PCI gfx card owners on Amiga, please l@@k

[Corrie]

Can I get some feedback from Amiga owners who have expanded with PCI slots and using a PCI gfx card on their Amiga? I would like to know how fast the Voodoo PCI gfx cards are on the Amiga? Does someone have a syspeed module they could make for me to compare? Could someone please give me a detailed rundown of the pros and cons of the PCI gfx cards on Amiga?

[Rob]

I have a Mediator 1200 + Voodoo 3.

Some of the Pros:

Higher resolutions (upto 1600x1200 and higher).
8, 16, 24 an 32-bit color.
Faster screen updates than AGA.
No flickery interlace.
16MB grahpics ram.
Chipram is left free for aother purposes.
3D hardware rendering.

The only con I can think of is having to use two monitors.  I solved
this buy buying a scandoubler and monitor switcher.

I'd recomend a scandoubler without a flicker fixer because you'll have
a flicker free graphics card for all your apps.

I currently run Workbench in 1024x768x16 @ 91Hz and never look back.

I'll leave to someone else to sort out the benchmarks.

[Damion]

I don't own a Mediator, but I did some of my
own benchmarks comparing AGA to the Voodoo...
even with the Voodoo at 1024x768x32 it
totally blows away AGA (this is on a "software
tuned" '060/66). The graphics on a slow
'040 with Voodoo 3 are even much faster than
AGA on an '060. There are some benchmarks on
Elbox's site somewhere.

Also I'm assuming that a Voodoo 5 would even
be faster.

[Corrie]

I have an Amiga 4000T, Cyberstorm 060 66mhz, 128mb ram, PicassoIV gfx card and 9gig scsi drive.
I have a 19" monitor and the picassoiv just isn't fast enough... thats why I am looking at a voodoo 5500 or something like that. Does it speed up Quake and Doom etc?

[Acill]

I own an A3000 with a CS mk III 060 and a voodoo 3, 3000 on my mediator. I wrote an article for Amitopia that is published at Elbox's site now as well with P96speed benchmarks in it. I have to tell you its way faster and it saves all your chip RAM for other things. I have 2MB of chip ram all the time when running things. Its a fantastic setup and I recomend it 100%

[Effy]

Mediator vs Z4. Have got a CV64/3D with also 1024x768 on my 19" monitor. It's also cool but I also wanna go faster all the time. Is the Mediator really so much faster than Zorro cards or is it just a lot faster than AGA ?? And about that gfx memory, if you have a 16 Mb Voodoo3, are those 16 Mb also used as Fast Memory ?? Can you in theory only use the memory on your gfx card(s) ?? I have read that memory on gfx cards is megafast compared to Edo or Simm memory, so in a way to boost speed it seems better to have a gfx card with 64 Mb and a slower processor than a superfast processor with 'only' Edo memory ?!

[JurassicCamper]

A1200. Mediator and Voodoo 3 3000 / Haupagge TV
OS3.9 / Picasso96 V2

Excellent but a few problems.
Cool things like having TV as your backdrop / Windows.

**Occasional** Graphics Trashing when you have too many screens open. (more than 3 1024*768*16) screens.

Graphic Trashing when using SuperTV on full screen then Amiga+M back to workbench.
Opening a window will result in all the contects of the window being trashed.

[xeron]

Elbox's Voodoo drivers are really good! Intuition really benefits from 2D hardware acceleration from the Voodoo's blitter. Your applications really get a kick up the backside in terms of responsiveness.

Going from a CV64/3D in Zorro III to a Voodoo 3 in Mediator 4000 was a really big noticable leap.

[ikir]

My Mediator+voodoo3 works nice!

Don't buy a voodoo5, but a voodoo3, because it has the 3d drivers.

[PulsatingQuasar]

I have a 19" monitor and the picassoiv just isn't fast enough... thats why I am looking at a voodoo 5500 or something like that. Does it speed up Quake and Doom etc?

Probably not much. I don't know how fast a PicassoIV is but your CPU really will be the bottleneck with Quake and Quake 2.
Your Workbench speed will probably be greatly enhanced.

I have a BVisionPPC connected to my BlizzardPPC. I use 1024x768 16-bit color. One of the best things I have done to my Amiga 1200.
Mind you, the Permedia 2 is crap on 3D. Not enough fill-rate so a Voodoo 3 is obviously beter.

Maybe I will get myself a Grex with a Voodoo 3!!!
Who has one on this list???

[xeron]

Probably not much. I don't know how fast a PicassoIV is but your CPU really will be the bottleneck with Quake and Quake 2.

Actually, GLQuake and Quake 2 will get a tremendous speed boost through Warp3D compared to the software only option of using a PicassoIV.

On my 50Mhz 68060, ClickBOOM Quake only becomes playable in a small-ish window with 2x2 pixels, however GLQuake gets reasonable frame rates in all modes from 320x240 right up to 1024x768 (640x480 being about the best mode to use on my setup).

[Corrie]

PulsatingQuasar wrote:

I have a BVisionPPC connected to my BlizzardPPC. I use 1024x768 16-bit color. One of the best things I have done to my Amiga 1200.
Mind you, the Permedia 2 is crap on 3D. Not enough fill-rate so a Voodoo 3 is obviously beter.

Maybe I will get myself a Grex with a Voodoo 3!!!
Who has one on this list???

So if you run the 060 version of Quake on your system, how does the blizzardvisionppc card go in performance?

What sort of software would support my 060 and take advantage of a 3d gfx card like the voodoo for example?

[Corrie]

Tickly wrote:

Probably not much. I don't know how fast a PicassoIV is but your CPU really will be the bottleneck with Quake and Quake 2.

Actually, GLQuake and Quake 2 will get a tremendous speed boost through Warp3D compared to the software only option of using a PicassoIV.

On my 50Mhz 68060, ClickBOOM Quake only becomes playable in a small-ish window with 2x2 pixels, however GLQuake gets reasonable frame rates in all modes from 320x240 right up to 1024x768 (640x480 being about the best mode to use on my setup).

Does GLQuake take advantage of the CybervisionPPC gfx card? I am really needing some more gfx speed... even surfing the web I would like to have some more speed.

[jj]

glquakewos flies on a bvision, u can run it happily at 800X600 and it looks sweet