Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Heh. OK, so my definition of being patient for a week seems to be repeatedly trying and failing to do this nightly on my own, while between failed attempts checking online to see if the instructions were made available yet. I know, I know.... I must have been a terrible worry for my parents too.

But... I got it done last night and right now have the trusty old 9250 card working in an A1X1000 PCI slot alongside my new RadeonHD 4850 card in a PCI-e slot. What helped me crack this was clicking on Trevor's Workbench screengrab on his blog to enlarge it. I could then see he had a driver named PCIGraphics installed in devs/monitor.

How did you ever figure out to call it that, Trevor? Anyway, I renamed my driver to match yours, and ... tada! ... the 9250 card's display modes became available to me.

Woot woot! Now... gonna go figure out how to get Blender to open on a 9250 display to see how the interface runs. I find things a big sluggish with the wazp approach on the RadeonHD card at present.

mbrantley wrote:Heh. OK, so my definition of being patient for a week seems to be repeatedly trying and failing to do this nightly on my own, while between failed attempts checking online to see if the instructions were made available yet. I know, I know.... I must have been a terrible worry for my parents too.

But... I got it done last night and right now have the trusty old 9250 card working in an A1X1000 PCI slot alongside my new RadeonHD 4850 card in a PCI-e slot. What helped me crack this was clicking on Trevor's Workbench screengrab on his blog to enlarge it. I could then see he had a driver named PCIGraphics installed in devs/monitor.

How did you ever figure out to call it that, Trevor? Anyway, I renamed my driver to match yours, and ... tada! ... the 9250 card's display modes became available to me.

Woot woot! Now... gonna go figure out how to get Blender to open on a 9250 display to see how the interface runs. I find things a big sluggish with the wazp approach on the RadeonHD card at present.

You are a Wizard of Amiga tinkering Mike! Congrats on getting it to work, but I am wondering which PCI card you removed to make room for your Radeon 9250 video card? Did I miss the announcement of some driver(s) being released for the X1000 which enable the use of the Sound, or Ethernet ports on the Nemo2 motherboard, so that the PCI cards provided in all "First Contact" AmigaOne X1000's can now be removed, freeing up one or more PCI slots?

That would be very good news, if it is true. I must go searching for such an announcement and download the new drivers, if they are available. I want to do the same thing you have done to enable dual monitor support with dual video cards, but I also wish to free up a PCI slot to install and use my Catweasel card, to give me the ability to read and write original 880k floppy disks (maybe 1.76mb floppy disks too). Being able to use an original Amiga joystick with some games would be a bonus too, if the Catweasel joystick ports are supported in OS4.1.5.

Can you, or anyone else reading this thread answer my previous questions about which Radeon 9xxx video card would be best to buy for the current 3D support contained within OS4.1.5?

Don't get too excited, Dave… no drivers have been released for onboard sound or ethernet so far as I know. What I have done is the admittedly radical move of removing the ethernet card and, thus, Internet access. (I can confirm the onboard ethernet port does work in Debian.)

I doubt anybody else will want to do this, as everybody goes on and on about web browsers and such. But in my case I certainly have lots of computers to get online with, including more than one at the same desk where my X1000 is installed. What I want this machine for mostly is running new and classic Amiga creative applications. You see, I remember the pre-Internet period when I was most productive with my Amigas. These days I surely do waste a lot of time on, ahem, Internet forums and such. I mean, I could be reading threads about how useless an X1000 is or I could be using my X1000 to do something useful. That's the way the view looks from here anyway.

I expect we'll have drivers for the onboard ethernet and sound sooner rather than later. No inside knowledge, and maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Obviously the ATI 9250 card works, as I've used it with both a Sam440 and now the X1000. (I'm keeping my little Sam440 with the onboard M9 video but likely will sell or keep as a spare my Sam440ep-flex motherboard that had the 9250 card).

I have no experience with other cards. I have a spare 9200 card in a PowerMac G5 PCI slot, but I haven't tried it and suspect it's a Mac version that would have to be re-flashed or whatever the term is. I'm not going to bother with that.

AmigaDave wrote:I ... realized that I don't have all the information I need to buy anything yet. Can someone here educate me about which video card would be the best to purchase for use in my X1000, that has full OpenGL (or is it OpenCL) 3D support under OS4.1.5.

Should I look for an ATI Radeon 9000Pro w/128mb VRAM in PCI format, or a ATI Radeon 9250 w/256mb VRAM, PCI format, or something eles? I am not even sure the 9000Pro was made with 128mb VRAM in PCI format, as I am only familiar with the 9000Pro cards used in G4 PowerMac's, which only have 64mb of VRAM. I already know that the 9000Pro is much faster than the 9100, 9200, & 9250 cards, but I don't know the history of which Radeon 9xxx series video cards were produced in PCI format with faster 128kb interfaces and 128mb, or 256mb VRAM and the fastest clock speeds of the GPU's.

I'm afraid that I can't really help you, as I am an ATI/Radeon newbie, so take any of my comments with a pinch of salt! However, I do know that Radeon 9250 works, and I have been reliably told that the 9200 also works. I'm not sure about the 9000 (I have a feeling it will but can't say for sure).

128MB (VRAM) seems to be the highest that is reliably supported. 256MB won't do any harm, but you may only be able to use 128MB of it (unless very lucky). I'd avoid 64MB of VRAM, as that is a bit limiting for games (just ask non-flex Sam440 users trying to play games with high-resolution monitors & also having compositing enabled!).

When you say "128kb interface" do you mean a "128bit memory bus width"? That would certainly be faster than 64bit. I think both work, but faster would certainly benefit some games.

So I may have mentioned that I am getting an X1000 soon

This thread intrigues me, this hackery is very interesting, but I find myself wondering if it is a sticking plaster over what may be an extended wait for true 3D support on the PCI-E graphics cards.
Is it going to be necessary for me to acquire a 9250 PCI and all the gubbins to preserve the PCI Sound card and Ethernet if I want 3D support any time soon?

Is the Wazp3D solution so bad that the 9250 hackery is needed?

ddni wrote:So I may have mentioned that I am getting an X1000 soon

This thread intrigues me, this hackery is very interesting, but I find myself wondering if it is a sticking plaster over what may be an extended wait for true 3D support on the PCI-E graphics cards.
Is it going to be necessary for me to acquire a 9250 PCI and all the gubbins to preserve the PCI Sound card and Ethernet if I want 3D support any time soon?

Is the Wazp3D solution so bad that the 9250 hackery is needed?

Probably.

Driver writing takes a lot of time and effort from programmers. Something that the community is lacking in and needs more of, hence the OS4.x programming seminar at this year's AmiWest Show. Not that this seminar is going to help with getting drivers written, as I believe that it is not an advanced programming, or driver writing seminar and more likely a beginner's level programming class specifically tailored for OS4.x development. Getting more OS4.x users educated in programming for OS4.x should eventually lead to more competent OS4.x programmers in the years ahead. I know I am signing up for it and will be studying before I attend the seminar, so I won't be so clueless during the seminar and have a hard time understanding what they are talking about.

ddni wrote:Is the Wazp3D solution so bad that the 9250 hackery is needed?

I haven't tried Wazp3D myself yet (I do intend to!), but from a theoretical view I think that Wazp3D should be able to achieve decent performance for most 2D games (that use MiniGL or Warp3D).

But real 3D is another matter entirely - there is simply no way for a CPU to do all the 3D effects with reasonable performance. The good news is that older 3D games don't use all those 3D effects, so there will be 3D cases were Wazp3D should be able to get acceptable (but probably not great) performance. e.g. Quake 3 is never going to be playable (at least not with any high-quality effects enabled).

AmigaDave wrote:I
Since I am new to OS4.x, please advise me on which is the best video card that is already supported to the fullest extent by the current OS4.x video card drivers. I want to set up a dual monitor, dual video card installation in my X1000 until the 3D video card drivers are completed for the Radeon HD video cards.

Thanks!

Just remember, the gfx card driver is a work in progress, don't be so fast to jump. I would hold off till 4.2 comes out & then make the jump, if you still want to. To be honest, I would (& will) just get a pci-e2pci adaptor, put the network card on it & install a 9250 in the pci slot & keep your 4650 for now. Up to now, looks like the 6870 is king of the hill, but I would still wait for the smoke to clear.

Ken

sundown wrote:

AmigaDave wrote:I
Since I am new to OS4.x, please advise me on which is the best video card that is already supported to the fullest extent by the current OS4.x video card drivers. I want to set up a dual monitor, dual video card installation in my X1000 until the 3D video card drivers are completed for the Radeon HD video cards.

Thanks!

Just remember, the gfx card driver is a work in progress, don't be so fast to jump. I would hold off till 4.2 comes out & then make the jump, if you still want to. To be honest, I would (& will) just get a pci-e2pci adaptor, put the network card on it & install a 9250 in the pci slot & keep your 4650 for now. Up to now, looks like the 6870 is king of the hill, but I would still wait for the smoke to clear.

Ken

Thanks for the advice Ken, but my question was asking for advice on which Radeon 9250, or 9000 Pro (if available in Windows/OS4.x & PCI form factor) to buy? I got a few helpful hints from some other members here, but was hoping someone would just tell me which card is best for OS4.x and provide a link to where I could buy one cheapest. I know that is asking a lot from anyone here.

In addition to wanting a dual monitor setup for my X1000, I also want to buy and play Heretic II that is being sold on AmigaKit's online store site (I actually think it might be one of Hyperion's games and is being sold here too), on my X1000, and I don't know if it will play well with just the Wazp3D driver and my Radeon HD stock video card that came with my First Contact X1000 system.

AmigaDave

This is the model of 9250 I bought and used in my dual graphic card setup:-

http://diablotek.com/v2.0/index.php?pag ... &Itemid=40

Sould be fairly easy to track one down. I bought mine on eBay.

Trevor