Save Scening with AAA

[Atheist]

A new custom Amiga with AAA could be made.

When AInc, sell enough A1s, all they need to do is make a custom high speed PCI audio/video display card with AAA capabilities, backward compatable to AGA and  OCS/ECS. It would have to be a multiple of 7.12 and not make a 320.4MHz, 356 MHz, and 384.48MHz model, but only 1 type to maintain a common standard for games and demos to work on.

Amiga! We need standards.

[Bodie]

Why would you want AAA when you could have a brand spanking new video and sound card?  

AAA would have been nice back in 93 and 94,  but a bit out of date  now ;-) .

Cheers
 :pint:  :pint:

[downix]

Bodie wrote:
Why would you want AAA when you could have a brand spanking new video and sound card?  

AAA would have been nice back in 93 and 94,  but a bit out of date  now ;-) .

Cheers
 :pint:  :pint:

Well... yes and no.  AAA does have some advantages in design, and could actually be brought up to spec nowadays.  Fortinately, it was designed using an HDL, which means you can update the design far easier than the classical schematic approach.  Replace that VRAM with DDR-II RAM, increase the clock, you've got options.

However, it is still a 2D chipset.  Sound support kicks anything Creative Labs has in the teeth (99.6khz audio here guys) and with the higher-speed, it would actually not be too difficult to modify the disk controller to Serial ATA support.  

But, it's 2D... unless you pull what Commodore was attempting with Hombre.  Integrate a high-end processor into the chipset to act as a 3D accelerator, add in a texture pipeline, etc.  But then, you're talking a whole-scale re-design which would take 12-14 months to accomplish, providing you use an odd-the-shelf processor core.  (I could recommend a few)

So, a year+, we'd end up with a very programmable chipset that would be able to compete with the big boys in a real way.  Maybe not on polygon count, but definately in programmability and quality of output.

Pity Amiga, Inc is only interested in software.

[yssing]

Pity Amiga, Inc is only interested in software.

Not even that, but only interested in DE...

[Darth_X]

Not even that, but only interested in DE

DE on PocketPC?

 :-?

[yssing]

IF only ever they finish DE or anything else for the matter..

[gregthecanuck]

Hi there - this is my first post so be gentle with me... might as well dive right in ... :-P .... what are you guys thinking???

The graphics card market is so cut-throat and rapidly evolving who would want to waste their time developing a custom graphics chip set?  This kind of R&D money is better spent developing abstractions for off-the-shelf cards.  Way, way cheaper and a better end-result.

Same idea goes for sound cards.  Creative's newest Audigy 2 has pretty good specs (192Khz, 24bit) and even supports 5.1/6.1 sound.  Also includes a built-in firewire port - all for 100 bucks on eBay.

Custom hardware is dead, dead, dead.

The better path is to take the best hardware out there and do a great job making it all work together.

OK, flame away - I can't wait for my first flame....  ;-)

[Karlos]

OK, Here's a thought ;-)

Lets create a virtual custom chipset for the forthcoming A1/Pegasos. It could comprise a 2D/3D pixel-shader GPU, complete with its own small instruction set, running on top of existing hardware. Use a similar approach for a virtual audio processor.

Whatever isn't directly hardware supported would have to be software emulated by the virtual chipset. That would suck up all the spare cpu cycles and give meaningful constraints to those who relish coding within hardware/speed limitations...

BTW, I'm not totally serious :lol:

Still, it could be a fun project just to create the thing in the first place.

[Atheist]

@ Greg the Canuck
Hi, nice day eh? Tuesday morning, anyhow.

What they should do is make a card with multiple chips on it, then just pick (in SW) the one you want to use.

Put the Fatter Agnus (make a 32 or 64 or 128 meg chip ram version), and AGA (32 chip+) on there for absolute backwards compatability. Then, make a custom, or select a current, maybe the Ti4600, for 3d. But, whatever they choose as the 3d chip. Make a commitment to ONLY USE IT for 3 or 4 years, not keep using a different one every 4 or 5 months. Then, software that is written will run, just about identically, on any Amiga.

BTW: Same goes for sound.

Amiga! We need a standard, so we should use the best one, AOS 4.0!

[odin]

And why would it be better than using of the shelf hardware :-?.

[kengur]

In a time when CommodoreUK was potential buyer of CBM International, there was an idea (don`t know who`s) about creating a PC graphics card based on AAA chipset. I have to say that I`ve never seen better video output (color quality, image sharpness), than AGA`s and I`ll miss AGA in AmigaONE.

[mikeymike]

Erm, I'm confused.  After abandoning much of the legacy that would hold Amiga hardware development back, why would we want it back later?  So we can play Stunt Car Racer in hardware instead of perfectly feasable software emulation?

[mikeymike]

@ kengur

In a time when CommodoreUK was potential buyer of CBM International, there was an idea (don`t know who`s) about creating a PC graphics card based on AAA chipset. I have to say that I`ve never seen better video output (color quality, image sharpness), than AGA`s and I`ll miss AGA in AmigaONE.

What?!?  Have you ever cleaned the 6 inches of dust off the monitor of the PC to check your theory?

You must have used some of the worst PC graphics cards ever made.  Every Matrox card I've used has excellent 2D output, the Creative GeForce 4's 2D output quality is as good as Matrox's... I can't say I've noted the colour quality or sharpness of AGA chipset output as particularly great compared to the competition I've seen it against, although that is unfair as the first time I saw AGA was around 1997, at which time PC graphics cards were waaaaay ahead.

If you stand by what you're saying, you seriously need your eyes tested, or need to use some decent PC kit :-)

[downix]

gregthecanuck wrote:
Hi there - this is my first post so be gentle with me... might as well dive right in ... :-P .... what are you guys thinking???

The graphics card market is so cut-throat and rapidly evolving who would want to waste their time developing a custom graphics chip set?  This kind of R&D money is better spent developing abstractions for off-the-shelf cards.  Way, way cheaper and a better end-result.

Same idea goes for sound cards.  Creative's newest Audigy 2 has pretty good specs (192Khz, 24bit) and even supports 5.1/6.1 sound.  Also includes a built-in firewire port - all for 100 bucks on eBay.

Custom hardware is dead, dead, dead.

The better path is to take the best hardware out there and do a great job making it all work together.

OK, flame away - I can't wait for my first flame....  ;-)

You say custom hardware is dead... then go on to mention custom hardware as an alternative.  Can you please explain this to me?

The Audigy2 is such a custom chip solution.

"But I can buy it off the shelf, or on eBay."

So?  Doesn't mean that it was not custom-designed by Creative Labs.

Custom chips are designed and sold everyday.  In fact, they out-weigh non-custom designs by an order of magnitude.  ATI, nVidia, even Intel and AMD make a living designing their own lineup of custom designed chips.

Now, if you ment "a chipset custom-made for the Amiga market" then I might agree with you, that it might be a bad option, unless you can guarantee a competitive edge that way.

See, hardware has an absurd amount of overhead nowadays.  Do you honestly think that a G4 costs $200+ to make out of a $45 wafer and $10 per chip fabbing cost?  If you custom design a solution to eliminate the high-overhead components in a system, you can actually make a competitive solution.  The game console makers do this all of the time.  What prevents a PS2 from becoming a desktop computer?  The software.

So, someone could make a custom solution that could actually deliver something of an edge to the Amiga market.  Note, I said could.  Will it occur, not likely.

[kengur]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I was saying about TV output. I work on a small TV station which used to use Amigas for output before PCs with ATI cards came here. The point is that ATI just can not match AGA`s image quality. Maybe Amiga`s TV modulator is better than one in ATI`s card. Or maybe Win2000 can`t make the most out of ATI.