Re: CT60 / CTPCI / Radeon

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 11:45:23 +0000, Johan Klockars wrote:

> In article <pan.2005.09.06.22.04.29.80488@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Mark D <mducksub@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:49:01 -0400, Ronald J. Hall wrote:
>>> On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 08:23:30 -0700, Coda wrote:
> ...
>>drivers! That's not good at all. There's actually marginal open source
>>ATI drivers out there. For our platform, ATI is the choice.
>
> There seems to be pretty decent open source nVIDIA driver support out
> there too. Perhaps not for Linux (haven't checked), but under BeOS they
> even have rather good 3D performance, apparently.
> QuakeII is supposed to be running, along with other OpenGL things.
>
> See here, for example:
> http://web.inter.nl.net/users/be-hold/BeOS/NVdriver/bench/bench_v041.html
>
>>>> I still say that the Voodoo cards would be the best choice considering
>>>> the amount of documentation available, but what Didier does is his
>
> Documentation is definitely much nicer than X sources. ;-)
>
>>Those cards are ancient. Asking my voodoo 3 to do 1680x1050 which I need
>>for my LCD would not go well. If we're going to do it, we should do it
>
> Are you sure?
> I'd be very surprised indeed if a Voodoo 3 had trouble with resolutions
> like that. Even the (far more) ancient RageII used with the Eclipse can
> do 1600x1200 (only at 60 Hz, but that's enough for an LCD, and not at
> 32 bit colour (too little memory and possibly bandwidth)).
>

Maybe voodoo5. I remember my voodoo 3 (even the 16MB version) having a
1280x1024 limit. The voodoo5 was a nice card. It'd be nice to see
drivers for that ;)

> Someone else commented that even a CT60 would have trouble throwing
> around the data for a mode like that, but that's missing the point
> completely, in my opinion. There are very few situations where you'd
> actually want or need to do anything much with the CPU for all those
> millions of pixels. Usually you'd let the hardware acceleration work
> for you, and that is very very fast indeed.
>

Right, and I expect us to use at least some of that hardware acceleration.
I have an expectation for this mode to be possible - we'll see though if
that can be reality.

>>right. Even if ATI cards have less support, they have the support we need
>>to get things up and running. They're VERY fast too. The eclipse makes a
>>stock falcon twice as fast. Just ask Carey. 128kbit mp3 on a falcon uses
>
> I suppose that number is related to the fact that you can set the Falcon
> to monochrome mode and still get colour graphics (so that more of the
> bus bandwidth is free for the CPU)?
>

Precisely. Maybe it even uses a lower mode?

>>devs choose what they're most comfortable with, and I'd say ATI is it. We
>
> As someone said, anyone is of course free to write a driver for some
> other hardware. It really isn't very hard to do (assuming you have
> decent documentation or equivalent).
> I'd really like to do one for the Voodoo cards myself, but I'm not sure
> I'll ever find the time for that.

The more choice the merrier. I'd prefer ATI drivers for quite new cards
so that as hardware acceleration is done, it's quite fast. Considering
ATI stuff is a proven concept, I thought it made more sense, but the
bottom line is whatever, the people developing the (likely free) drivers
want to use they should get to use without any whining ;)

Thanks,
Mark


.

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