Was PCI for Amiga a good choice?

[gertsy]

It was the only practical choice really,since so many cards exist in pci. The $1000 is a trivial expense compared to dev costs.
I would love more native zorro3 cards,but that is not going to happen.
With a mediator and radeon  it makes a nice workbench at 1920x1440 or even wide screen modes. its very fast even in 32bit screens.

+1

[mechy]

Using a PCI setup is the same as using a CSPPC card, they were not in Amiga's plans and are not "original hardware," but much of the appeal of the Amiga (and many other systems) is the ability to adapt to the user's needs; I call this, "Wouldn't it be cool to..."  This is the same statement that gets us in trouble as well -- usually with a significant other.

With a PCI configuration, one is only limited by the software drivers for the card, not the hardware development.

Again, only in my opinion.

  The CSPPC is no different than using a cyberstorm MKIII,other than the fact it has a ppc coprocessor. it acts like any accelerator. the ppc side is great for playing mp3,some mild video and other stuff that leaves the 060 unloaded for doing normal stuff. Big box amigas were intended to be expanded and even though a mediator adds pci slots, the zorro3 slots still work the same. its more than a cool factor, it makes the machine downright useable.

[psxphill]

Using a PCI setup is the same as using a CSPPC card, they were not in Amiga's plans and are not "original hardware,"

Not entirely. You can use a PCI sound, video or scsi card with the same software that runs on an a2000 back in the day.

The plan for backward compatibility was to have a new version of AGA render into graphics memory on a PCI graphics card, it would make sense to do that too. That plus a 68k core could fit in an FPGA. If you use one that supported PCI express then it would make a really nice cheap motherboard, it would sell more than an X1000.

[cv643d]

I dont think PCI was a good choice on the A1200, I had the LT4 version and sure you could run a 1600x1200 WB, but running fast scrolling graphics on the Workbench was slower than regular AGA in 4 colors. For example, scrolling in Ibrowse felt laggy and this was with a 060 board. If you wonder what I am talking about, play a module in Hippoplayer and enable any hipposcope. Watch hipposcope run in slo-mo.

As I was told this is because of how memory is shuffled to the GFX-board on the A1200. I was told that on on a Z3 system this issue is gone.

Another nice detail about a loaded PCI system is that the Amiga will use around 100w if it is pumped to the max (PPC/060/Mediator loaded system).

[mechy]

I dont think PCI was a good choice on the A1200, I had the LT4 version and sure you could run a 1600x1200 WB, but running fast scrolling graphics on the Workbench was slower than regular AGA in 4 colors. For example, scrolling in Ibrowse felt laggy and this was with a 060 board. If you wonder what I am talking about, play a module in Hippoplayer and enable any hipposcope. Watch hipposcope run in slo-mo.

As I was told this is because of how memory is shuffled to the GFX-board on the A1200. I was told that on on a Z3 system this issue is gone.

Another nice detail about a loaded PCI system is that the Amiga will use around 100w if it is pumped to the max (PPC/060/Mediator loaded system).

None of those issues on my A4000. power is not a issue on the 4000 either,hence the 150w psu. It never made much sense to me to expand 1200's with all the bottle necks,and you still won't have zorro3. by the time you fix the psu,add a bunch of dongles, you have a semi reliable machine half the speed of a 4000. I can see why people are disappointed. You saved no money and its still mediocre at best.

Mediator is still a good choice for the 1200 i suspect if you want better gfx on the 1200 for browsing or such. there were virtually no other options, unless you use a zorro2 expansion and video card like picassoII,iv,etc. which would still be slow. Mediator also gives reasonably fast usb on the 1200 instead of those slow,silly clock port expansions.

[pVC]

I dont think PCI was a good choice on the A1200, I had the LT4 version and sure you could run a 1600x1200 WB, but running fast scrolling graphics on the Workbench was slower than regular AGA in 4 colors. For example, scrolling in Ibrowse felt laggy and this was with a 060 board. If you wonder what I am talking about, play a module in Hippoplayer and enable any hipposcope. Watch hipposcope run in slo-mo.

As I was told this is because of how memory is shuffled to the GFX-board on the A1200. I was told that on on a Z3 system this issue is gone.

Another nice detail about a loaded PCI system is that the Amiga will use around 100w if it is pumped to the max (PPC/060/Mediator loaded system).

Hmm.. I bet you had some config issue rather. IBrowse scrolls just fine on my A1200/060/MediatorZIV/Voodoo3 with 1600x1200 at least.

I think PCI is the best thing happened for expanding the A1200. It's really fast compared to other options. Zorro2 was horribly slow for any gfx operations, Zorro3 busboards were hacky, unstable and expensive for accelerators.

[psxphill]

You saved no money and its still mediocre at best.

I'd love to know where there is a huge number of cheap A4000's.

[golem]

I have the innards for an 040 1200 tower but no tower or Mediator. PCI seems the better option rather than an extremely expensive PPC card and BVision. Anyone selling a Mediator and tower near Nottingham? Amigakit have no Mediators currently and PowerTowers (my preferred option) are rare too.

[danbeaver]

I'd love to know where there is a huge number of cheap A4000's.

Well, you can have one or the other; there are cheap, non-working A4000's but they require money to repair them, then they are no longer cheap.

[matt3k]

A few questions concerning PCI:

Is video refresh and speed noticeable fast than a CV 64 for normal tasks, like using final writer or playing a game like nightlong?  

Can you use DVI out?

How stable is a rig using all PCI cards on the Mediator?

[slaapliedje]

A few questions concerning PCI:

Is video refresh and speed noticeable fast than a CV 64 for normal tasks, like using final writer or playing a game like nightlong?  

Can you use DVI out?

How stable is a rig using all PCI cards on the Mediator?

I can at least answer some of this.

Not sure about the comparison between CV 64 and Mediator PCI card, but yes you can use DVI Out (that's how I have mine set up, VGA through the Indivision AGA MK1 and DVI Out through my Radeon 9250)

And yes it's quite stable (I have the aforementioned Radeon, Fast 10/100 NIC, Spider 2.0 all plugged into the Mediator, and the Indivision under neath.)

slaapliedje

[danbeaver]

It was the only practical choice really,since so many cards exist in pci. The $1000 is a trivial expense compared to dev costs.
I would love more native zorro3 cards,but that is not going to happen.
With a mediator and radeon  it makes a nice workbench at 1920x1440 or even wide screen modes. its very fast even in 32bit screens.

I'd love more native Zorro 3 cards with an improved Buster that let the Z3 bus run at full speed.

[mechy]

A few questions concerning PCI:

Is video refresh and speed noticeable fast than a CV 64 for normal tasks, like using final writer or playing a game like nightlong?  

Can you use DVI out?

How stable is a rig using all PCI cards on the Mediator?

I can speak for the A4000 version of mediator. Its fast and stable. the cv64 starts to slow at 800x600, the radeon 92xx never seems slower,even at 1900x1080x32 ever(using 060/ppc). The radeon is so fast its always doing the waiting. You can also map some gfx ram to amiga fast ram with it.

dvi out works

Not sure about the game,but anything rtg should do well.

[mechy]

I'd love more native Zorro 3 cards with an improved Buster that let the Z3 bus run at full speed.

I agree, i love native hardware also, and always wished buster would be fixed. It would of been cool to see it run near pci33 speeds.
The piv was the finest native amiga video card i had ever owned,it served me well from 1995 on.

[matthey]

Is video refresh and speed noticeable fast than a CV 64 for normal tasks, like using final writer or playing a game like nightlong?  

Probably. Higher resolutions and greater screen depths would definitely be noticeably faster as well as allowing higher resolutions and greater screen depths than the CV64 is capable of. The CV64 has a faster gfx bus (can transfer from the Amiga to gfx card faster) but most of the time the more modern gfx card performance and extra gfx memory more than make up for it. Using P96Speed in 640x480x8, I calculated that my 3000T+CSMKIII 68060@75MHz+Mediator 3000(T)/4000(T)+Voodoo 4 is on average 3.00 times faster for P96Speed gfx operations than the 4000T 68060@70MHz+PIV in the P96Speed database. The PIV was overall a little faster than the CV64 (although the CV64 has a little faster gfx bus and some specialized hardware which would make it faster in a few cases). Just for fun, by the same calculation of averaging the "Diff" for all operations in P96Speed, my Amiga is 118.42 times faster than the 4000 68060@50MHz using AGA in the database. I have a faster system with a few tweaks so the gfx performance is not completely isolated by these tests. Once the gfx are fast enough then what is noticeable becomes diminished also. The CV64 is a nice board especially for a 3000 because of the passthrough and hardware planar support. The Mediator offers better performance, more gfx memory, potentially newer gfx outputs like DVI and potentially 3D.

How stable is a rig using all PCI cards on the Mediator?

My "rig" is very stable although the driver installation is not for beginners and the drivers have some annoying but minor bugs that can mostly be worked around.

[Cosmos Amiga]

PCI is fantastic with the amiga, I have the mediator lt4 it has given my amiga a new lease of life

Yes, Mediator is very good for us...

Sadly the 3dfx driver is a bit buggy for me : watch the little demo W3DStarShip with only 170 triangles running at only 300 fps...

170 triangles are nothing for a 3dfx GPU clocked at 166 Mhz... We can reach about 2000 fps with a bugfree driver I guess...

Or maybe the bugs are somewhere in Warp3D, I don't know exactly...

I feel bugs in the Voodoo.card, hope Elbox will have a look...