Using VRAM as fast ram?

[slaapliedje]

Probably just put in version 9.7 or 10 of PCI.library and reboot.

There's a version 10 of pci.library out?

For the question of how to get fast ram to show up at the top of the screen.  I could be wrong, but I think OS3.9 supports it.  If not, maybe it's something else already mentioned, but I know ClassicWB for 3.9 has it, as does Amikit for Real.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Ah, that makes sense, Danbeaver.  It's too bad that no one has been able to get a Mesa/Warp3D driver using the Radeon cards.  Granted I may be talking out of my ass about this, I have no clue how hard it'd be, but it seems that with the 9250 having been working great in Linux, some of that code may be useful in getting that.

But then I think.. besides maybe getting Quake 1 and 2 working with hardware acceleration, would there be much benefit?  I don't know if any of the 3D rendering software for the Amiga would use it.

I've read about some wrappers, but I don't think they work with the Radeon... unless of course you're running OS4.x.  In fact, from what I read somewhere, if you're running OS3.x, Voodoo is the way to get Warp3D, or if you're running OS4.1, Radeon, because one doesn't work in the other.  Unfortunately Voodoo cards are extremely expensive (at least the ones you'd want for an Amiga.)

Too Bad I couldn't use my Voodoo 1 or two cards that I think I still have ha ha.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Ha ha, I was just looking at the cards on eBay, there is still (pretty sure it's the same one that's been there for years) a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI card for $400...  Maybe I'll look into getting a Voodoo 3 2 or 3000 (seems there's both on ebay right now, though one a bit more pricey than I want to spend right now.)  

It'd be nice if someone had gotten 3D acceleration on the Radeon 92xx cards for OS3.x  It looked at one point like someone was going to work on it, but it was a few years back and I didn't see any downloads for it.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Ha ha, earlier this morning I received the amiga-mediator mailing list post saying that pci.library 9.9 has been released.  It supposedly auto-adds the VRAM from the Radeons that have the 2x128mb banks like my card does.  I think I was messing around with medconfig and set it to 128mb so it'd get the full 128mb from the second bank, so hopefully when I get home, I'll end up with 356mb+128mb of fast ram!

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

I just tried the new pci.library version 9.9, but it didn't add any extra ram yet.  I only just copied it over though, so I'm guessing that there is a newer version of medconfig that comes with the 2.2 update that Elbox released.

I'll have to check Amibay to see if I can find a Voodoo card.  It's not like anything on the Amiga would even utilize the second GPU, isn't it basically the first 'SLI' on a single card?  I remember that's where Nvidia got the SLI tech from, when they bought 3Dfx.  It was nice when there were 3 or 4 different competitors in the video card market.  Now you basically have ATI/AMD or Nvidia if you want to do any serious 3D with Intel lagging way behind.  Then you have a few other less known ones for embedded systems.  Then there is Matrox who used to totally rock, and at one point in time was rumored to be in the 'New Amigas!!! OMG!" but of course we know how that went...

I also notice there is a huge difference in price and availability between US ebay and UK ebay.  Guess I live in the wrong country for being an Amiga fan.

slaapliedje