GeForce 040 - sloooow SCSI? :(

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hi,

Are there any other GVP GeForce 040 board owners here that could post results of a few speed tests?  As one of the pieces on my A2000 restoration project I've fitted it with what I thought would be a pretty decent board, the GeForce 040 with 16MB of memory.  Overall Workbench performance is about what I'd expect and the board clocks about 25 MIPS, but disk transfers are awful - only about 1/4th the speed of my A500 according to SysSpeed at Create/Open/DirScan/etc., and SysInfo reports my A500 with SCSI card reader and x133 card hits about 2100K/sec, the best I can get out of the 040 SCSI is about 1700K/sec.

I've tried the controller with a variety of drives including several different SCSI hard drives and a Mechware card reader with CF, SD, etc.  It doesn't seem to matter the card or drive I use, performance never goes much above 1700K/sec.  I'm on the latest 4.15 GVP firmware, same as my A500 uses, and I've also tried different cables, checked and re-checked all the jumpers, tried formatting with different block sizes, number of buffers, MaxTransfer, etc.

A clue on Ralph Babel's site actually says (quote) "Note: Yes, SCSI on GVP accelerators typically is slower than on-board transfers on GVP Zorro-II hard cards", but really?  This is awful.  Just look at this screenshot, it takes Workbench almost 3 minutes to load off an x600 8GB CF card.  Ugh!

Seems like the only thing I can do is lower the number of colors of my Workbench to get a little better performance, but even at 4 colors my A500 still crushes the A2000 with GeForce, and it's running an identical 16 color NTSC high res laced screen.

Any speed tips or comparisons would be helpful, thanks!!!

[nicholas]

It's a long shot but is your 68040.library installed correctly?

[TjLaZer]

Hi,

Are there any other GVP GeForce 040 board owners here that could post results of a few speed tests?  As one of the pieces on my A2000 restoration project I've fitted it with what I thought would be a pretty decent board, the GeForce 040 with 16MB of memory.  Overall Workbench performance is about what I'd expect and the board clocks about 25 MIPS, but disk transfers are awful - only about 1/4th the speed of my A500 according to SysSpeed at Create/Open/DirScan/etc., and SysInfo reports my A500 with SCSI card reader and x133 card hits about 2100K/sec, the best I can get out of the 040 SCSI is about 1700K/sec.

I've tried the controller with a variety of drives including several different SCSI hard drives and a Mechware card reader with CF, SD, etc.  It doesn't seem to matter the card or drive I use, performance never goes much above 1700K/sec.  I'm on the latest 4.15 GVP firmware, same as my A500 uses, and I've also tried different cables, checked and re-checked all the jumpers, tried formatting with different block sizes, number of buffers, MaxTransfer, etc.

A clue on Ralph Babel's site actually says (quote) "Note: Yes, SCSI on GVP accelerators typically is slower than on-board transfers on GVP Zorro-II hard cards", but really?  This is awful.  Just look at this screenshot, it takes Workbench almost 3 minutes to load off an x600 8GB CF card.  Ugh!

Seems like the only thing I can do is lower the number of colors of my Workbench to get a little better performance, but even at 4 colors my A500 still crushes the A2000 with GeForce, and it's running an identical 16 color NTSC high res laced screen.

Any speed tips or comparisons would be helpful, thanks!!!

Perhaps it's the SCSI to CF reader and CF card?  I had this exact accelerator back in the day with a 4GB SCSI-II HD and it screamed.  Was getting like 6MB/s.

[zipper]

Asynchron or synchron mode?

[Robert17]

Hi Mike,

I have a GVP 030 Combo Board, the SCSI Isn't that good. With the correct Mask setting to DMA Transfers into 32bit fastram, I get 1700kb/s as you mention, this is using a Mechware SCSI Card reader with an 80x Compact Flash card, But I have had the same results using a real HDD too.

Robert.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It's a long shot but is your 68040.library installed correctly?

I've got 3.9 with all the Boing Bags installed, as far as I know none of them make any changes to the 68040 library so I'm still running the original C= one.  A little googling finds Thor's libraries, but I don't think they'd affect SCSI performance...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Perhaps it's the SCSI to CF reader and CF card?  I had this exact accelerator back in the day with a 4GB SCSI-II HD and it screamed.  Was getting like 6MB/s.

I tried it with a 4.3GB WD Enterprise drive, 7200 RPM, and SysInfo still reported around 1700K/sec.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Asynchron or synchron mode?

I'm not sure how I would change that?

My jumpers are set based on the information I found here:

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=179

and on the amiga.resource.cx site.  All caches are enabled and burst mode is on.  Motherboard is a 6.4 with full ECS, MegaChip, Indivision, and heat sinks everywhere.  As far as I can tell everything works great on both the boards except my clock chip, LOL (still struggling to get that working).

[zipper]

I'm not sure how I would change that?

HDToolbox or whatever you use to control your HD.

[mechy]

Perhaps it's the SCSI to CF reader and CF card?  I had this exact accelerator back in the day with a 4GB SCSI-II HD and it screamed.  Was getting like 6MB/s.

Interesting trick considering the gvp gforce 040 uses the Am33c93a (same as WD -08/am33c93a in the A3000) which specs in the data sheet at 5MB/s max in synchronous mode,and that's in laboratory setting most likely. so if you even see 4MB/s you would probably being doing well.



the pcd series card reader are not as fast as the mfg specs for the same reason,most likely lab specs. I have attained 3.9 MB/s from it with a class 10 SDHC 4GB card from transcend on the csppc scsi. I doubt anyone will see this on the same speed on narrow scsi cards. Of course the benchmarks are hard to trust.

[mechy]

I'm not sure how I would change that?

My jumpers are set based on the information I found here:

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=179

and on the amiga.resource.cx site.  All caches are enabled and burst mode is on.  Motherboard is a 6.4 with full ECS, MegaChip, Indivision, and heat sinks everywhere.  As far as I can tell everything works great on both the boards except my clock chip, LOL (still struggling to get that working).

gvpscsictrl is the utility you need to set synchronous mode. it should be on the gvp install disk i think

Also another note, if you are using any external devices,i seem to recall the gvp does not supply term power.


I wonder if you can do speedgeeks 33c93a scsi chip overclock hack for more speed? feel like being a guinea pig on the gforce mike?

[SpeedGeek]

gvpscsictrl is the utility you need to set synchronous mode. it should be on the gvp install disk i think

Also another note, if you are using any external devices,i seem to recall the gvp does not supply term power.


I wonder if you can do speedgeeks 33c93a scsi chip overclock hack for more speed? feel like being a guinea pig on the gforce mike?

There is a good chance the 33C93A is already running at 14MHz this being a later model/revision accelerator card.

The 33C93A is rated for 16 MHz and therefore is NOT overclocked at 14 MHz... but it does need to be configured correctly (for reliable synch mode operation) at any supported CLK speed.

[TjLaZer]

Interesting trick considering the gvp gforce 040 uses the Am33c93a (same as WD -08/am33c93a in the A3000) which specs in the data sheet at 5MB/s max in synchronous mode,and that's in laboratory setting most likely. so if you even see 4MB/s you would probably being doing well.

the pcd series card reader are not as fast as the mfg specs for the same reason,most likely lab specs. I have attained 3.9 MB/s from it with a class 10 SDHC 4GB card from transcend on the csppc scsi. I doubt anyone will see this on the same speed on narrow scsi cards. Of course the benchmarks are hard to trust.

Well obviously my memory is lapsing a little then.  It was 4-5MB/s.  This was around 1997, so forgive me.  All I know is the machine was very fast and the HD was much faster than a A2091.

[mechy]

There is a good chance the 33C93A is already running at 14MHz this being a later model/revision accelerator card.

The 33C93A is rated for 16 MHz and therefore is NOT overclocked at 14 MHz... but it does need to be configured correctly (for reliable synch mode operation) at any supported CLK speed.

Ok, good to know. I should of checked first before speaking-you didn't overclock it, just brought it close to its rated speed.
 i have no idea what the Gforce runs it at.
There is a 20mhz version of the chip also, it may be plcc style only(edit- no there is a DIP version). Have you tried these?
I wonder if there would be any gains on overclocking it,assuming it would tolerate it?

[mechy]

Well obviously my memory is lapsing a little then.  It was 4-5MB/s.  This was around 1997, so forgive me.  All I know is the machine was very fast and the HD was much faster than a A2091.

No worries, we are all getting old. I wish i could remember everything i knew