So much memory... what to do?

[slaapliedje]

That sounds logical.  I can't recall where I read it at, or even the specifics, but someone I thought had said something about the cyberstorm mk2 being faster than the mk3?  (as I said, I could be getting that wrong, it could have been the mk1 was faster than the mk2).

So I did know that it really was dependent upon the particular model of accelerator.

Which is why something like the Natami or other newer full Amiga platforms would completely rock, updated memory bandwidth!

Should be getting the 68060 tomorrow.  Then I'll be sure to fire your game up and give it a play.  From what few screen shots I've seen of it, it looks awesome!

slaapliedje

[AAACHIPSET]

So, I did some calculations;

I have an Amiga A4000D, decked out with the following hardware;

Mediator 4000Di
Radeon 256MB
Zorram 128MB
Spider 2
10/100 Ethernet
Indivision AGA
and soon to be Cyberstorm MK1 with 64mb of ram.

Now according to my calculations, that gives me 2mb of chip ram, and 16MB Fast, along with 113MB (from Radeon's first bank), 128MB (From Radeon's second bank, just need to add it in), 128MB from the Zorram card, and the soon to be 64mb from the Cyberstorm.

That's almost 450mb of Fast memory.  Now the question is.. what can one do with so much memory on an Amiga?

I'm still shocked that a computer that was released in 1992 can address this much.  It's too bad that Chip RAM is limited to 2MB.  Would be nice if that little jumper that says 2MB or 8MB actually did anything.  But that's all in hindsight of an architecture that otherwise had a lot of rather 'futuristic' notions at the time.

slaapliedje

when i run doom or heretic  it takes 10 meg fast ram just to start ..only program that eats ram is my picture viewer on slideshow ..let it run with huge cache an it can eat 100meg fast ram down to 20 meg in a hour or so..mysticview..still my favorite though ..
i WISH  someone would come up with a way to increase chip ram ..how much faster would a 1200 be with 20 meg chip ram !!

[slaapliedje]

Agreed!  There was supposedly work done to do this at some point, since there is a jumper on the A4000D that says 2mb or 8mb, but as far as I know, it doesn't do anything.  There are a few other jumpers on the board that don't do anything as well.  Is the limitation in one of the custom chips?  I know WinUAE can use 8mb of chipram, so I'm guessing that it's not an Operating System limitation, or even a kickstart one.

slaapliedje

Edit:  It's Alice's fault!  http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/8mbchip.html

[slaapliedje]

So if this is Alice that limits the memory, and thinking about how the Indivision ECS works (or how I had read that it works) by basically replacing the ECS graphics chip with an FPGA equivalent, wouldn't it also be possible to do this with Alice, and replace it with the emulated Alice that WinUAE uses to enable 8mb of Chip RAM?  

Just a thought..

[ChaosLord]

Which is why something like the Natami or other newer full Amiga platforms would completely rock, updated memory bandwidth!

Yes any new Amiga with faster fastram and faster chipram would make our old Amigas so much better!

Should be getting the 68060 tomorrow.  Then I'll be sure to fire your game up and give it a play.  From what few screen shots I've seen of it, it looks awesome!

Its more about the gameplay than the gfx.  Just imagine a gfx card version of it that takes 16x as much memory.  1280x1024 is 4x bigger than 640x512 AGA and 32-bit pixels are 4x bigger than 8-bit AGA pixels = 16x the memory and 16x the bandwidth.  So it would look 16x as beautiful but have the exact same gameplay from AGA 1992 days.

I hope ur Radeon has 16x the bandwidth of AGA chipram.


I accidentally found a video to keep u company until u get ur 060:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nr0WMnCXTE

[warpdesign]

I'm still shocked that a computer that was released in 1992 can address this much.

In theory, your 32bit computer should be able to address 2^32 = 4Gb memory, not only 450Mb... As to what you can do with it, using real apps would quickly fill it... A real browser for example.

[ChaosLord]

Good point.  A modern webbrowser can burn a gig of RAM while it warms up before breakfast.

Especially an Amiga browser, since Amiga browsers invented Tabbed Browsing.

[Thorham]

how much faster would a 1200 be with 20 meg chip ram !!

It wouldn't be faster at all :p

[delshay]

Someone needs to take a closer look at busboard(s). I was a little shocked to hear you can't play some games at very high resolution. If the busboard is capable of 66Mhz bus with a CPU card then I think it warrants a closer look. I do not own a busboard (not yet) but I will be taking a closer look at one soon.

The year is 2013 and from my point of view there's no excuse,none whatsoever as some of you have very good GFX card(s).

[slaapliedje]

Yes any new Amiga with faster fastram and faster chipram would make our old Amigas so much better!

[/q]Sure would make our old Amigas seem slower!  That goes off topic and I'm sure those conversations have been done to death.

[q]Its more about the gameplay than the gfx.  Just imagine a gfx card version of it that takes 16x as much memory.  1280x1024 is 4x bigger than 640x512 AGA and 32-bit pixels are 4x bigger than 8-bit AGA pixels = 16x the memory and 16x the bandwidth.  So it would look 16x as beautiful but have the exact same gameplay from AGA 1992 days.

I hope ur Radeon has 16x the bandwidth of AGA chipram.


I accidentally found a video to keep u company until u get ur 060:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nr0WMnCXTE

Awesome video!  Really does look like 'Total Chaos'.  Name is very appropriate.  Well, with '32bit' color, you'd have an 8-bit alpha channel, and could add some transparency effects that could (not sure how) apply to the gameplay.  Then again I guess with sprites you don't really need that. I'm thinking the biggest benefit would be larger maps!

Oddly, I bet the Radeon (in itself) probably does have 16x bandwidth of the chip ram.  Sadly, the Amiga won't take advantage of it, as we've already established.  (I found a reference to the AGP Radeon that says it has 6.4GB/sec memory bandwidth).  

But i agree, graphics definitely don't make the game.  Only type of games where graphics really matter (in my opinion anyhow) would be simulators, since that's kind of the point of them, to simulate realism.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

In theory, your 32bit computer should be able to address 2^32 = 4Gb memory, not only 450Mb... As to what you can do with it, using real apps would quickly fill it... A real browser for example.

Yeah, I knew that.  And actually on the Amiga hardware book, it says the 4000D can have up to 3GB of memory (I think this is probably due to Alice in the same way that you can only use 2mb of chip instead of 8mb, though I could be completely wrong on that).

I would love to have a real browser.  Netsurf is getting there, but it requires at least truetype fonts, and I hadn't spent the time looking on a better way to get that without AfaOS (which ClassicWB doesn't like all that much).

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Someone needs to take a closer look at busboard(s). I was a little shocked to hear you can't play some games at very high resolution. If the busboard is capable of 66Mhz bus with a CPU card then I think it warrants a closer look. I do not own a busboard (not yet) but I will be taking a closer look at one soon.

The year is 2013 and from my point of view there's no excuse,none whatsoever as some of you have very good GFX card(s).

I will let you know how it goes with Genetic Species when I get the 68060.  As it is, you're right, the 33mhz speed isn't quite fast enough to play it at full settings and be smooth.

slaapliedje

[Ral-Clan]

If I had had that much RAM a few years ago when I was editing audio using my Amiga 2000, it would have come in really handy. I could have edited almost an entire CD with 450MB+ RAM at once.  As it was, I had to use virtual RAM (HD RAM) and it was very slow.

Like the other fellow above said, any Amiga productivity software could benefit from that much RAM, but if all you do is play classic games, etc., then I guess that much RAM wouldn't be much use.

[slaapliedje]

Yeah, I plan on doing more than just gaming.

Though I did run out of memory extracting Total Chaos's audio files!  I'm guessing (hoping) it was because of just having the one 64mb bank, and not wanting to utilize anything else?

I gave the game a play, it's pretty fun, but I was really tired last night.  Looks like what Archon 3 could / should have been!  (Loved Archon 1 and 2)

Ha, the 060/50 is still too slow to smoothly play Genetic Species in 640x480 though.  I'm guessing a faster 060 would help on this?

slaapliedje

[ChaosLord]

Yeah, I plan on doing more than just gaming.

Though I did run out of memory extracting Total Chaos's audio files!  I'm guessing (hoping) it was because of just having the one 64mb bank, and not wanting to utilize anything else?

WTF?!?  Something is very wrong.
I have extracted the audio files on my 32MB Amiga many many times and never got an out of memory error.

So something in your system is/was using a huge giant hunk of ram... or.. your memory list was super super fragged out and there were no hunks large enuff to hold the audio file.  The very largest file is around 1.2MB I think.  So if ur memory got all fragged out and there was not a single 1.2MB hunk anywhere in memory then u could get an out of memory error.

Maybe you have many hard drive partitions and giant AddBuffers for each partition?

The audio files decrunch into the RAM disk so maybe you are using some buggy hackpatched RamDisk.device?

I gave the game a play, it's pretty fun,

The Game will suxx if half the audio files never unpacked!!!

You might miss the funny speech samples, or some kewl muzax, or the names of all the units.

Did it speak the name of the monster when u clicked on it?
(only during your Movement Phase)

Did it say something like "Select your spell" once you passed all the setupscreens and got the actual game started?

 but I was really tired last night.  Looks like what Archon 3 could / should have been!  (Loved Archon 1 and 2)

Exactly!!!!!!  Its 8-player MegaArchonOfDeathOnSteroidsEnhancedProfessional++

I coded in the Archonian PowerPoints option just for you.

I liked Archon on the C64, but I didn't like the Amiga version.  EA games were really primitive in 1985-1986.

Ha, the 060/50 is still too slow to smoothly play Genetic Species in 640x480 though.  I'm guessing a faster 060 would help on this?

slaapliedje

Maybe... but it still has to copy all the gfx data over at 8MB/second. (or whatever speed u currently get using bustest.)

640x480x256 colors = 307200 bytes
8MB/307200 = 26  but the CPU can sit there copying 26fps, it also has to generate the frames in the first place so you couldn't realistically get more than 13fps if u were really REALLY lucky.

You need to play it in 320x256.

Or wait for a new superAmiga to come out, like the Replay or Tina or Natami or whatever...

Just because Total Chaos AGA runs in 640x512 doesn't mean u can just go round running everything at that resolution.  I had to use some really hardcore darque majique and break a few laws of physics to achieve that.

[slaapliedje]

WTF?!?  Something is very wrong.
I have extracted the audio files on my 32MB Amiga many many times and never got an out of memory error.

So something in your system is/was using a huge giant hunk of ram... or.. your memory list was super super fragged out and there were no hunks large enuff to hold the audio file.  The very largest file is around 1.2MB I think.  So if ur memory got all fragged out and there was not a single 1.2MB hunk anywhere in memory then u could get an out of memory error.

Unless I have something jacked that at start up (I have just OS3.9  with BB3 with ClassicWB slapped on top, along with the mediator drivers  and the Cyberstorm drivers off of Aminet), then I shouldn't have had any fragmented memory.  Started the extraction off of a cold boot.

Maybe you have many hard drive partitions and giant AddBuffers for each partition?

I have three partitions, System is on FFS, and Work and Games are both on SFS.

The audio files decrunch into the RAM disk so maybe you are using some buggy hackpatched RamDisk.device?

This sounds most likely.  It's whatever BB3 is using.

The Game will suxx if half the audio files never unpacked!!!

You might miss the funny speech samples, or some kewl muzax, or the names of all the units.

Did it speak the name of the monster when u clicked on it?
(only during your Movement Phase)

Did it say something like "Select your spell" once you passed all the setupscreens and got the actual game started?

I think most of the sounds were there, and they were AWESOME!!  Music was seriously epic too!  

I'm giving it another play right now, hopefully my Amiga doesn't overheat again...

Exactly!!!!!!  Its 8-player MegaArchonOfDeathOnSteroidsEnhancedProfessional++

I coded in the Archonian PowerPoints option just for you.

I liked Archon on the C64, but I didn't like the Amiga version.  EA games were really primitive in 1985-1986.

I'd have to agree with this!  Though instead of the C64, I played the Atari 8-bit version.  Loved it.  Though I distinctly recall punching the crap out of my younger brother when he somehow managed to slay my dragon with a knight...  There are two of my favorite all time EA games from this time;  Racing Destruction Set and Mail Order Monsters.  I'd like them to remake them, but they'd just ruin them like they did Syndicate.  Though... if you have ideas for a Total Chaos 2... Mail Order Monsters was, to me, a direct descendant of Archon.  After all, it was Archon with upgradeable beasts.

Maybe... but it still has to copy all the gfx data over at 8MB/second. (or whatever speed u currently get using bustest.)

640x480x256 colors = 307200 bytes
8MB/307200 = 26  but the CPU can sit there copying 26fps, it also has to generate the frames in the first place so you couldn't realistically get more than 13fps if u were really REALLY lucky.

You need to play it in 320x256.

Or wait for a new superAmiga to come out, like the Replay or Tina or Natami or whatever...

Just because Total Chaos AGA runs in 640x512 doesn't mean u can just go round running everything at that resolution.  I had to use some really hardcore darque majique and break a few laws of physics to achieve that.

I did a bustest after getting the Cyberstorm in there.  It scored around 30MB/s!  I'll run it again after my current game of Total Chaos and post the exact numbers.

slaapliedje

Edit: Since when does using q between brackets and /q not work for quotes?