brilliant PCI graphics cards with DVI for Amiga

[mantisspider]

Why are the only Voodoo card drivers for the amiga?
Voodoo card suck! they have done from Voodoo3 onwards. There are lots of good PCI graphics cards out there...

Why were TNT2 or GeForce drivers never made, come on guys are there any brave and willing programmers out there?

OS4 is using a Raedon 7000 right? Why not release the drivers that are writen and run a ATI Radeon 7000 64 MB DDR PCI Video Card on ur Classic Amiga?

I always felt that it wasnt the lack of processing power it was the lack of decent graphics cards that kept the amiga from keeping up with the latest games. Quake II running on the amiga proves that point. The Classic Amiga has the processing power to handle; Soldier of Fortune, Half Life, Unreal Tournament. What it doesnt have is the graphics card to allow these games to run at a decent speed.

Is the mediator good enough to give these cards justice?

Decent PCI graphics cards:
ATI All-In-Wonder 64Mb (TV tuner graphics -the lot)
GeForce4 MX440 64Mb
Radeon 7500 64 MB
TNT2 32Mb (if mediator cant handle faster)

Want DVI?
Appian Graphics HURRICANE PCI 32MB DVI

Click here to see a  Collection of ATI PCI Graphics Cards : nice eh

If there was a PCI busboard good enough for the Amiga I would have loved to see the 3Dlabs Oxygen GVX1 be used on a A4000 for more up-to-date professional graphics platform (im more a Matrox man myself but Matrox on the Amiga may forever be a dream)

Matrox Graphics Cards : Beautiful 2D & 3D performance with Dual Monitor support

So guys, just how bad is the amiga PCI-busboards for these beautiful cards? 100mhz to 133Mhz is whats needed right? With the Mediator running at 33Mhz to 66Mhz, the cards could at least perform better than a voodoo?

Taken from Elbox.com
66/33MHz PCI clock
With the PCI clock running at 33MHz, data transfers are executed with the bandwidth of up to 132MB/s and up to 264MB/s for 66MHz clocking.

[Karlos]

You need to take a huge dose of salt with those bandwidth figures. They are theoretical figures for top speed at which a pair devices sharing the bus can communicate.

From experience I can say that the bandwidth from the CPU to devices on the bus is much slower (about 15Mb/s is tops on a 68060 A4000 with mediator).

As a result of the slow bus speed, faster processors can't keep the cards fed with rendering instructions fast enough to make full use of their capabilities, even on the Voodoo3 and above.

[Jose]

Wasn't ZIII synchronous (or was that asynchronous) able to reach 50 mb/s?? I think I read that somewhere. .. but don't remember well. If so they never really took advantage of it.

[Wain]

Nvidia will not release any information regarding their hardware or how their drivers work in communication with it to other developers.  They have the final say so on what platforms their cards will work.  Even their Linux drivers are closed source.

[MarkTime]

I want to encourage you to go ahead and start coding a driver.
 
I do not know your level of programming experience, I'm sure it would seem daunting if you haven't programmed before.

But its a one step at a time, type of thing, and pretty soon you'll have that driver finished and you'll be the one with a thousand requests.

I have written program and released them into the public domain, though I have never written a graphics card driver.  Last time I wrote anything for the public, was a game for the palm pilot, gosh, when they first came out, has it been 6 or 7 years?  I don't remember the exact date.

Anyway, I have much respect for the people still releasing stuff, I never seem to have the time anymore...I hope that will  change but I'm always hoping it will change...sigh

Anyway, I loaded up AROS today, with all the recent news, and I think those guys are great, although I was surprised to see it bring a P4 1.6 to a crawl, and I heard the familiar buzz buzz of the floppy (which was nostalgic and very annoying as well)...why don't they fix that polling of the floppy, man I hate that.

anyway...before I go off on a tangent, write that driver!  It will be great.

[mantisspider]

Well no need for the GeForce cards if the ATI drivers can be ported.

If the best that can be hoped for is the 15Mb/ from the mediator then maybe the only decent solution would be the cold fire project with its own PCI Bus.

Maybe ELbox would be able to improve on the Mediator.
What speeds do the GRexx/Predator boards give?

cheers

[patrik]

Has anyone tried writing a Graphics-card driver?


/Patrik

[GadgetMaster]

patrik wrote:
Has anyone tried writing a Graphics-card driver?


/Patrik

Probably many. If you want to have a go I am sure there is plenty of information on the web regarding this. such as
This Guide  :-)
or maybe
This One

[patrik]

@GadgetMaster:

I really liked the first guide. I wonder how difficult it would be to write a driver to enable a card to be used under CyberGraphX or Picasso96... though there probably aint any documentation released regarding how to program drivers for those APIs if I know the Amiga software companies right.


/Patrik

[lempkee]

15megs is MAX transfer rate..., and the normal one is 7.8 megs .. THATS why we use only a voodoo gfx card and not a gforce which needs alot more..

oh and i havent seen a gforce 1 pci card in 3 years?? anyway i hope we will see more drivers for a1 eventually...

maybe you should read some specs about amiga? seriously its like asking for a V8 engine for your fiat uno from 92..

[lempkee]

mantispider: here is a clue, grexx has a direct pci slot and so does the blizz ppc cards , please tell me how much better they are (as i have had a bvision and a grexx).

i dont see how a coldfire would fix that, well higher cpu cycles will help ofcourse but still it wont be alot faster unless its a g3 cpu? or an 500mhz 060 i guess

[mantisspider]

@lempkee,

I did read some specs about the amiga, "132MB/s and up to 264MB/s for 66MHz", thats why I posted asking if it really was at these speeds. 15Mb/s is a big difference.

[Effy]

Okay, so there's no use to have a V8 gfx card in our Fiat Uno Mediator. We can't use the full potential of those fast gfx cards. But isn't there a way to use only the most common features of such a fast gfx card ?? I mean that those cards you need are not always to be found. I just bought a Voodoo5 PCI for 70 euro, including porto, but I can not find such a card in Belgium because it's pretty rare. Finding another gfx card, more modern, would be easier, even if those special features can not be used due to the slower transferrate of our Fiat Uno Mediator ... if people want to use a V8 then why not giving them a choice, apart from those companies that refuse to give away info ...

[lempkee]

mantispider: yes thats correct SPECS if the cpu was placed ON the mediator, but since it aint... well you are then stuck with 7.8 ->15 megs per sec.

if we get a shark then i would bet that we would get other gfx cards aswell, as then there is a point to it...

[lempkee]

effy:i agree but there is one problem here, if you had an gforce card or whatever (pci) in your mediator then there would be problems like "big and little endian" problems and maybe most of all, warp3d and later 3d api\s must be rewritten, so i see this as an ok solve, i bought my voodoo3 from a local pc store in 2001..., then later i bought an voodoo5 from ebay..

anyway i agree with you but i find it very true to why we have only banshee,vodoo support atm , take a look at pegasos/mos , amigaos4/a1 and what gfx card do they use for everything now?...
surely this will change asap but until then i find it 100% understandable,  as far as this thread goes about Elbox stopping people from making drivers for other cards, NOW thats wrong.. there is allready Grexx and promethus as options and what gfx cards do they support ?..

final... you can apply to elbox for an nda and develop drivers yourself though i wont recomend it
and other options is OpenPci for grexx etc..