Voodoo and Radeon cohabitation

[Gulliver]

According to Elbox, it is possible to have in a mediator board, a Voodoo and a Radeon graphics card working together, at the same time.
Has anyone done it? Have you got any tips, problems and recomendations?
I am thinking of adding a Radeon to my mediator SX + Voodoo 3 3000 setup, but i would like to know first if anyone has had that experience, or knows something about it.

[tokyoracer]

As far as I'm aware, no you can't.
They both require specified drivers and they don't talk to eachother. You 'might' be able to run them at the same time but not in some sort of SLI/CrossFire style configuration. If you can do that then it would seem slightly pointless to me.

[Gulliver]

Good point, let me quote what Elbox says:

The Radeon PCI card can be used in the Mediator systems together with the Voodoo gfx card, which allows work on two (or more) monitors simultaneousely. Here (1) you can see the list of currently supported screen modes in this configuration. In Mediator systems where two gfx cards are installed (Radeon and Voodoo), all DMA buffers are automatically redirected to the Radeon card memory.

(1) http://elbox.com/products/extra_prod/screenmodes.html

[tokyoracer]

Good point, let me quote what Elbox says:

The Radeon PCI card can be used in the Mediator systems together with the Voodoo gfx card, which allows work on two (or more) monitors simultaneousely. Here (1) you can see the list of currently supported screen modes in this configuration. In Mediator systems where two gfx cards are installed (Radeon and Voodoo), all DMA buffers are automatically redirected to the Radeon card memory.

(1) http://elbox.com/products/extra_prod/screenmodes.html

Hmm, quite neat I suppose but if the ATI Radeon 9200 / 9250 has two monitor outputs then what's the need? Unless you want 4 monitors? :insane:
Still, the only advantage of having two different cards running at the same time would be for better compatibility.
Clever how an old system can do this but for me personally, it is slightly pointless.

[Piru]

Hmm, quite neat I suppose but if the ATI Radeon 9200 / 9250 has two monitor outputs then what's the need?

You really want to see the same picture twice?

[Gulliver]

@Piru
I was wondering if there was something interesting to do with it. I only found interesting the fact that i can use dvi output, probably add an dvi->hdmi converter to extend a bit more the life of my old Amiga. Just thinking in a future scenario.

[rkauer]

Piru is right, the only thing you can do with the Voodoo is tossing it away. Or keep it for some Warp action.

 To me the Voodoo is pretty useless now, I get a Radeon 9250 (256Mb! YAY!).

 Maybe I'll feel its fault at the winter, that monster home heater.

[EgillSkallagrimsson]

What about using the Radeon as a cheap fast ram card and then using the Voodoo as your main rtg card? Possible?

[Piru]

What about using the Radeon as a cheap fast ram card and then using the Voodoo as your main rtg card? Possible?

It would be very very very very slow ram. Probably slower than chip mem when reading.

[Gulliver]

It is only possible in an A3000 or A4000 to use video ram as fastmem. In an A1200 you dont have that luck.

It is possible to use the Voodoo as display and the Radeon as fastmem, but then some little memory would probably need to be reserved for mediator dma purposes in the Radeon. I am allways speaking here of A3000 or A4000 models.

Unless someone develops a memory handler to access the video ram in a mediator for an A1200, i will never get fastmem from Radeon memory. It would probably be much slower than an A3000 or A4000, but then at least it would be better than nothing.
There are Radeon cards with 256MB, no matter how slow that memory handler could be, it would certainly be usefull.

[EgillSkallagrimsson]

So would it perform slower or roughly the same speed as one of those 3128 zorro III ram cards?:confused:

[rkauer]

Slower. But good to use as RAM DISK.

 You need to create your own RAM disk mounter and specify the RAM address.

[HammerD]

It would be very very very very slow ram. Probably slower than chip mem when reading.

When there is no other alternative, slow ram is better than none.  But I am referring to OS4.0 classic here, not OS 3.9, where 128MB ram is normally more than sufficient.

[pVC]

As far as I'm aware, no you can't.
They both require specified drivers and they don't talk to eachother. You 'might' be able to run them at the same time but not in some sort of SLI/CrossFire style configuration. If you can do that then it would seem slightly pointless to me.

That has never been issue on Amiga. It's "always" been possible to use different type gfx cards simultaneous. I've used Voodoo3 on PCI and CV64/3D on Zorro together as well as three PicassoIV:s in same computer.

Usage can be for example for normal multidisplay home use (web and desktop separated etc), or demonstration situations where you need separate display for the audience and control display for yourself (done that at demoparties). Or if you can get cloned output it can be useful for software presentations (done that with MorphOS presentations).

[Vulture]

I've had a setup with both cards. I had Radeon set up for my desktop 1920*1080@32bit and Voodoo for Warp3D games as, sadly, there's no Warp3D driver for Radeon. After a while I setup a second Mediator machine and now I have one miggy for desktop usage and the other for games (the Voodoo one). Btw, I don't have a Mediator TX, just plain old Mediator 1200 with a (simple) voltage hack found on aminet to allow it to work with Radeon cards. Poor Voodoo was way too slow with said resolution, while Radeon is quite comfortable.