It's taken a little while to sink in, but because (once ported!) Gallium3D will only work with 3D cards that support Shaders, Sam440 owners will need to buy a suitable *PCI* graphics card... but I was a little worried whether there ARE any such gfx cards available to buy. So I thought it might be worth starting a thread to discuss the possibilities:
* Zotac GeForce 6200 A / 512MB / PCI - this seems the best candidate, because it supports Shader Model 3.0. The big question is whether Gallium3D supports it...
* EVGA 512-P1-N402-LR GEFORCE 6200 512MB PCI DDR2 - I guess should be same as the Zotac 6200, although it seems much harder to get.
* Zotac GeForce FX5200 / 256MB / PCI - this apparently supports Shader Model 2.0. I don't know how good it actually is (FX...) but I guess must still be better than any Radeon 9250. So, does Gallium3D support it?
And slightly shockingly, those are the only candidates I could find. (Unless any Matrox cards would be suitable?) So unless anyone can find any other possible candidates, I guess the next step is to find out whether Gallium3D supports any of them...
EDIT: Oh, and something I totally forget to ask was whether AmigaOS4 supports hardware accelerated *2D* with any of those cards! Because they will obviously be useless without that.
I'm sure Hans will explain things in detail as soon as he sees this, for the time being what I reckon is that since we only have 2D drivers for RadeonHD cards, Sam440 owners (Flex owners in particular as it's the only 440 model to feature a 66Mhz PCI bus) should look for PCI versions of RadeonHD cards. In particular I saw the HD2400 and HD4350 in PCI version. Support for recognizing the first was added in a past U-Boot update I don't know if the 4350 is also recognized at the moment.
This card should be ideal (supports Shader Model 4.1 although I don't think it's relevant for us, with Gallium we should get access to GLSL 1.20 however):
Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like the situation is better than I thought :) . Dunno why my search didn't turn up any Radeons.
@DAX Something you may have forgotten (or at least failed to mention) is that the Sam440 can only handle 3.3v PCI cards (not 5v-only ones). This means you have to pay careful attention to the PCI slot - it needs to have two notches in it (one at either end) for it to (theoretically!) support 3.3v (and 5v). I think that less powerful cards are more likely to support the lower voltage, although I did see an X1550 with two notches & a HD4350 which only had one notch!
The free Nauveau driver for Linux that is also used by AROS works with the cards you linked above. It's possible that there will be non-free Radeon drivers for use with OS 4.x since Hyperion has NDA access to the specifications of the Radeon.
I'm not sure what the licensing implications of using the Nauveau drivers with OS 4.x would be. I have heard that Gallium doesn't use the binary-blobs LGPL library stub to interface to the Linux kernal. It may require some GPL interfacing to be able to use the free drivers that Linux uses.
While Gallium3d support and nvidia and radeon cards, still, 2d driver should be done as well (on which gallium drivers are based). In case with radeons and radeonsHD, we already have 2d drivers, but with case with all those geforces, we firstly need to port nvidia 2d drivers (those ones about which Samuri_Crow say).
But imho, its too early to worring about Nvidia cards while we not have Gallium for radeons (for which we already have 2d drivers working).
As has already been said by others, the cards supported by the Radeon HD driver are supported by Gallium. At present there is the R300g driver for R300-500 chipsets, and the R600g driver for R600/R700 series chipsets. While the R300 driver also supports the R300 and R400 series, I will only be working on R500+ support.
Not from me. However, there's nothing to stop someone else from adding support for R300 or R400 chipsets if they choose to.
I personally see little point in supporting the older cards. R300/R400 chipsets don't support the full GLSL specification (e.g., they don't support loops), and so are insufficient for newer games. It won't take long for us to have graphics-software/games that these older chipsets can't handle. Plus, since (almost?) no-one has one of these cards in their Amiga's, everyone is going to have to buy a new card, and they might as well buy something newer.
While the R300 driver also supports the R300 and R400 series, I will only be working on R500+ support.
I check lately some speed tests of gallium drivers on linux (on phoronix.com site) and as i understand , while r600g are in the begining of way (its very slow in some areas), r300g in last time have speed boost , and matured enough already to be used for us. But even in r300g some cards works very fast on gallium, some are not. There is few tests of r300g on linux in compare with classic mesa and catalyst: there and there
For example, the best speed got those cards as i can see: radeon x1800xt/x1950pro , radeon hd3850 and radeon hd4830.
And as far as i understand all x1000-x1950 its all r520, so r300g driver cover them and so x1800xt/x1950pro are the best cards by speed on linux.
As for hd3850 and hd4830, they imho covers by r600g ? Did you have interest to works on it as well ? If so, then we will have all the fastest drivers, and that is good news. As i see from tests x1800xt and x1950pro, works almost the same by speed as catalyst one. Of course there is still porting problems can be, just because of some linux-related speed-tricks only, but we cross the fingers :)
Edited by kas1e on 2011/5/20 9:01:13 Edited by kas1e on 2011/5/20 9:30:40 Edited by kas1e on 2011/5/20 9:31:52 Edited by kas1e on 2011/5/20 9:33:25
...Sam440 can only handle 3.3v PCI cards (not 5v-only ones). This means you have to pay careful attention to the PCI slot - it needs to have two notches in it (one at either end) for it to (theoretically!) support 3.3v (and 5v). I think that less powerful cards are more likely to support the lower voltage, although I did see an X1550 with two notches & a HD4350 which only had one notch!
Indeed Sam440 might be more picky than other systems when it comes to GFX cards, I hope that A-cube and dealers such as Amigakit will provide "certified" cards when the time comes...
SamFlex Complete System + AmigaOS4.1 Update 4 Amiga 2000 GVP GForce-040 Picasso II AmigaOS3.9 BB2 Amiga CD-32
The Sam 440EP comes with the R9 by default. Will this model be supported? Moreover, there are 3 or 4 radeon cards PCI version, for the series 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000. I haven't see any cards for the 6000 series. For sure a new PCI radeon card is actually more fast than the AGP M9 of the Sam440. What do you think about?
The Sam 440EP comes with the R9 by default. Will this model be supported?
The Sam440ep's built-in graphics chip will NOT be supported by Gallium3D, because that chip does not support shaders. Which is why I said Sam440 owners will need to buy a suitable gfx card.
Well... since on my Peg2 I can use only AGP cards and only 2x cards the best choice for my config was to get a Radeon9800... But since you are telling me that Radeon9800 wont be supported I will see to buy a 9100 that was the curently faster card for AmigaOS4.1 around right? Or also the 9250 gamer edition was the same?
kas1e wrote: As for hd3850 and hd4830, they imho covers by r600g ? Did you have interest to works on it as well ? If so, then we will have all the fastest drivers, and that is good news. As i see from tests x1800xt and x1950pro, works almost the same by speed as catalyst one. Of course there is still porting problems can be, just because of some linux-related speed-tricks only, but we cross the fingers :)
As said in my first post, the R600g covers the R600 and R700 chipsets and, yes, that includes the HD 3000 and HD 4000 series. In fact, it includes evergreen support too, although the 2D driver don't support those yet.
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here, as I already said that 3D support is coming for all cards that the RadeonHD.chip driver supports (i.e., R500+ chipsets).
Well... since on my Peg2 I can use only AGP cards and only 2x cards the best choice for my config was to get a Radeon9800... But since you are telling me that Radeon9800 wont be supported I will see to buy a 9100 that was the curently faster card for AmigaOS4.1 around right? Or also the 9250 gamer edition was the same?
Correction. I said that I won't be working on support for anything below the R500. There's nothing to stop someone else from adding it themselves.
Yes, the 9100 is probably the fastest supported card. I'm not sure what "gamer edition" means, but the 9250 is almost the slowest R200 card in existence. The crown for the slowest is actually taken by the 9200 SE.
The Sam440ep's built-in graphics chip will NOT be supported by Gallium3D, because that chip does not support shaders. Which is why I said Sam440 owners will need to buy a suitable gfx card.
In that case what card do you suggest to buy for series 3000, 4000, and 5000? I mean the Pci version.
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