Decision time: Do I upgrade my X1000?

Hi, guys. I've not been paying the closest of attention to developments in our scene the last handful of years or so. From the looks of things, there have been developments, and that is good. :)

I recently dusted off my X1000 and udpated the OS to the latest public release from Hyperion. Also upgraded to the new Hollywood Designer and updated the Emotion video player. (Now there is Hollywood 9 to do too.)

Now I have a question or two about going forward.

I see a new Enhancer release from A-Eon, including a new video/graphics driver from our champion Hans that boasts video acceleration to enable better video playback.

My X1000 has a nice R9 270 video card. With previous improvements to various versions of MPlayer and also Emotion, my X1000 is pretty solid at playback of 720p video files. But forget 1080, which has disappointed me all these years.

This brings me to my main question. (At last, you say! He is long winded.)

BEGIN MAIN QUESTION :)

Will the new RadeonHD driver in the new Enhancer work with a new RX card to allow me to achieve 1080p video playback in my X1000?

END MAIN QUESTION ;)

I ask this specifically because I only ever see mention of the X5000. Can I put a new RX card into my X1000 and benefit from the new driver, just as my X5000 brothers do?

If the answer is yes, what's a good card? This past year I put a new RX 580 card in my classic Mac Pro rebuild, so I am familiar with that card. But from glancing over the forums I see a lesser RX card might work better for us.

Thanks.

And long live the milspec X1000! Haha.

Hmmm, are we waiting for CFE firmware upgrade to allow X1000 to utilize RX cards? Now that I think of it, a man in the know may have mentioned this to me on IRC a few months ago. If so, that puts a halt on the upgrade considerations for me.

@mbrantley

You need to get a Radeon RX running with the new RX Radeon driver. Which is different from the Radeon HD Driver. Both Included in Enhancer 2.0 .

There is also indication that a hardware video acceleration library will come in future enhancer versions that will supports RadeonHD cards .

There is this rumor :

There are reports that if you put your X1000 into serial output for the firmware rather than video output it then boots the Radeon RX card into OS4 without any problems.

The only downside is that you wont see your firmware screen.

@mbrantley

According to tests performed by kas1e, only the rx550 and rx560 are working fine with both warp3d nova and the av decoder. These cards perform less or on par in 3d compared to your R9 270.

So if rx cards work in an X1k, you should still consider waiting until the RX570 and RX580 are fully supported.

@geennaam

You totally missed his question about video playback of 1080p.

@Spectre660

No, you totally missed ".. and the av decoder.."

According to kas1e:
1) av decoder and warp 3d working on RX550 and RX560.
2)Av decoder working but issues with warp3d on RX570
2) Neither working on RX580

Kas1e made a youtube movie where he demonstrated playback of two simultaneously playing 1080p movies with low cpu load on a X5000: https://youtu.be/3N3Da7KYR84

But to get the complete picture, he should also realise that a fully supported RX550/560 is no upgrade from his current R9 270 when you consider warp3d performance. And I must admit that this was a surprise to me.

@geennaam

His main interest was the video decoding.

On the 3D performance side with pure Warp3D Nova these were the results that I got years ago before the Power Management Prefs :

Spencer FPS performance (Level 1)

--------------------------------
X5000/20

ASUS R7-240 (Oland) = 22-23 fps (2D GfxBench2D Score = 2,197.26)
ASUS R7-250 (Cape Verde) = 52-55 fps (2D GfxBench2D Score = 6,022.26)
Club3D R7-370 (Pitcairn/Curaçao Pro) = 55-62 fps (2D GfxBench2D Score = 6,764.25)
PowerColor R7-250X (Cape Verde) = 64-69 fps (2D GfxBench2D Score = 6,377.72)
ASUS R9-270X (/Pitcairn/Curaçao XT)= 72-80 fps (2D GfxBench2D Score = 7,305.97)
Sapphire Rx 550 4Gb (Polaris 12) = 95-109 fps
Asus Rx 560 4GB (Polaris 11) = 128-161 fps

@Spectre660

I stand corrected. On the pc there is no performance difference between a R9 270X and a RX560. But apparently the situation is different in amigaland.

https://www.gpucheck.com/compare/amd-r ... el-core-i7-3770k-3-50ghz/

Be also aware that AMD changed specification of the RX560 from 1024 cores to 896/1024. So check first which RX560 is on the actual card before you buy it. The latest biostar board has the 896 core version for example. Some other manufacturers advertise with RX560D or RX560 EVO for the cut down version.

Yeah, I think in Amigaland HDR has implemented some gpu-assisted magic in the RX driver that is not in his HD driver.

Appreciate the information, guys. I'll keep reading and watching and learning.

@geennaam
Quote:

Basically, for me, all my 3 Radeon RX cards have working 2D, compositing, and VA decoding. But 2 of them fail in Warp3DNova with lockups. Hans aware, but didn't know the roots.

Quote:

That only if you mean old Warp3D performance (i.e. old warp3d) as currently there for Radeon RX only minigl-reloaded with bugs.

But in terms of Warp3DNova, Radeon RX now a better choice than RadeonHD: you only need to be sure you run PowerMAnagment preference, and set there to "HIGH" and save. I say "NOW", because we have now in public this Power prefs were you able to set resources of Radeon RX on maximum. Before this prefs out to the public, I say everywhere that RadeonHD is better, and that was true. Now things change. I have in the pipeline some 3d games, which on Radeon RX really faster than on RadeonHD (especially those ones which use heavy shaders).

You need to set power management to "high", because power management in the current Radeon RX works wrong, as we have no DMA support, and so, Radeon RX drivers didn't raise resources where is time for and you have low FPS. Now, you just run Power prefs, set it to High, and Radeon RX will be always at maximum and will give you better FPS in comparison with RadeonHD.

The only current issue with Radeon RX is proper support of old Warp3D / minigl, but for time being there is that minigl-for-gl4es

So, *are* RX cards (fully) supported on current X1000 hardware, or not?

@Raziel
No, no x1000 support for RadeonRX in any form

@kas1e

The rumor of working but no CFE display has not been disproved.

@geennaam

Info on my cards .Using the RX560 currently .

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/pmbhdz46crjurkd/RX_560.jpg?dl=0

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ir ... r4gsl/RX_550%232.jpg?dl=0

@kas1e

You're a betatester.

You know of @Spectre660's rumors?
Are they true?
Is a X1000 firmware update being worked on?
(I highly doubt it, since I remember someone saying the source for it was never made available and change to it would mean completely reinventing the wheel)
Is the only way to get support for RX cards a change on CFE?

@Spectre660

Nice. The full 1024 cores version at 1325MHz.

This one is still on sale in my country. But it contains the cut down version.

https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/vga/introduction.php?S_ID=265

@Raziel

Rumor was from a question in a Beta tester forum.
but never verified as being factual .

Someone would probably have to try.
Would mean installing the Radeon Rx driver first .

@Raziel

If CFE can’t be displayed, you access CFE from RS232, if you have debug RS232 connector.

@LiveForIt

I understand *how* it could be possible to use it...the question is *if*!

I wonder on this displaying of the CFE text issue.... what if one puts two graphics cards in the X1000? One would be an HD card and the other would be an RX card. Would that get around the issue?

I have run dual GPU cards in my X1000 since early days.