graphic card

[Karlos]

BoingBoss wrote:
It comes with 1 or 2 megs of video memory, supports 8-bit, 16-bit, and 24-bit graphics modes...

Precisely why you should give this card a miss. 2MB of VRAM is nothing. A single 1024x768x16-bit screen will eat 75% of that in one go, assuming this card can even cope with that resolution at a bearable refresh rate.

Open a few screens and they have to be paged in and out of VRAM which means screen switching takes longer. Add to this the fact there is next to no hardware acceleration for drawing operations with this card and you are left with a very lacklustre piece of hardware that's little more than a VGA framebuffer.

Get a *real* graphics card with at the very least 4MB memory and a RAMDAC capable of at least 75Hz refresh for your target resolution.

Your eyes will love you for it.

[Karlos]

@BoingBoss

:lol:

I was so waiting for that "you do not know what you are talking about when..." :-D

As for the specifications, instead of quoting the maximum rates, how about telling us what the maximum refresh rates are for the highest supported resolution in the largest number of colours?

I ask this because IMHO your arguments for supporting this card are not valid. Nobody really uses 640x480 unless they are have to. Just browse the gallery of workbench screenshots in this very site if you don't believe me.

The whole point of owning graphics card, over the native display is

1) You get higher spatial resolutions without interlacing
2) You get faster refresh rates
3) You get greater colour depths
4) You get faster GUI rendering etc.

Im not saying that the card is crap, if it fulfills your requirements then power to you. The question is, is it suitable for everybody?

Your point about the expense, however I accept. But it is also the case that you get what you pay for. If the GVP costs half as much as a CV64, but the CV64 is on eBay for a reasonable (as determined by your budget) price, I wouldn't opt for the cheaper card *just* because it is half the price.


-edit-

BTW, I wish I did have an "above average wallet", that's for sure :-D Seriously, cards like the CV64 goes on eBay for silly money these days. Youd have to get the GVP for next to free for it to be worth it ;-)

[Karlos]

kzin wrote:
I had a GVP spectrum it was just fine, made me realize how slow AGA is, all of its modes are faster than 256 col AGA, used to run it at 1024x768 no problems. if you see one cheaper than any thing else dont pass it by. if its bang for your dosh you want.

Not that it's relevent to this discussion, but I use 1600x1200x16-bit on my BVision at flicker free 75Hz refresh and its faster than AGA in PAL hires 16 colours :-D

[Karlos]

Hyperspeed wrote:
16-Bit isn't my idea of the best colour mode. HAM8 can display 4x that
and it still looks uneven in gradients.

Good for a Workbench desktop, but do you really use 65,000 colour
icons? If you view pictures on your Workbench screen then you are
degrading the 24-bit ones.

I defy anybody to tell the differnece between a high resolution dithered 16-bit display and 24-bit one in the same resolution on a CRT. For speed, most people set their picture.datatype to only use dithering on 8-bit screens. If you have OS3.9 and a PPC, of course it can do the dithering using WarpOS on the PPC and a 16-bit dithered image takes imperceptably longer to render than an undithered 24-bit one.

As for HAM8, sure it's great for images encoded in that format but is next to useless as a display format for general purpose work ;-)

[Karlos]

Whatever you decide, it might be worth waiting to see what Redrumloa is cooking up presently.

Looks like he's found a new set of teeth for the old dog ;-)

[Karlos]

BoingBoss wrote:
Hi Karlos,

Whatever you decide, it might be worth waiting to see what Redrumloa is cooking up presently.

Do you get "kick-backs" or something?!   :lol:

:lol:

I was merely reflecting on the recent posts he's made about getting higher performance out of the machine via some tweaks he's working on.

Hey Red, any chance of a free Prometheus? And an A4K to go with it. Aw, go on, you know you want to :-D

[Karlos]

@Hyperspeed

You can't love the Picasso-IV and dislike PCI at the same time. How do you think all the add-ons for this card are connected?

AFAIK, it's a PCI bus. It might not have the PCI slot's physical form (just like my BVision), but its still PCI bus logic.

[Karlos]

Brian wrote:

PCI do belong on the Amiga, it was planned for the next gen Amiga even in the Commodore days...

Indeed. The erstwhile Mr. Haynie was rather excited at the prospect in the day as I recall. And there is no way BoingBoss can argue with Big Dave when it comes to classic amiga hardware ;-)

[Karlos]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Damnit!

Tell me what differentiates an Amiga from your average PC!

If you need us to answer that for you, it's clear you are missing the point totally.

Is it not the video capability out of the box? What does a Mediator do? It flushes your video capability down the toilet.

No it doesn't - not even close. I know of many people here who route their native video straight into an inexpensive "generic" TV card on their "generic" PCI expansion bus and with their "generic" drivers are perfectly happy watching native video on their "generic" flickefree SVGA compatible monitors :-P

If you want to use classic chipset software, video genlock and toaster etc. how do you manage with all these generic PC cards in your machine with their generic drivers.

Well perhaps now you know the answer. Also, if you are so keen on your video work, what is stopping you using a dual head display with your native video going via all your genlock etc into a professional PAL display and have your OS and apps running on your graphics card?

This isn't the evolution Dave Haynie would have wanted, this is going down the slippery slope of the Ateo Bus (albeit in PCI as opposed to ISA). And look what happened to that lump of cr@p!

The PCI expansion busses available at present are nothing like the ateobus. Dave Haynie recognised that PCI offers everything a bus needed to build a better Amiga, faster and cheaper than the Zorro III standard. Get over yourself already.

My advice to all who want to enjoy the most out of their Amiga is to get a Picasso-IV. There aren't many around so if you are serious then make someone a serious offer.

As I already said, the Picasso-IV uses PCI for its expansion capabilities. Do you really think the modules it offers are based on Zorro?

Yes get a Picasso-IV - it was the king of amiga graphics cards in it's day and nobody in their right mind will pretend otherwise.

Alas we are no longer in those days. Why pay a fortune for an old, slow chipset and pay more for equally dated and hard to find expansions for it (all of which are connected via PCI anyway), when you can get a PCI busboard and shove your own choice of cards for sound, video, TV, networking, USB etc., all of which are far more powerful than their Picasso-IV module equivalents into it?