best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

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Ghillo
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best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by Ghillo »

Hi everyone, I wanted to make my XE with G3 faster in the management of 3D graphics to model with Blender.
With the latest updates of the OS, 3D more powerful cards of the 9000pro are supported. Like the 9800 or 9600?
If yes, what do you recommend, in modeling if the scenes become complex, the graphics become very shotted and it is difficult to work.
Or it is irrelevant, I currently have a 9250 with 128MB, would it be better to switch to G4 instead of updating the graphics card?
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sailorMH
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Re: best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by sailorMH »

Today still is the best Radeon 9000 PRO with graphics chip RV250. Take the one with 128 MB VRAM.
It is the same generation like yours 9250 with graphics chip RV280, only faster. Check here the basic specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/

The is also faster cards from this generation - Radenon 8500 and FireGL 8800 with gfx chip R200, HW acceleration works, but unfortunatelly it causes artifacts on screen. So it works, but is unusable.
Here in article 3.2 is example of the smallest artifact: https://www.amigaportal.cz/node/149415 - also Czech language ;-). Other artifacts are worse.

About the mentioned cards 9800 or 9600: they one generation newer, the fastest is 9800 PRO with gfx chip R350 ( 9800 PRO with R360 have the same speed, but is not AGP-compatible with our XE).
9800 PRO is great card. I have it inside my Pegasos 2, but it has one little ;-) disadvantage - it have no hardware drivers under AmigaOS 4 ( MorphOS has ). The only use of this card with AmigaOS is SDL - it uses R200 drivers and it is super fast. When I overclocked Pegasos 2 and change 9250 to 9800 PRO I receive more than 80% speed increase with SDL bench. So great for E-UAE, DosBox, some games like 1941 and that is all. But no 2D accel, no 3D accel, no compositing. So, do not use it.

In any case is better to switch from G3 to G4. But you need different CPU module, this CPUs are not pin-compatible. And AmigaOne XE CPU modules is very rare. So if you found some spare, please let me know, I am interested in both G3 and G4. ;-)
I have G3 / 800 MHz in Micro A1-C and G4 / 800 in AmigaOne XE. Speed of common tasks not differs. But G4 has AltiVec, which is great for mplayer, lame, graphics.library and others. Blender ownselves not use AltiVec, only indirectly via ffmpeg.
And there were G4 / 900 MHz from Eyetech and ACube makes G4 / 1.0 and 1.267 GHz versions. But to find it...
Micro A1-C (G3/1.2 GHz), AmigaOne XE (G4/1.4 GHz), Pegasos II (G4/1.33 GHz), Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000
Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Powerbook, Mac Mini (1.83 GHz), iMac, Powermac Quad

AmigaOS, MorphOS, linux, MacOS X
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Ghillo
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:08 am
Location: Italia

Re: best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by Ghillo »

Hi everyone, you may remember that I was looking for a new graphics card for my A1 XE to see if I could increase performance in handling 3D graphics in modeling using Blender .
Let me explain a little what happened , in looking for the best solution maybe I got a little confused and not finding a 9000 Pro with at least 128Mb of memory ( you can find most with 64 Mega ) and at a decent price (on EBay you can't find them for less than 50/60 euros which seems to me excessive for such an old card).
I wanted to try for 25 Euro a 9800 , but of course bad luck was watching me and the seller made a mistake and sent it who knows where , he doesn't even know anymore , however he was honest and refunded me the amount .
At this point reading around sites I learned that the 9800 is not supported in 3D by OS4 , so I find for 20 Euro a 9200 with 256Mb of ram at 128Bit ( which looking at comparisons with other cards is faster than the 9250 I currently have which by the way has 64Bit memory), prensa arrived in a short time I try it but it gives me these problems.
Uboot and kickstart all normal and displayed correctly , as soon as the Workbench appears I notice that it starts to slow down loading what I have set up in WBStartup , I try to boot something but it is super slow in loading and then it crashes until I have to reset OS4.1 FE , let me premise that I have a 1TB SATA HD connected to the 3112 , I also tried moving the Sil to another PCI connector , but no dice the problem persists , it seems to be a conflict between SATA and graphics card ( or at least I infer it but I am not sure).
Has anyone had similar problems and managed to solve them , there might be some UBoot setting or other , in Devs:Monitors in Radeon options via RAWBinfo there is set CMPLENGHT=11 (what would be)
and among other entries also INTERRUPT=Yes (what function would this option have).
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sailorMH
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Re: best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by sailorMH »

In general, Radeon 9200 works fine with AmigaOS. I have one and tested with Sam440ep-flex.
If your card not works as expected, try this:

1. Return to your last working configuration with your original Radeon 9250. ( PCI slot with SATA, UBoot variables, Monitor file.. all this set as was original working state)
2. If it works like before, rename Devs:/Monitors/RadeonWithYourNumber to Radeon. Set the Radeon Icon tooltypes: CMPLENGHT=6 and BOARDNAME=Radeon. If there is other files in Monitors drawer, delete them. Be sure there stay only one Radeon file.
3. Reboot - it should works normally, as before.
4. Shut down your Amiga and swap the card for new Radeon 9200. Do not touch anything other. Power on.
5. It should works.

If it still not works, probably is problem with the card. Try connect serial cable to other computer with serial terminal, check serial debug output and post here the output.

Regarding your SATA PCI slot:
How many PCI cards do you use? Only this one SATA, or also others?
Best configuration ( if you have graphics card in AGP slot ) is to place PCI SATA in first PCI 33 MHz slot. It should work without conflicts.
If it not works, try the second 33 MHz PCI.
But anyway - if you have no conflict with original gfx card + PCI sata, there for sure will be no conflict with new graphics card.

P.S. is your Radeon 9250 128MB really with 64-bit memory bus? There were 64-bit and 128-bit versions.
And if it has 128 bit, is practically as fast as your new Radeon 9200.
Micro A1-C (G3/1.2 GHz), AmigaOne XE (G4/1.4 GHz), Pegasos II (G4/1.33 GHz), Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000
Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Powerbook, Mac Mini (1.83 GHz), iMac, Powermac Quad

AmigaOS, MorphOS, linux, MacOS X
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Ghillo
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:08 am
Location: Italia

Re: best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by Ghillo »

Thank you for your reply , I did what you say, but after inserting the graphics card
UBoot didn't appear to me either.
So I put the 9250 back in and everything is normal without any problems, I can't understand , maybe the 9200
Is defective.
:shock:
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sailorMH
Posts: 230
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Location: Czech republic

Re: best Graphics card for AmigaOne XE

Post by sailorMH »

The best I can advice is to wait for cheap and tested Radeon 9000 PRO.
In past, I waited more than two years for X1900 G5 Mac Edition for fine price. ;-)

If I buy old graphics cards, I allways select the one which have screenshot of ouptput of GPU-Z or similar program. Chance that the card is in working state is bigger, and I see exact GPU and VRAM frequencies - it often differs from standart type.
Micro A1-C (G3/1.2 GHz), AmigaOne XE (G4/1.4 GHz), Pegasos II (G4/1.33 GHz), Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOne X1000
Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Powerbook, Mac Mini (1.83 GHz), iMac, Powermac Quad

AmigaOS, MorphOS, linux, MacOS X
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