CybervisionPPC, should I buy one?

[Corrie]

I have an A4000T, Cyberstorm MKIII @ 66Mhz, 128Mb RAM, IOBlix, PicassoIV.

I am looking at buy a CybervisionPPC gfx card for the right price. I do not want to go to the expense of buying PCI daughterboard and expanding with a voodoo card.

Therefore, could you all please tell me what you know about the CybervisionPPC card, speed? problems? positives? compatibility etc? All info would be great!

[Karlos]

That depends on what you want to use it for.

The permedia2 is good for 2D but if 3D gaming is important to you, a voodoo 3 or voodoo 5 may be a better choice.

The permedia doesn't have a full 3D feature set, so you'll get monochrome lighting in games like quake 2, little things like that. Also, most voodoo cards come equipped with more memory than the 8Mb of the CVisionPPC.

On the software front, for the time being you'll have to stick to CyberGfx.

I have a BVision and ame happy enough with it and haven't noticed any huge incompatibilites - I'd expect a CVision to be the same...

There are benefits to a PCI expansion aside from gfx cards, but you do seem to be well kitted out for expansons already.

[Corrie]

I heard that the screen swapping is alot faster then the picassoIV because of the 8mb, is this true?

I basically would like a faster native card that will be better then the picassoiv for surfing the net, playing some games. I do like quake, so how bad is the monochrome lighting? Overall I just feel that I need a faster gfx card for my amiga.

Would I get some more speed playing payback?

[Effy]

I have got a CV64/3D from my old A1230 but at this time it's not being used. Would the 3D part in the card do anything better in gaming than the Picasso IV ?? Just wondering.
Besides that, on Ebay it's not too difficult to get a Voodoo3 2000 16 Mb for 10 to 12 euro ... but then you do need to get the PCI busboard at full price ...

[SilvrDrgn]

Corrie wrote:
I heard that the screen swapping is alot faster then the picassoIV because of the 8mb, is this true?

I believe that the CV-PPC also has 8MB of memory, so that wouldn't make any difference.  In my opinion, the PicassoIV should be slower because it's on the Zorro bus whereas the CV-PPC is on the local bus of the CyberStorm accelerator (faster data transfer rates).  Screen swapping only slows down when you have multiple screens open that use more than the 8MB.  Then it has to swap screens into/out of Fast RAM.  The CV-PPC is definitely worth buying.

[JKD]

Sure..buy my spare CVPPC!

For what it's worth I've had maybe 3 generations of gfx cards in my Amigas and the CVPPC is the superior.

1. Extra memory - faster screen swaps
2. Best compatability - more so if you use CGFX4
3. Highest rez/refresh rates
4. Fastest bus speed

I have a PIV but it gets used only for the flicker fixer and when I wish to view PAL video from my UK videocam (I have a Paloma module). This is not often due to the pain of reboot/switch to P96.

email me (jkd_steve@mac.com) and we can talk a good price if you are in the US?

Steve

[seer]

I used to have an A4000 with CyberstormPPC and a CybervisionPPC (Ok, still have her.. In several pieces)

The CVPPC is a good card, even considering it's age, tho you may have some trouble putting it inside your A4000 (Then again, since it's a T model, maybe not).

It gives a good display, with high resolution with a good refresh rate depending on the monitor used. It's also pretty easy to adjust the refresh rates and screenmodes yourself (I don't mean setting the screenmode in the preferences, I mean making your own screenmode.. If you want a 660*540 or something screenmode, then you can try to make it with the software provided), tho I'm not certain wheter this is because of CyberGFX, or the chipset...

On the negative side, only supported by CyberGFX, no P96 drivers (AFAIK), and no default pass through, and the one made by P5 isn't all that good, IMHO..

Anyway, I never regretted buying one...

[MikesterBrau]

   I had just about the same setup you are proposing, a 4000T from Escom era made by that company in Florida whose name suddenly escapes me, with OS 3.9, Cstorm MK III PPC, Picasso IV running P96 and I transitioned to Cybergraphics and CyberVision.  First of all find a CyberVision card was very difficult and the instalation in the 4000T case is a bit tricky.  If Villagetronic had gotten the Voodoo module out for the PIV I would probably still be using it, but I did go to the CVision and found it to be a good upgrade though you MUST get the newest Cybergraphics update to use it with OS 3.9 or you will be in a real fix.  I did not feel like it was much faster but it did support the higher resolustion and use with a 19" monitor better and for the most part I am glad I did it though I still have a HUGE respect for the PIV card.  Another factor in my decision was that the Concierto card did not work under OS 3.9 and the PIV has a pretty large footprint in the Zorro Config space.  With the PIV in, some of my other Zorro cards had to go in a certain order or they would not work, the CVision alleviated this somewhat though my Power Flyer Gold IDE card was still a bit tempermental especially with my IO Blix with an Ethernet add on.  Ok, the point being without the Picasso it seemd to free up some config space.  Good luck with whatever decision you make.

 :-D