Picasso II decreasing the speed of my 030 card.

[AmigaNut08]

Hi,
 I have slowly been putting together an A2000 and i noticed the performance a little sluggish when switching to a Picasso screen mode. I ran sysinfo and it reports my GVP Combo card (030@25Mhz) is running at 1 mips. I remember it running near 5 mips before i installed the Picasso card, so i took out the card and tried sysinfo again, and all was ok. The card shows near 5 mips. Why would the Picasso card be slowing the CPU down??? Ok before i end this i better let you in on the A2000 setup.

 A2000 rev6.4 mobo, GVP combo card 030@25Mhz scsi and 1 meg ram, Toccata sound card, Quicknet Ethernet card, Dataflyer memory card configured to 4meg of ram and the Picasso II with 2 meg of ram.

 The Picasso 2 is in the zorro slot closest to the GVP combo card. I am running WB3.1 and have installed CyberGraphX V4 drivers for the Picasso card. The Picasso card runs perfect and displays all 8, 16, and 24bit screen modes on an 19" LG crt. Sysinfo reports the CPU as an 030 but the speed is only 1mips. I have also ran speed tests using AIBB, and that also shows the CPU as an 030 but the speed not much more than an A500. As i said above, once the Picasso II is taken out, Sysinfo reports the correct cpu speed.

Would changing zorro slots make a difference?? I was going to try this but i did not have time because of other commitments.

[terminator4]

Its using the memory isn't it? (yes).  That memory is not 32 bit and slower.
Setup your workbench t o use fast memory not in graphics (Agnus).  Also, see if you can disable Picasso 2 segmented memory via jumper.
When I owned Picasso 2, I disabled set the jumper to off to obtain proper speedup plus 16 mb RAM.
pointless to use gvp030 with 1mb ram.   it kills me why people never spend the money on gvp memory sticks - they are faster &  performance is noticable...like everything in life there is a price to pay ...  sounds like you are out of memory-thats why its slow...

[QuikSanz]

Hi,

A DKB MegaChip wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Chris

[AmigaNut08]

Its using the memory isn't it? (yes).  That memory is not 32 bit and slower.
Setup your workbench t o use fast memory not in graphics (Agnus).  Also, see if you can disable Picasso 2 segmented memory via jumper.
When I owned Picasso 2, I disabled set the jumper to off to obtain proper speedup plus 16 mb RAM.
pointless to use gvp030 with 1mb ram.   it kills me why people never spend the money on gvp memory sticks - they are faster &  performance is noticable...like everything in life there is a price to pay ...  sounds like you are out of memory-thats why its slow...

Thanks for your reply. I dont think the card is running in segmented mode as there is no jumper on the card, I had to set the Datafler ram from 8 to 4 meg as it had issues with the Picasso because of the 8meg bottleneck with the zorro slots, also i believe that segmented mode does not work with the CyberGraphX V4 driver.

 Yes i know the GVP 030 is pointless with only 1 meg of ram but i have other projects (car related) that i need lots and lots more money till they are complete. I do plan on getting the maximum amount of ram (only takes another 12meg) fitted to the GVP very soon though. In the meantime the system has a total of 6 meg of ram. 1meg chip and 5 meg fast. This is enough for the moment as i only just installed WB 3.1 with only drivers installed for the Toccata, GVP, and the Picasso.  Once the A2000 boots up, i have a total of 5 meg (1 meg chip and 4 meg fast)to play with. Once i choose a Picasso screenmode, lets say 16bit 1024x768 with 65k colours,i have a total of 1meg chip and 3.1 meg fast left. There is plenty of ram left over. Maybe the left over ram has to be 32bit directly attached to the GVP and not comming from the Dataflyer as this is 16 bit??? BTW is it normal that the Picasso sucks 1 meg fast ram when this card has 2 meg installed already?

Cheers

[spirantho]

I'd imagine it's not the Picasso II but CGX 4 that's bagging the fastest 1MB of RAM it can find on startup, leaving everything else to be on the very slow Dataflyer RAM.
Fill your accelerator with RAM and everything should fly as it should!

[save2600]

When I had a Picasso II on my A2500 setup, I did not (and still don't) like Cybergrafx drivers. Try installing the latest Picasso96 driver and see if that helps speed things up. It is true though that the computer will seem sluggish with an 030, especially when using a lot of colours. It's been advised that an 030 is a minimum configuration when using graphics cards.

[chiark]

Re: Megachip: what advantage would that give speed-wise when the guy's running Picasso screenmodes?

I'm confused...

As above, check you're not running in segmented, get rid of the 4MB Zorro memory and invest in more for the GVP

Haven't we had this conversation elsewhere?

[AmigaNut08]

When I had a Picasso II on my A2500 setup, I did not (and still don't) like Cybergrafx drivers. Try installing the latest Picasso96 driver and see if that helps speed things up. It is true though that the computer will seem sluggish with an 030, especially when using a lot of colours. It's been advised that an 030 is a minimum configuration when using graphics cards.

Yes sometime this week i am going to give it a try with the latest Picasso96 drivers. I'll order some GVP ram from software hut as well next month as that will help get the most out of the already struggling 030.  

Cheers

[Matt_H]

SysInfo isn't a very good benchmark tool and the readings you're getting might not be accurate. Try a different benchmark program with/without the Picasso and see what happens.

[AmigaNut08]

Re: Megachip: what advantage would that give speed-wise when the guy's running Picasso screenmodes?

I'm confused...

As above, check you're not running in segmented, get rid of the 4MB Zorro memory and invest in more for the GVP

Haven't we had this conversation elsewhere?

Yes i would like to know what a advantages a Megachip will give also??
 I am going to invest in some GVP ram next month. In the mean time i will play around with other drivers and see which ones work best.

[AmigaNut08]

SysInfo isn't a very good benchmark tool and the readings you're getting might not be accurate. Try a different benchmark program with/without the Picasso and see what happens.

 Hi Matt,
 I have also tried AIBB and that reports the CPU being an 030 but without the performance. It does report that the 16bit ram (that being zorro based) will impact the cards performance. If i take the Picasso out, the GVP performs as it should. As spirantho said earlier, i believe the CyberGraphX V4 drivers are sucking the GVP ram right from the start and leaving me with only the 4 meg of slow zorro ram.

[Matt_H]

As spirantho said earlier, i believe the CyberGraphX V4 drivers are sucking the GVP ram right from the start and leaving me with only the 4 meg of slow zorro ram.

Ah, I overlooked that part of the conversation. There are a few things you can try to verify that. First, try booting without a startup sequence (so the CGX drivers don't get loaded) and run the benchmark again. Also try checking the priorities of your various memory nodes. I don't know if loading CGX into Zorro II RAM instead would make things any better (I suspect it won't), but you can try it by putting this early in your startup-sequence.

[AmigaNut08]

@Matt
 
 Yes thats a good idea. I'll try that next time i stuff about with it. At the moment i just dont have time. Maybe on the weekend as i dont have a permanent place for the A2000 until i clear my A500 setup and hooking everything up just for a few minutes is getting to be a pain.

BTW i am now focused on getting my MP3@64 to work in my A1200 as i just received the clock port extension cable from Amiga Kit tonight.  

Cheers

[terminator4]

When I had a Picasso II on my A2500 setup, I did not (and still don't) like Cybergrafx drivers. Try installing the latest Picasso96 driver and see if that helps speed things up. It is true though that the computer will seem sluggish with an 030, especially when using a lot of colours. It's been advised that an 030 is a minimum configuration when using graphics cards.

Yeah, 68030 with resolution of 1024x768 and 16bit or 24 bit display will be slow.   Especially if redrawing icons etc.  Try going to lower resolution to see if there's performance improvement.  (say 640x480 and 800x600).  The 68030 is slowish redrawing the icons (ok i'm spoiled by 68060 that does the icons in an instant) and any images will eat away from ram too.