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Author Topic: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.  (Read 3039 times)

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Offline Karlos

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« on: July 31, 2004, 07:41:32 PM »
BVision and mediator together? Not heard of anybody using that combo before :-?
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Offline Karlos

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2004, 10:51:13 PM »
@lempkee

I guess you need to not only have a PCI graphics card physically connected but also use it for any of the PCI stuff to work. Ultimately, that would require P96 as your RTG and hence using the BVision would be more or less out of the question (well, almost, anyway)...
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Offline Karlos

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2004, 02:07:54 PM »
@Brian

Don't underestimate the performance of the BVision when used with the right drivers...

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2004, 06:52:07 PM »
@brian

I have a voodoo3000 in a mediator system here (on a 28MHz 68040) and a BVision on another machine with a 25MHz 68040.

When it comes to sheer Warp3D rendering speed (on the 68K side  at least) as defined by vertex array triangle/sec, the Permedia2 flattens the Voodoo3000 - but only with right driver ;-)

On a 50MHz 68060 based BPPC, the same 68K driver outpaced A CSPPC 060 + Mediator4000/Voodoo4500 ;-)

What difference it makes to games is hard to tell since only a fraction of the time is spent in the renderer...

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Offline Karlos

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2004, 12:15:19 PM »
Agreed. However, I'm specifically talking about tests that were carried out at 640x480 in 16-bit RGB.

The thing is that we never even reach the fill rate of either chipset on 680x0. The setup code (yes, after you've transformed your triangle list) is still expensive - there is a lot of steps required between reading a vertex array and writing the chip specific data. Then there is the physical bus speed which ultimately puts a wall on how fast the chip specific data can be fed to the GPU. On a system where your CPU power is very high, this last factor is decisive.

Imagine, for the sake of argument, each full vertex definition requires 32 bytes of data (coordinates, colour, texture coordinates, fog value etc).

There are 3 unique vertices per triangle. The Maximum write bandwidth of the BVision on a 25MHz 68040 is about 10M/s (was 18M/s on 060 which crucified the Mediator4000)

This gives us 10*1024*1024/32 = 327680 vertices/sec, which is 109227 triangles/sec limit. The Permedia2's delta unit can actually handle 800,000 triangles/sec as long as you can feed it quickly enough. Yes, the fill rate is low for the permedia2, only 43M/pix sec for fully shaded/textured/depth buffered (double that for non depth buffered) but in realistic applications you dont get close to this limit.

You can see, however, the P2 is already underutilised. You will only run into the fill rate limitation for large screen sizes, which due to the 8M RAM limit are impractical for 3D anyway.

The Voodoo3000, of course can handle way more than this. However, it too is limited by the physical bus speed (especially on 680x0/Mediator). Typical 68040 VRAM write speed is 7M/s on my loaned 28MHz 68040/Mediator1200/Voodoo3000 system. Thats already 30% lower than a slightly slower CPU on the BPPC.

Both cards are underutilised, but the voodoo is underutilised more than the Permedia2. Especially considering the voodoo hardware can do multitexturing in a single pass but is not yet supported at a driver level (to the best of my knowledge).

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Offline Karlos

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Re: Mediator with Bvision PPC issues, HELP is needed.
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2004, 07:14:37 PM »
@brian

-edit-

Hehe, were getting pretty off topic. But...

-/edit-

Both my test systems are 68040. The Mediator/Voodoo3000 is 3MHz faster and has faster RAM access than the 040 on the BPPC .

Of course, comparing a 68060 to a 68040 is totally unfair when you consider we are really talking about the speed of the driver setup code (far less of an issue on 060) and the bus speed (060 at 50MHz naturally should have faster access than 25MHz 040).

Your CSPPC/060 + Voodoo3 is of course a faster system overall - faster CPU(s), faster GPU compared to your BPPC/040 + BVision. For games and such, differences at the driver level are totally eclipsed by the other operations the CPU has to perform. The 060 runs rings around an 040.
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