been impressed with the speed increases with etch new core Apollo has released.

[Motormouth]

I read that the new board design was to allow higher clock. We'll see if it works.

The newer board design is likely to use a newer FPGA.  For example, a Cyclone 5 supports DDR3 memory while current designs use a Cyclone 3 with SDRAM.

Which Vampire board design are you referring to? Vampire 500 V2 to Vampire 500 V2+? Other?