Best graphics solution for an A2000.

[rattlehead]

Well I have to admit I went with the Picasso IV solution when my system was new and I never regretted it.  Sure I did feel a little quizy when it came to snapping the scandoubler unit from the card..... LOL.  But I love the look and feel I get from my system.  I know it doesn't have AGA support, but remember this is an A2000 not a A1200 or A4000.  I like my P-IV card and it makes my Classic Amiga look modern.

Rattlehead.

A2000 Rev. 6.2.
GVP 030 / GVP 4008 SCSI Max'd Ram / Bhudda IDE / IO-Blix / Picasso IV.  Maybe an 060 Board Someday.

[save2600]

cv643d wrote:
Even with 060, Zorro 2 is slooooooooooooow..

(Ok, its not so bad if you run WB in 8 colors with no background image).

I totally and wholeheartedly disagree here. I have a fancy background image, the WBclock, taskbar and run my WB at 1024x768 and 16-bits depth. Not slow at all. My A2500 setup down below is snappier in many ways to my iMacG5 2.1ghz/2.5gb/OS10.5 system. Moving icons around, opening files and even surfing the web *can* and usually *is* faster on my Amiga. Oh and the Miggy boots in about 40 seconds. Not sure what you mean by an 060/Zorro 2 being slooooooow. Unless you mean opening up a large .jpg file. Yeah, that can take a few seconds, but so can 'preview' on my Mac system.

Amiga's Amp player when playing .mp3's is about the only real disappointment or complaint I have. That does slow the system down and big time. Oh well. Guess I'll pop a CD in and get much better fidelity instead  :-)  

In fact, I recently demo'd my Miggy to a few friends. Ran it through some typical work related paces which included visiting some familiar sites of theirs. Needless to say, ALL of them were impressed with the speed of my system compared to the modern PC's they are used to using. Some commented that my computer brought up pages faster than their Pentium IV's w/ much fancier graphics cards. That includes Java scripted pages and Ram: cached images & pages.

[doctorq]

Amiga's Amp player when playing .mp3's is about the only real disappointment or complaint I have. That does slow the system down and big time. Oh well. Guess I'll pop a CD in and get much better fidelity instead

Get a MAS MP3 player, and the load is off your 060. Alternatively a MP3@64 to connect to your X-Surf card.

Sorry for hijacking.

[Damion]

cv643d wrote:
Even with 060, Zorro 2 is slooooooooooooow..

(Ok, its not so bad if you run WB in 8 colors with no background image).

That's BS. :-P My cards benchmark almost identical whether Z2 or Z3, a least with normal size screenmodes. 1024x768 or 800x600 (16-bit) is plenty fast. Backdrops load and pop on the screen instantly. Cybergraphics drivers do slow down WB, at least here with either PIV or CV643D and Z2 (slow redraw).

I agree the Picasso II is a nice card, it would make a good pair with an Indivision (rumor is Jens is releasing an A500/A2000 version). Personally I use a CV64/3D+SD in my A2000, it's a nice combo, but the scandoubler doesn't work with all accelerators. (Some introduce nasty interference on the 28MHz signal, eventually b0rking the picture. No problem with my TekMagic and a shielded cable, though.) Also, the CV64/3D scandoubler doesn't flicker-fix.

[Crumb]

@countzero

Zorro 2 is the bottleneck here, not the Cirrus2. It does quite well in 16 bits 800x600. Picasso II is just the right choice for a Z2 system. PIV is overkill.

I notice a lot the slowness when switching the PicassoII from 256colours to 16bits.... it's specially noticeable on intuition menus (and I mean standard ones, not using MagicMenu patches).

That problem happens regardless of using ZorroII or ZorroIII as that Cirrus chip is slow (compared to other gfx cards). Just try out a GVP Spectrum with the same chip in ZorroIII mode and you'll see that it's not instantaneous like a card with a faster blitter like CV64, CV64/3D, PicassoIV...

I agree that it's better than nothing but I would seek a CV3D as it allows higher resolutions and it's way faster.

[pault1]

I'm refurbishing an A2000; it's a Rev6.2, 1Mb + 4Mb on 2 2091 SCSI cards.

I think that is what my A2000 was, maybe a 6.1 mobo, been a while.  I was very happy with its performance with a GVP 040/4MB and onboard SCSI, and a CV643D.  The fast RAM on the 040 was probably the biggest difference - while expansion RAM on the 2091 is significant as you do NOT want to live with just Chip, accelerator-bus RAM is the biggest difference.  If you get the working Progressive accelerator with a lot of fast RAM, do one of the fastblit programs, etc. you will get nice performance.  

I also got comments that my rig loaded most webpages comparably or better to Windows rigs.  I generally ran 1024x768.

It was an interesting contrast to my 1200 which I needed to keep in a non-tower format for the desk where it lived.  So I did a bellyboard '060 with 64MB RAM onboard but used AGA run through a flicker fixer, surfed in 256 colors @800x600, opened pictures in separate windows when I needed more color.  The AGA was definitely the bottleneck there, but still tolerable surfing, the problems were more with browsers lacking modern features.

[matthey]

I would also recommend the CV64/3D on a 2000. It's pretty snappy even with a 68030@50MHz and you get hardware 3D support even if it's not very fast. The CV64/3D overclocked quite nicely for me providing even better resolutions, colors and a little more speed yet. I used with Picasso96 and it was problem free and very stable. I bought a local dual input 22" CRT monitor for less than $100 off E-bay and switch between the inputs from the gfx board and scandoubler with a button on the front of the monitor. It's not as nice as a passthrough but there is no degrading of the signals and a CRT is still the way to go on the Amiga. The CRT handles color, motion, and different display resolutions better than LCD monitors.

P.S.
For extra speed with a gfx board, select SIMPLE REFRESH windows and use FAST ram for windows, in any program options.

[murple]

I used 500, 1000, and 2000 Amigas for a long time before getting an AGA system. They were cool in their day, but the fact is even with a fancy graphics card you won't be able to run all the cool AGA stuff out there. That's a huge drawback in my opinion, moreso than the limitations of the Zorro II bus. There's a lot of real cool AGA stuff.

[rkauer]

 In this case, a Retina Z2 can do the trick.

 It is not fast as the Picasso (II, II+ or IV) or CV64, but it don't waste the precious 8Mb Fast RAM limit that Zorro II bus have.

 Someone may say: it not work with Picasso96 nor CGX (any version). So what? The board have a unique feature, go for it if you see one for sale!

[KatManDEW]

murple wrote:
I used 500, 1000, and 2000 Amigas for a long time before getting an AGA system. They were cool in their day, but the fact is even with a fancy graphics card you won't be able to run all the cool AGA stuff out there. That's a huge drawback in my opinion, moreso than the limitations of the Zorro II bus. There's a lot of real cool AGA stuff.

What cool AGA stuff are you referring to?

I've had an A2000 with Picasso II, Flicker Fixer, and GVP 040 since back in the 80's. I just got my first AGA machine a few weeks ago - an A1200 with Apollo 1240 and Indivision. From what few AGA games I've been able to run with WHDLoad, I haven't seen a single thing that was noticably better looking than games on my A2000.

At this point, I'm half tempted to sell the whole A1200 mess.

[mchaggis]

Thanks to everyone for there valuable input. You all seem to be, on the balance split between the Picasso and Cybervision camps.

It might now just come down to what I can buy.

I might start a new thread: WTB: Best graphics solution for an A2000.

 :lol:

Any Amigans in the Canberra region? Australia.

[stefcep2]

You will find that phase 5 cards work better with CGX 4 than P96:  I've used both RTG systems on both a CV-3d and a CV 64 and CGX is faster, smoother than P96 (on an A4000)

[stefcep2]

@katmandew

caches on the 1240 are probably why you get compatiblity issues with whdload.  tweak some of the game icon tooltypes.

AGA wasn't really taken advantage of by games, but AGA versions still look better than ECS.

Serious software that runs much better on AGA than ECS and for which RTG won't work (or work well) include Dpaint, Brilliance, Scala, and playback of animations.  There isn't anything quite as good as these in RTG.  There are probably others.  

Sure you can use photogenics and ImageFx better on RTG machines, but then a PC will do it better still for less than an RTG Amiga

I still think an A1200 like you have is pretty cool: small form factor, composite out built in, easy to expand, heaps of games.  Its when people turn A1200's into Frankenstein machines- and really all thats being attempted is to create an A4000- that I think people lose it.  i presently have an A4000 with 68060, scsi, CV64, scan doubler, and i use an A1200 with just an 8 meg ram card and a flash card more often:  I love its fast boot off flash card, 100% comaptiblity with my whdload games, my son loves to play with dpaint and scala

[murple]

As far as games, I'd need to look and see which ones I like are AGA. There are some AGA games that were very cool. Honestly my primary game platform is Commodore 64, not Amiga (though there's some great Amiga games). You seem to be suggesting having difficulty running AGA games on your AGA machine with WHDLoad... you might want to ask people about that if so. I've had great luck with WHDLoad, though most AGA games run fine without it on my 1200. Unless you have some floppy only AGA game you want to put on your hard drive, why are you even using WHDLoad for AGA games?

When it comes to demos, though, AGA stomps all over anything ECS could even imagine. There's also a bunch of cool graphics apps for AGA which I don't use, but if you're into that sort of thing a non-AGA machine will hold you back a lot.

After having a 1200 for a while, if I had to go back to using an older Amiga without AGA and the other improvements in the 1200 and 4000, I'd probably give up on my Amiga hobby completely.

[murple]

stefcep2 wrote:
Its when people turn A1200's into Frankenstein machines- and really all thats being attempted is to create an A4000- that I think people lose it.  i presently have an A4000 with 68060, scsi, CV64, scan doubler, and i use an A1200 with just an 8 meg ram card and a flash card more often:  I love its fast boot off flash card, 100% comaptiblity with my whdload games, my son loves to play with dpaint and scala

Problem is that finding some things for a 4000 (better CPU, memory expansion, ethernet, PCMCIA) is difficult to impossible. I have a 4000 that I barely use because I haven't been able to find either a new CPU board better than the '040 one it came with or a way to expand the memory on it. Ethernet would be nice but not critical. The main thing is with the limited memory it has, it can't do very much. If I could get those things it'd be my main home Amiga.

[murple]

mchaggis wrote:
Thanks to everyone for there valuable input. You all seem to be, on the balance split between the Picasso and Cybervision camps.

I had a Cybervision that came with an A2000, I never found any use for it and eventually ended up selling it for about $10, and then putting one of those boards with the flicker fixer circuitry from an A3000 in the video slot. Anything I ever wanted to do on an A2000 would run just fine with just plain ECS. Anything I wanted to do that ECS couldn't, the only solution was AGA. If I still had the Cybervision I would've sent it to you, but oh well... I don't think they're too hard to find. Don't know about Picasso.