Hi guys,

I have an X5000 with an ATI HD7750 GPU. I intend to keep this card, as it's necessary to maximize using OS4 with all the 3d goodies.

I'd like to add a second GPU for MorphOS and linux. Can someone please recommend the option to enable triple booting?

Thanks!

> I'd like to add a second GPU for MorphOS and linux. Can
> someone please recommend the option to enable triple booting?

- HD5870, HD6870, HD7670, HD8490 or R5 235X/310 if you can live without 3D and overlay on MorphOS
- HD2900 XT, HD3870, HD4890 if you can live without 3D on MorphOS
- X1950 XTX for everything (except Warp3D) supported

Awesome, thanks Andreas. I just grabbed an X1950 XTX and will use that. Hopefully it doesn't introduce too much complexity trying to have multiple video cards in the computer at the same time.

> I just grabbed an X1950 XTX and will use that.

I just want to add that my posting was based on my interpretation of "best" as "fastest".

> Hopefully it doesn't introduce too much complexity trying to have multiple
> video cards in the computer at the same time.

It's not trivial at least, and I'm not sure anyone has been successful in what you want to do, i.e. using a dual-card configuration with OS4 using the primary card in the PEG slot and Linux/MorphOS using another card in another PCIe slot. As far as I understand, a dual-card installation with just OS4 and Linux has been tested to work successfully, but that did not involve MorphOS. Some more info there:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=12178&start=70
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=12300

The X5000 only has one PCIex16 slot so 2 pciex16 cards cant be installed at the same time unless you can get an adapter to work. Either a pci to pciex16 adapter or a pciex1 to pciex16 adapter. If the OS does not support the graphic card in the primary slot (The PCIex16 slot) then you will not get a display. Also It appears that currently both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1 do not support multiple Radeon cards on the X5000.
So to run MorphOS on the X5000 at present you will have to remove your Radeon HD Southern Island card.

Quote:

>It appears that currently both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1 do not support multiple Radeon cards on the X5000.

Yeah, I'm not sure what Andreas was thinking, knows the issue with having two Radeon cards in a MorphOS system, and the limited # of PCI-E lanes (and the slot configuration) of an X5000.

Possible he was thinking in terms of swapping.

The simplest answer would be that eventually an HD 7750 driver will be released for MorphOS.

> Andreas [...] knows the issue with having two Radeon cards
> in a MorphOS system

I knew it wasn't possible to have MorphOS use two Radeon cards, but not that it wasn't possible to have MorphOS use one single Radeon card as soon as another Radeon not supported and not to be used by MorphOS was connected to the board.

> and the limited # of PCI-E lanes (and the slot configuration) of an X5000.

As said by Spectre660, there are adapters from PCIe x1 to PCIe x16, which are just dumb physical adapters with only one lane connected on the x16 side so should be completely transparent to firmware and OS.

> The simplest answer would be that eventually an HD 7750 driver
> will be released for MorphOS.

How will MorphOS cope with an additional Radeon/FireMV/FirePro card put into the PCIe x1 slot for Linux then?

Ugh. This whole GPU situation in the X5000 is terrible. Admittedly I bought the X5000 with the intent to use OS4.1 as my main OS, so my optimal build takes the most advantage of that...hence the HD7750.

That said, the HD7750 doesn't work in linux. SO, I need an additional GPU to use linux...grumble grumble...

And MorphOS can't utilize the HD7750, so I need something that'll work in MorphOS. But...MorphOS doesn't work with multiple GPUs.

What a shoddy state of affairs. There exists no reasonable multi-boot solution for this computer. </rant>

The HD7750 does work in Linux but there is no hardware acceleration or 3D.

Thread on X5000 Dual Graphics cards for AmigaOS 4.1 and Linux


Thread on X5000/020 Quake III Performance with the different options

[ Edited by Spectre660 03.06.2018 - 15:44 ]

Quote:

That last reference would certainly if better if the comparison used the same video cards.

And that is the dilemma.

The benchmarks show that on the X5000/020 3D performance under Linux might not be worth giving up 3D performance under AmigaOS 4.1 to run a pciex16 card under Linux.
X5000/020 hardware assisted video playback under Linux is about as good with a pciex1 card as a pciex16 card so you have a decent balance between the video card capabilities of the two OS'es plus 3D support on both.

Quote:

Those Q3 benchmarks are quite disappointing.

X5000, Linux: Radeon HD 6570 pciex16 (pciex16 Slot) = 78.2fps
X5000, OS4: Radeon R9-270X pciex16 (pciex16 Slot) = 99.5fps

for the 640x400 resolution. Your average X850XT (AGP) does 73,1 FPS on MorphOS and G5 in 1600x1200.

I used the 640x400 mode as it is the mode that works best for the Radeon FireMV 2260 pciex1 in the pciex1 Slot.

Will post an OS4.1 1600x1200 result with the R9-270X for you later.

X5000/20 Radeon R9-270X Ioquake3 1600x1200 = 93.2FPS . (Radeon HD 3.6 Driver. Warp3D SI 1.14)

The nice feature under AmigaOS 4.1 is that software written for older Radeon cards also run on machines with Radeon HD Southern Islands cards and the Warp3D SI driver.
New software will run on the same Radeon SI cards under the new Warp3D Nova driver.
Both Drivers will benefit from the Radeon HD 3.x 2D driver that allows all of the ram on the graphics card to be used.

Some recent Warp3D Nova developements

[ Edited by Spectre660 04.06.2018 - 08:01 ]

@koszer

Matched up my settings to the ones that you posted
here

Score 92.1

The problem with X5000 Linux performance is possibly something to do with the open-source Radeon drivers on Linux. While in theory they are just as fast as proprietary drivers, I've always had to replace them with the proprietary drivers from ATI/AMD, which are x86 only.

There should be quite some room for improvement on the X5000 under both MorphOS and AmigaOS
once 3D for newer video cards under MorphOS is done and when pure Warp3DNova versions are released for AmigaOS. Support for the older MorphOS software using the newer cards would be nice too.
Finally found some links about preliminary Quake 3 benchmarks on a X5000 + X1950 under MorphOS 3.1 beta= 215FPS at 1280x1024.
Under OS 4.1 on my X5000gives 102.00FPS at 1280x1024 (Warp3DSI + Mingl).

Post 1


Post 2

> If the OS does not support the graphic card in the primary slot
> (The PCIex16 slot) then you will not get a display. Also It appears
> that currently both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1 do not support multiple
> Radeon cards on the X5000. So to run MorphOS on the X5000 at present
> you will have to remove your Radeon HD Southern Island card.

At AmiWest it was claimed (and reaffirmed here on MorphZone) that MorphOS can use a Radeon 9200 in a PCI slot of the X5000 without removing the unsupported Radeon HD Southern Islands card from the primary PCIe slot. What's your opinion of this?

If anyone gets it to work it would be nice if they would share their configuration and method. Also U-boot version.
If there is a U-Boot variable to switch the initial video output slot/device then yes .

The only way I could get my X5000 to boot MorphOS with a Radeon HD Southern Islands card in the primary PCIe slot was by using the virtual monitor driver . For some reason I could not get the VNC properly configured to work though . I know that it booted because I could hear the MorphOS boot jingle.

I agree, if anyone can get this to work and share the results it would be very much appreciate as have a spare PCI Radeon 9200 lying around but am not able to get this to display in U-boot.

Currently gone back to using my Radeon HD7750 and AmigaOS 4 full time with the new RadeonHD 3.6 driver. The X1650 I was using to allow me to use MorphOS on the X5000 is simply tad too limited for OS4 tasks.

Quote:

It's a matter of which card is scanned first.
It's not that you can't have two Radeon cards installed, BUT, if an unsupported Radeon card is detected first, then the OS is going to fail.

The Radeon 9200 solution just might work. And it would give you W3D support.

I own a PowerMac G5 that originally was fitted with a nVidia GeForce 5500 AGP 64MB GFX card, but as this is not compatible with MorphOS I needed a GFX card that was. So I acquired a Radeon 9200 128MB PCI card and fitted that in the next lower (PCI) slot in the G5 board.

I had to connect the video monitor to the connector on the Radeon PCI slot to use the card, but MorphOS was viewable on it, even though I seem to remember the nVidia card was still sitting in the AGP slot. It's a while ago, but that's the basics of how I used a Radeon 9200 PCI card in my PowerMac G5, though I've since located an Apple/Mac based Radeon 9600 128MB AGP card so the 9200 is no longer required for the moment for that purpose.

My use of the Radeon 9200 was extremely brief, it was more to test the PowerMac G5 hardware itsef, as it had a faulty CPU when I got it, and I had to replace it, so that required re-installation via Mac diagnostic software to get the fans to run at an acceptably quiet/slower speed, instead of on full speed all the time - requiring calibration.

So, a Radeon 9200 PCI card is useable with a PowerMac G5, and I believe it is also OK with a G4 PowerMac, but other hardware I am unsure if there are PCI slots compatible in other hardware with that kind of card.

> I am unsure if there are PCI slots compatible in other hardware with that kind of card.

The PCI slots of the X5000/Cyrus are compatible, that's not the problem. The issue is probably with the board firmware or its configuration/settings.

Probably a U-Boot variable to specify the pcie16 ,pciex1 or pci slot to initialize would be required. The default is the pciex16 and it does not bother with the other slots even when there is no card in the pciex16 slot.

The Sam460ex has a variable to select onboard graphics or pcie/pci.
Never tried to boot with both a pciex16 and pci card installed at the same time though but it handles a single Radeon configuration as it was meant to.

Quote:

Quote:

That is a possibility. And isn't PCI addressed via a bridge chip? That might complicate accessing and detecting PCI cards.

Further, performance of PCI linked gpus is really limited by the slow bus transfers.

So, I think it's best to use what PCI-E cards we can, wait for some further development, and just deal with it.

Personally, since 3D isn't as important as overlay support, I am thinking a Radeon HD 4770 would be a good match for MorphOS on the X5000.
And Mark will no doubt enhance his current Radeon driver to provide 3D support to cards without it eventually.

He has GCN gen 1 and 2 cards on hand.

A driver for something like the 7750 ought to be doable.

Still, since most of our base still uses AGP based systems, the R500's like the X1950Pro still make sense for many of us.

I'm thinking of taping off pins 3 and 11 on one and throwing it in a G4 for the pure perverse satisfaction of it.

I'd like to see someone install an X1950XTX in an X5000 and bench it under MorphOS.
I think Frank once mentioned that he had one, so maybe this has already been done.

However, like all cards with memory above 128MB (and the XTX has, I believe, 512MB of GDDR4), the extra memory lays unused.

So, are 1, 2, or 4GB cards going to provide much beyond faster gpus and memory?

[ Edited by Jim 27.10.2018 - 17:55 ]