Warp3d Voodoo vs. Radeon ClassicOS

[Motormouth]

I finally was able the Mediator i4000D v3.3 version working!!!!
This was after several months of frustration and several months waiting to get it back from Elbox. etc....

But to Elbox's credit it now works great!!!!


Overall it is quite nice.  It works well with a v3.3 Radeon 9250 I got fairly cheaply on fleebay and even nicer is the fact that the Sonnet 7200 G4 works very well without modification with the version 13.1 pci.library and Jenkin's latest sonnet powerpc.library.

The question I have for all of you is how useful is Warp3d?

It look like the mediator supports warp3d with Voodoo, but not with Radeon.
So I guess my questions are:

1)  How important/useful is Warp3d?
2)  Is there a Radeon Warp3d library?
3)  If not Which is faster in PPC games a Voodoo3 with Warp3d or Radeon 9250 without?

[Motormouth]

1)  If you want to play the games that support Warp3D, then you don't want to play them in software mode.  If you don't want to play any of the Warp3D games then not useful.
2)  No, there is no Radeon Warp3D driver, this needs to be written or ported from OS4.
3)  A Voodoo3 in Warp3D mode will be 2-4x+ faster than a Radeon in software mode and look better too.

Thanks! for the response
This is similar to what I expected

I do have a voodoo3 I can put in the system, i was hoping to keep it with the Prometheus and put that in a 3000 , but I will put it with the sonnet.

The biggest this I like about the radeon is that it is runs much cooler that the voodoo
The extra memory is also nice, but not a big limitation given the sonnet has memory, and I have a zorram in the computer as well.

[Motormouth]

Pity, under OS4 or MorphOS the Radeon would dust a Voodoo3. And both of those OS' support Warp3D funtionality with the Radeon.

Anyone know why there isn't a Radeon driver for legacy applications?
It seems kind of dumb considering it shouldn't be that hard to backport.

In fact, the R200 drivers under both OS4 and MorphOS are so mature that they perform really well.
Many MorphOS users didn't move to higher cards when the R300 drivers were introduced because everything above the R200 (under MorphOS) isn't W3D compatible.
And the performance gain was less than you'd assume.

Still, the Voodoo3's performance isn't that shabby.
It beats the other solutions (except for the previously mentioned Radeon).

It would be helpful if elbox would make a warp3d driver for the radeon particularly since they support if for 2D video and memory on the mediator.  And as Iggy says R200 solutions on platforms related to amigaOS 3.1 do have warp3d drivers.  

Funny I have a R200 card in a G5 mac with MorphOS on it.

[Motormouth]

@ Motormouth

yup been in the same boat here with my 1200T and my Radeon 9250 can use all it's 256MB BUT no go to play on Warp3D games unfortunaley...at least not yet anyhow..maybe A-Eon/ Amigakit is working on this:confused:

Thanks this info.

[Motormouth]

Out of curiosity, can you even buy an R200-series card that physically fits in a Mediator?  I thought they were PCI only?  Or are you talking about doing it with adapters?

You can get PCI versions of the 92x0.   There are many 3.3V on Fleebay, not nearly as many 5V.

[Motormouth]

Not that funny, I've suggested that to others before.
Its the one way you can get W3D compatibility with the G5.
And a 9200 with a Mac rom can used the full AGP 8X bandwidth (although a 9000 isn't significantly slower).

The R200 drivers under MorphOS and OS4 are very mature and perform surprisingly well.

Since Hyperion has an R200 driver for OS4, and they want to continue to develop OS3.1, why not push them to support the R200?
After all, OS4 supports the mediator, why shouldn't OS3.1?

If you wait for Elbox to do it....well we all know how long that wait could be (and we're not getting any younger).

I don't think Elbox are ever going to publish a Warp3D driver for a Radeon as they haven't even fixed the problems with the Voodoo 4/5.  I doubt Hyperion will port any Radeon Warp3D drivers for OS 3.X since it's a significant amount of effort and they have other things to do.  Maybe a bounty could entice someone to do it.  I'm in for $50.

@Iggy  Sorry,  I guess I was saying funny in relation to the ClassicOS.  Yes you are correct the R200 came standard with the G5.  The G5 I bought was upgraded to a geforce 6800 (a quite powerful card at the time).  I had to down grade to the original radeon card that came with the G5 so that I could use MorphOS on it.  Finding a MAC version of the card was surprisingly harder than I though at a reasonable price.

The G5 is a very impressive computer, both as a MAC and as a MorphOS box.

@amiadudeorwat  Alas, you are probably right  
As for a bounty, I would also be in......

[Motormouth]

The smallest card that shipped with a G5 was a 64MB Radeon9600Pro which is a RV350.


R200 cards were supposed to go into G4, with the one build for

Congrats on getting both the mediator and the sonnet working, Motormouth! They're good aren't they!

Is the sonnet working stably for you, any issues or teething problems? The massive thread on eab is worth checking out if you havent already done so.

Regarding Radeon vs Voodoo: for a classic system I can't think of many reasons to choose the Radeon over the Voodoo. The Radeon's ram might be useful on the 68k side of the house but it's zorro ram and will be much slower than ram on your accelerator; it is not used at all by the sonnet. Warp3D on the Voodoo is much more useful if you're at all interested in playing games - BlitzQuake, Quake2, Quake3, Hexen2, Wipeout 2097 etc all make use of Warp3D.

Make sure you populate the sonnet with as much ram as you can - 192mb is what you're aiming for to give the best gaming experience.

@Kronos  I stand corrected, it is a R350, Kronos you are right.

I remember going to this quite interesting website to findout about mac for MorphOS
this page has how all mac are originally equipped
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/faq/powermac-g5-adc-ports-dvi-ports-resolutions-supported.html

My G5 is the Early 2005 2.0 Ghz model.  I found an original card which a 9600 (non pro or XT) with 128 Meg Ram, kinda of a weird combo (ie not pro or xt and 128 meg).

These were the last of the AGP macs,  was there not a plan to get the 11,2 powermacs G5s to be MorphOS compatible?   I guess the biggest problem would be the need for the GForce 6600 PCI-E drivers???  just a guess.

@trixster  Thanks for asking.  The mediator with the Sonnet took me a few tries to get working.  The problem I had with the Radeon and Sonnet working together was the busmaster jumper.  The Github starting guide:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetAmiga/wiki/Sonnet-first-time-installation-guide
said to keep the jumper closed, but the mediator manual says to have it open for a PCI card busmastering (vs Amiga CPU busmastering for close jumper)
Eventually I open it and everything started to work.  Otherwise the guide was awesome.

I have had issues getting the Sonnet to work with the voodoo however.  I figured out it was the Sonnet's ram.  I have 4k modules (ie 128 meg 5v FPM) .  The starters guide says it only works with 2k modules
The radeon didn't seem to care and worked with no problem with 3 128meg modules (or 384 meg) with only 128 meg mounting (because the radeon has 128 megs) 256 total.

The voodoo seems not to like more than 192megs in the sonnet.  I put a 128meg module and a 64meg module, everything started to work.

Oh and if the powerpc.library is in the Libs: directory without the InitPPC command in the right place in the startup-sequence, it will hang the computer.

Otherwise use the script method as described in the guide after the amiga is booted.

[Motormouth]

a) widely off-topic

Noted
Back the radeon 9250 vs voodoo 3
The radeon 9250 with the Sonnet is very very stable, just no Warp3D
The Voodoo 3 is much less stable with the sonnet,  I get guru 8000 0004's all the time
I found this interest, albeit dated page, the unreliable mediator guide:
https://mediators.github.io/
It discussed the 8000 0004 with the voodoo
It suggest a little program called dtack  I get significantly less 8000 0004 errors,
but like the unreliable mediator guide says warp3d crashes with it, which is kinda like being back at using a radeon 9250 without warp3d, very very frustrating.
I am attempting to put both the radeon 9250 and the voodoo3 in the mediator.
I am going to configure the radeon to be the pcidma memory, while using the voodoo3 as just the display.

Initial attempts with this configuration seem a bit more stable, but I still get a couple crashes with WOS and Warp3d at the same time.  I think I need to adjust some of the mediator variables.  I still have some voodoo pcidma memory.

First, the 11,2 IS MorphOS compatible and some people have them running the OS, BUT it isn't supported and there is no plan to add this to the public distro (so buy an X5000).

Cool!  the 11,2 is a very nice model.

The cards I've seen running in G5s were reflashed Radeon 9200s.
The Apple 9000 is a 4X AGP card with a power connector for the ADC power supply that is in the wrong place for a G5.

I'm not sure a PC 9000 couldn't be modified for use in a G5, but I've never tried a 4X card in a G5.

Back the one of initial question, a warp3d library for the mediator/radeon 92x0 and classicOS would be nice

[Motormouth]

Your experiments with using both the Radeon 9200 and the Voodoo3 sound interesting. The extra memory on the Radeon can be put to good use.
Is it possible to use both cards for display, or does using Voodoo3 preclude the use of the 9200 for display?

Update,  The Radeon 9250 works just fine with the Voodoo3.  When using picassomode The Radeon board is always.... always board0 and the voodoo board1 no matter what order the boards are in the mediator, nor if one was in first (ie by itself with a previous configuration).  This suggests that the radeon device is being mounted first during boot. (alphabetical order perhaps?)

This being said if the radeon was previously configured (board0), you need to add new monitor profiles for the voodoo (board1).  If the voodoo was by itself first (ie board0) it becomes board1, and the new radeon becomes board0.  Therefore both monitor modes for both cards need to be reconfigured.

It if funny to have the workbench screen being displayed by the radeon and the picasso test pattern on the voodoo output.

Some really interesting things happen with many programs.  If you have a warp3d workbench window open you need to have a 16bit voodoo3 mode configured for as your monitor preference, things will otherwise crash, ie gears opened in a windoew..  Otherwise for full screen modes warp3d will always go to the voodoo3 (as these are the only warp3d drivers I have installed)  otherwise a new 2-d full screen video output will attempt to go to the radeon modes, unless otherwise configured.

Maximum ram that can be configured with the Sonnet in the system is 256 megs,  if the radeon has 128 megs of ram, the sonnet will/can only have 128 megs.  This seems to be true even if the mediator is configured for 512 megs of address space.  Unlike what I said in an early post, with just the voodoo and the sonnet, I can put 256 megs of ram in the sonnet.

What is really weird with the 256 meg limit.  If the radeon and sonnet are in the mediator together,  if more than 256 meg of memory between the two are in the system, the extra sonnet memory will not be mounted and used, but otherwise everything works.   But once you put the voodoo in the system (either with or without the radeon) if you go above 256 megs (ie aboe 128 meg radeon /128meg sonnet, or above 256 meg sonnet only no radeon) everything will crash.  I find this interesting.

Sonnet memory configures as 32 bit "sonnet memory", it always leave 6 megs unmounted (I assume this is for powerpc.library stuff)

The radeon's extra memory is always mounted as 32 bit "pcidma memory" which can be used with the 680x0.

And the voodoo always have a least 1 meg of memory (depending on configuration) as "pcidma memory",  if by itself (no radeon, radeon usually has much much more) you need at least 3 megs of pcidma memory from the video card to do dma transfers between the amiga and the sonnet or the powerpc.library will bring up a message saying that it needs 3 meg of pcidma memory.

After all of this the PPC and warp3d together still crashes randomly.
warp3d and 68k works without any issues.
PPC works by itself without any issues.
but PPC and warp3d, though more stable with the radeon card still generates a variety of
8000 000x errors mostly where x = 4, A, or B.

[Motormouth]

OR you guys could establish a bounty and pay someone write this for you. Can you think of anyone, with experience writing W3D drivers for OS4? One person comes in mind to me.

I would be very interested to have a talented programmer, like yourself, to take on the challenge and certainly would be interested in contributing to a bounty.   Would you want to do something like indigogo.  Or via paypal donations account.  Further, I would assume this would be best effort.   Feel free to pmail me.  I know I would be willing to beta test for you.  My only caveat would be it would need not only be warp3d compatible but be warp3d compatible with the mediator as their warp3d libraries are a bit different.   The Prometheus would also be a plus.  


Oh, by the way I think I know what is wrong with my setup.  I think it is the Voodoo card itself.  Sometimes the mediator says it has 13 megs of ram and sometimes 16 megs of ram.

I think it may be a bad memory chip.  This probably would not effect 2-D video if the chip is mapped high.  The 2-D video would use lowest ram first.  However it might effect pcidma memory.

[Motormouth]

Motormouth, I would recommend you post on the eab thread. A bunch of people have had similar issues to what you're seeing, most of which have been resolved.

Have you tried a fresh workbench install? It is recommended to start with no more than wb3.9 + bb1 and bb2 to try and rule out a dodgy patch causing issues.

Have you tried tweaking the setcmemdiv parameter? Sometimes allowing the sonnet to autodetect the cachemem speed causes instability.

SetCMemDiv (0-5): Sets the speed divider of the L2 Cache memory. 5 = 3, 4 = 2.5, 3 = 2, 2 = 1.5, 1 = 1, 0 = Handled by library. Default = 0. For example: A Sonnet with speed 500 MHz and setting 5 will run the L2 cache at 166 MHz (500/3).

@trixster  thanks for the advise.  I finally made an EAB account.  The EAB threads are quite good.  I am going through them.  I have the setcmemdiv unset.  getinfo says it is a its default value,  I might however attempt to set the setcmemdiv at what would be the default.

[Motormouth]

sonnet is dead rapture-g4 is the new and we need better support r300+

Not for the lucky few that have them  but understood,  However getting video cards working with what ever solution is useful even with rapture-g4  

I haven't made any tests recently, but in old times (MorphOS 1.4.5) Voodoo3 wasn't that bad compared to Radeons, actually pretty same level beating some Radeons

Here's my old test with Peg1 and MorphOS 1.4.5:

Code: [Select]


               Quake I fps    Quake III fps
R7000              36               1
R9200 SE           71              22
Voodoo3 3000       71              25
R7500 Club3D       85              23
R8500 LE          100              24
R7500 ATI         100              25


One thing to consider is that Voodoo3 only has 16 bit depths, while Radeons have 24/32bit.

To be fair you picked the fastest Voodoo 3 (ie the 3000) and picked the slowest r200's (ie the R8500LE and R9200 SE,  with the 9200 you would want the faster model with the 128 bit transfer ram (not the SE with slower gpu and 64 bit transfer).

However the real reason to be interested in the 9200 is that it is available (voodoo's are become rare like sonnets) and cheap.  Additionally they run much cooler than the voodoos.

[Motormouth]

reason i say this is cause the rapture-g4 will be 7447/7457 PPC with DDR cache those radeons are underpowered we need x series or better support

I do agree in principle, but radeon r200 already has picasso drivers and elbox support.  Only need warp3d drivers.  

Additionally, as Iggy has indicated, W3D do already exist for MorphOS and OS4.

For the X radeon you would need to write a bunch of stuff (even MorphOS 3D support of these are non-W3D).

[Motormouth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDFPg2ELo4

Very Cool,  How did you get the Radeon working with warp3d in classic OS!!!!!

Are you going to make this available??

[Motormouth]

@kev711

Please tell us you are not using

Warp3D_CPU_PPC
or
Wazp3D