Hello,

New user here. Just recently got into the Amiga scene after boredom with the x86 world.
I recently purchased an X5000 motherboard and RX580 GPU for AmigaOS4, w/hardware accelerated drivers written by Hans.

I just found out about MorphOS. Looks really nice.
I would like to also install MorphOS but sadly only ancient video cards seem to be supported by MorphOS.

I would like to buy a New compatible PCI-E GPU for use with MorphOS.
Preferably it should work with AmigaOS4.
Used cards are off limits.
What do folks recommend?

Will MorphOS work with the RX580 I already own but with only default VGA driver?

Thanks in advance

If you're not willing to buy a compatible used card you need to move along.

> I would like to buy a New compatible PCI-E GPU for use with MorphOS.
> Preferably it should work with AmigaOS4. Used cards are off limits.
> What do folks recommend?

In the EU, you can currently get new from online shops these compatible Radeon cards:

HD6450 for 40 EUR
R5 230 for 42 EUR

MorphOS currently supports these with 2D acceleration only (no 3D, no overlay). There's also no 3D support for these cards by OS4.

> Will MorphOS work with the RX580 [...]?

Not as of current MorphOS 3.13.

Quote:

A little harsh and abrupt, but I know that the wording of the OP could be triggering for some MorphOS users and it appears developers as well.

To the original poster, if you want to experience MorphOS, then you have to buy a compatible video card, period. MorphOS is quite different than AmigaOS4.1FE, or what ever the current version is, and so the MorphOS Developers don't feel any obligation to create video card drivers just to help users run both MorphOS and AmigaOS4.1FE on the same GPU, and make dual boot systems easier on the user. The MorphOS Developers appear to be quite independent, and focus on the features they deem the most important to "MorphOS" users and themselves, as it is their creation, which they use and are proud of what they have accomplished. There are many X5000 users who wish that it were easier to run both MorphOS, and AmigaOS4.1FE on their systems, using the same video card, without any compromises in video card performance, but that is not currently possible, and might never be possible in the future, as there are two different teams working on separate projects, which work in different ways, so having the two OSes contain drivers for the same video card as their best performing solution, is highly unlikely, (IMHO).

Don't take any of this personally, but it is natural for the MorphOS Dev. Team to work on things that benefit MorphOS users, and not for them to concentrate their time and energy, to support any certain video card, just so users of X5000 systems who want to run AmigaOS4.1FE, will have an easier time dual booting into both OSes. Although we continue to see improvements for the PPC version of MorphOS, the x64 version of MorphOS has already been confirmed, and a "Proof of Concept" has already been displayed at a show. I would imagine that most of the teams efforts are now concentrating on moving MorphOS to x64 hardware, to allow us the opportunity to move to cheaper, and more powerful systems, as well as hopefully creating a more modern, and full featured OS, during the port to new hardware.

> There are many X5000 users who wish that it were easier to run both
> MorphOS, and AmigaOS4.1FE on their systems, using the same
> video card, without any compromises in video card performance

Apparently not *so* many, else the MorphOS team would likely have reconsidered its stance :-)

Please blame Aeon first for not allowing to have two PCIe cards in X5000 :)

My understanding was that 3D acceleration was desired. If this is not the case then of course the MorphOS supported 2D cards will do. However, whether these cards work with other OSes is another topic entirely, which I am not going to get into.

In short: We are not able to provide a solution that will be satisfactory in all cases. This is the reality, there is no need to sugarcoat this.

> Please blame Aeon first for not allowing to have two PCIe cards in X5000 :)

Dual-booting works on the X5000 with a PCIe x16 GCN-based Radeon card in the PEG slot for OS4 and a PCIe x1 R500/R600-based FirePro/FireMV card in the PCIe x1 slot for Linux. The question is why MorphOS cannot work in this setup when Linux can. If this is about the MorphOS CGX or Radeon driver restriction of accepting only one Radeon card in the system, then CGX or the Radeon driver should be changed to simply ignore the completely unsupported card in the PEG slot and switch to the supported one in the x1 slot.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12822&forum=11
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12716&forum=11&start=18
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11137&forum=11&start=892
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12151&forum=55&start=77
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12372&forum=11
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12300&forum=11
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=12178&forum=3&start=70

Quote:

My intention was not to sugar coat anything, but just to offer a small bit of explanation, to the OP who stated that he is new to the Amiga experience, and hence probably would not understand your brief answer fully. My reply was intended to be brief (and by my standards it was), and to give the new person to our small community some clarification, which I hope it did.

Like most users, he probably wants it all, both 2D and 3D acceleration to the fullest extent currently possible, on both OSes, using only one video card, which is not possible now, and unlikely in the near future. Personally, I don't believe there are enough X5000 owners interested in running MorphOS, to warrant taking development time away from other more important features, or from working on the port to x64 hardware.

In response to the member here that blames A-Eon for not allowing multiple video cards, see Andreas_Wolf's reply, and you will see that it is not A-Eon who is to blame for that not working with MorphOS. For AmigaOS4 it appears that only one person is working on video card drivers, while for MorphOS, we have 1 main programmer who appears to focus on video card driver development, with help from 1 or 2 other team members (I could be wrong, and there might be more people working on them). I don't see how the company who contracted to have the motherboard produced can be blamed for driver development, specially when it is usually the OS developers who provide or contract out for driver development, with commercial OSes.

Sorry, another reply that is longer than I intended.

Not sure why the developers are so hostile/negative to a simple question. Perfect attitude if your goal is to alienate new people to MorphOS and make them flee the project. X5000 is a "supported" platform after all. With that being said it is only natural for users to want the best GPU possible-not a 10+ year old card.

2D acceleration is OK. 3D acceleration would be better yet. Even a VGA framebuffer would be ok to experiment. Anyhow I will pick up 1 of the recommended GPU's you guys stated here to play around with. My RX580 is on a vertical riser and I guess I can disconnect it to use the MorphOS card, but I dont see doing that long term. The RX580 GPU acceleration on AOS4 is not something I want to walk away from.

Anyhow I hope to experience MOS soon. 1 thing it has that AOS4 does not is a IEEE1394 stack for my Lynx2 bus snooper card and 2nd OHCI compliant card. Awesome.

Thanks for the help.

Quote:

I’m one such user. Both of my Mac mini’s that I used to run MorphOS on died. So I would welcome a way to dual boot MorphOS on my X5000. I’m very interested in the X86 port of MOS but I have no idea when that will come out to buy. It would be nice to use MorphOS on my X5000 for development. I would have no problem purchasing a GPU video driver if required to use MOS on the X5000.

[ Edited by discreetfx 26.05.2020 - 07:57 ]

> it is only natural for users to want the best GPU possible-not a 10+ year
> old card. [...] I will pick up 1 of the recommended GPU's you guys stated
> here to play around with.

Please be aware that the two graphics cards I've mentioned in comment #3, albeit still available new, are 9 and 6 years old, respectively.

> My RX580 is on a vertical riser and I guess I can disconnect it to use the
> MorphOS card, but I dont see doing that long term. The RX580 GPU
> acceleration on AOS4 is not something I want to walk away from.

If you don't want to use one single card for both MorphOS and OS4 but rather switch cards, I recommend to not try MorphOS with any of the cards I've recommended in comment #3 but with a card that's 3D-supported by MorphOS. Unfortunately, due to age these cards are very hard to come by new (currently I can find new in the EU only a 13 years old RV516-based FireMV 2250 for 48 EUR, which might not even be whitelisted by MorphOS).

> MOS [...] has [...] a IEEE1394 stack for my Lynx2 bus snooper card and
> 2nd OHCI compliant card. Awesome.

Just in case this isn't obvious anyway: MorphOS having a FireWire stack doesn't mean that all FireWire controllers or devices are supported automatically.

Quote:

Piru's answer was maybe a bit harsh, but not hostile to me.

Every now and then we (I mean MorphZone users) notice an X5000 user that registers here to complain about not supporting his gfx card by MorphOS. That may be annoying at first time, but if gets repeated over and over again...

Quote:

Actualy it's rather the "Nemo" motherboard, but nevertheless...
So is Powermac G5 but not every gfx card this computer was sold with will work with MorphOS. It's always a good habit to look at morphos-team.net hardware compatibility list before buying a computer to run MorphOS on.

Quote:

Sometimes it's the 10+ year old card that's the best GPU available. For example - I could go and find a Radeon HD 3850 AGP (stil an old card, but surely newer and way faster than my Radeon X850XT) to put it in my PowerMac G5 but - as it currently offers no 3D acceleration - it would probably be just a waste of money.

But! I have a good (IMO) solution to all X5000 GPU problems - all the users that badly need modern GPU support for MorphOS should contact two people:
1. Hans de Ruiter that is doing the "driver" work for OS4 - for a possibility of bounty to write the necessary drivers for MorphOS too
2. Someone from MorphOS team (to check if this can actually be done without additional low-level MorphOS codebase tinkering)

I guess if an adequately large group of people (and resources) gathers around this idea it could be possible to make this two distant worlds meet after all.

[ Edited by koszer 26.05.2020 - 11:34 ]

Quote:
Which leads to the question of what the _best_ GPU possible is. Best in terms of most reccent or best in terms of most supported.

Being a member of the "plz no old card" fraction in former times I know both worlds a bit. New GPU's are put onto market under time pressure. Drivers from the vendor itself are being written only for Windows (to some extent for Linux nowadays). Of course tech specs of new cards do look tempting, especially when reviews are good. But if you buy bleeding edge cards you are Beta tester, even on Windows... Believe me, I learned that. Having GPU hangs, game crashes, memory leaks, etc. is not so nice when the only thing you can do is wait for better drivers to appear (hoping it's a popular card the vendor does care for).

So I defected to the "best supported card" fraction. On x86_64 Windows/Linux this would be Polaris cards (like your RX580) and Evergreen cards still (as they were very popular). On FreeBSD probably Evergreen cards as FreeBSD re-uses old Linux drivers. Well, and that's it for Mainstream OSes with _good_ GPu support. On other OSes (Haiku, ReactOS, NetBSD, etc.) you get less in terms of GPU feature support or GPUs running at all. If you check out Haiku GPU support you will see that MorphOS and OS4 do provide better support.

So for a non-mainstream OS GPU support in terms of features is pretty good in MorphOS! Having a look at the bigger picture I would not complain too much about OS4 being one step ahead providing Polaris support. Though I doubt they are able to exploit all the features Polaris cards got.

Having done some el cheapo 2nd hand Linux-PC builds for friends I learned that you won't miss much if you use at least R600 Radeons. (klick) 2D/3D acceleration works and OpenGL 3.3 is good enough for most open source games, h264 GPU decoding works, resolutions up to 2K possible.

What benefits you do get from >=Polaris cards? up to 4K resolution, h265 GPU decoding, OpenGL 4.x
Which is certainly nice to have but no must for an alternative OS. Of course Hans De Ruiter did a very good job and a 'common card' for MorphOS/OS4 would still be good.

>> X5000 is a "supported" platform after all.

> it's rather the "Nemo" motherboard [...] It's always a good habit to look at morphos-team.net
> hardware compatibility list before buying a computer to run MorphOS on.

Yes, the list claims support for the "AmigaOne X5000" computer with a footnote excluding support for R7 250, R7 260 and HD78x0 graphics cards, as well as support for the "A-EON X5000" mainboard. As long as the list of excluded graphics cards is being kept in sync with what the system has been sold with, I think this approach is sound (else it would be better to refer to the list of supported cards instead of having an incomplete list of the unsupported ones). But maybe they should better call the mainboard the "A-Eon Cyrus Plus" (not Nemo, which is the mainboard of the X1000) instead. It is only mentioned once on the entire MorphOS website, namely in the MorphOS 3.10 release notes.

> OS4 being one step ahead providing Polaris support

Depends on how you count "steps". If 1 step = 1 GPU microarchitecture generation, then we have in terms of support in MorphOS and OS4:

1. R300-R500: MorphOS (2D+3D), OS4 (2D)
2. TeraScale 1: MorphOS (2D), OS4 (2D)
3. TeraScale 2: MorphOS (2D), OS4 (2D)
4. TeraScale 3: OS4 (2D), *
5. GCN1: OS4 (2D+3D)
6. GCN2: -
7. GCN3: -
8. GCN4: OS4 (2D+3D)

In these terms, OS4 is 5 steps ahead in 2D and even 7 steps ahead in 3D :-)

* "MorphOS will boot, but the display is very flakey."

> you won't miss much if you use at least R600 Radeons. [...] 3D acceleration works

...except if you use MorphOS ;-)

> What benefits you do get from >=Polaris cards?

Better availability of non-used cards, I think.

Qz3fwd

Hope you enjoying your new machine and Radeon RX580 setup. I too have upgraded my card to a Radeon RX550 and quite happy with how it works with OS4. I’d stick with it if I were you as there are some goodies coming your way that will be of benefit to your hardware.

If you really want to try out MorphOS on this motherboard you need a Radeon X1650-1950 card even then be prepared for some disappointment as this most certainly is not the platform or hardware which will get the best out of the OS. On the X5000 with a X1650-1950 card which gives you the most options. You won’t have any legacy Warp3D software compared to a MacMini setup. 3D support is patchy and the further up you go the card tree the worse the support and less things will run.

Linux performance suffers too with anything less than a series 6000 card and as you can see from the postings on here this port to the X5000 was done as some sort of proof of concept with no real interest in solving any issues or catering to what they regard as an indulged user base. They have openly come out and said they have no interest in supporting newer graphics cards, so if you want to run MorphOS get something old with an Apple badge on it.

Enjoy what you have in front of you. Of course if like what you see It’s your choice to shell out for the licence fee. I’ve personally put the dedicated hard drive which had MorphOS running on it to a different use.

Welcome to MorphZone. If you have access to a G4 or G5 Power mac with Radeon gfx card, you'd have a better starting platform for MorphOS than the X5000 to test drive MorphOS. I'll try to fill some in some blanks here.

Quote:

If you think that was a hostile reply, you are most definitely new to the Kommunity. Try reversing the rolls. Go to hyperions forums stating you got a Cyrus Plus board for MorphOS, but you want a gfx card that will work fully with both operating systems. Please report back how it goes Seriously, we are talking about developers that publicly wish their own customers who paid huge sums would die in a fire. I could only imagine someone they think is from the outside challenging them and how they would react.

In my opinion as an end user, X5000 should have never been supported. It was largely done in response to a handful of people who claimed they only would use MorphOS if they could buy brand new hardware, price be damned. I'm sure the team wouldn't mind if some users moved over, but I doubt they expected many.

There is almost zero synergy between the two camps. That typically only happens when a 3rd party on the OS4 side hires the MorphOS lead for a specific task. There are decades old deep issues with both sides, much of it particularly ugly.

Quote:

If truly coming from the outside, sure. If coming from an Amiga lineage that went MorphOS, not so much.

Most MorphOS users use 14+ year old computers. You could probably count on 1 hand how many MorphOS user specifically bought a Cyrus Plus (X5000 board) for it. I got my main G5 2.7Ghz and Radeon (AGP) X1950 *with* license cost me under $300, and that included about $100 in shipping costs. That G5 is faster than an X5000. I haven't even put together to use my PCIe 2.5Ghz G5 model, and this AGP model is faster in most benchmarks than an X5000. I'm not knocking you or anyone else who buys an X5000. I'm just explaining that most MorphOS users have preferred faster and vastly cheaper, over brand new but exponentially more expensive.

Outside of bad blood between camps, there historically have been 2 completely different goals. The OS4 side went completely without 3D acceleration at all on X1000 and X5000, until FINALLY relatively recently did a 3rd party fill the void Hyperion couldn't or wouldn't. MorphOS OTOH has always had robust 3D, but only recently needed to start rolling PCIe drivers.

Quote:

Don't take any perceived snarkiness from devs to heart. To a man they are actually extremely friendly. I can see here why you may have thought it was meant that way, but it actually wasn't. It was being blunt to temper expectations. Cyrus Plus (X5000) is supported hardware, but only for MorphOS. OS4 is not a supported OS.

Also again, the goal was probably never to try getting converters. To this day OS4 aims to stay on expensive boutique PPC hardware. MorphOS's goal over the last decade or so has been to use inexpensive commodity hardware. That started with the 2nd hand PPC Macs and will soon be brand new X86 hardware. One side wants PPC or bust, the other wants modern common hardware.

> I too have upgraded my card to a Radeon RX550 and quite happy with
> how it works with OS4. [...] If you really want to try out MorphOS on this
> motherboard you need a Radeon X1650-1950 card [...]. On the X5000
> with a X1650-1950 card [...] You won’t have any legacy Warp3D software

Let's not forget that legacy Warp3D support gets lost on OS4 with jumping from a GCN1-based card to a GCN4-based card like your RX550 also.

> 3D support is patchy

What does that mean?

> the further up you go the card tree the worse the support and
> less things will run.

True, and the MorphOS hardware compatibility page clearly states which cards are supported in 2D+3D, 2D+overlay or just 2D.

> Linux performance suffers too with anything less than a series 6000 card

The author of comment #14 pointed out that Linux is good enough with anything from R600 (= HD2000 series) up and that Evergreen cards (= HD5000 series) are among the best supported. Maybe this is different between x64 Linux and PPC Linux?

> They [...] said they have no interest in supporting newer graphics cards

Is this what they really said or just what you think they said? I guess it's more about the available developer resources than about interest per se.

i like to second redrumloa's first point here: If you want to keep OS4 on X5000. better just keep it as it is and get a dedicated machine for MorphOS. My suggestion: Powerbook 5.8/5.6 or an iMac G5 20" isight. These devices are cheap and play in about the same performance league as the X5000 and are fully supported by MorphOS. And best is: You can run MorphOS and OS4 simultaneously.

Cost of an iMac g5 is not much higher than a gfx card you'll need anyway. Add a few bucks for a new ssd, and you're done (IIRC I paid 80 for teh iMac and about 30 for a Kingston SSD).

Only disadvantage I see is the additional required space on/under the desk, but on the other hand you'll win some redundancy which - in my experience - is quite a good thing.

> Go to hyperions forums stating you got a Cyrus Plus board
> for MorphOS, but you want a gfx card that will work fully with
> both operating systems. Please report back how it goes ;-)

The difference is that with any fully MorphOS-supported card installed in the X5000 you can still run OS4 in 2D, while with any fully OS4-supported card you cannot run MorphOS at all.

> developers that publicly wish their own customers [...] would die in a fire

To be fair, this was only one single developer ;-)

> X5000 should have never been supported. It was largely done in
> response to a handful of people who claimed they only would use
> MorphOS if they could buy brand new hardware, price be damned.

Seems they didn't learn from the previous Sam460 fiasco ;-)
(In their defense it should be said that by the time MorphOS was released for the Sam460, the Sam460ex had been superseded by the inferior Sam460cr which had several MorphOS-supported components removed that never could all be replaced by supported PCIe cards due to a severe MorphOS bug even unresolved today, AFAIK.)

> The OS4 side went completely without 3D acceleration at all on [...] X5000

This is not true. The graphics cards the X5000 was delivered with were 3D-supported (Warp3D, Warp3D Nova, OpenGL ES 2) by A-Eon right from the X5000 release in 2016.

> until FINALLY relatively recently did a 3rd party fill the void Hyperion
> couldn't or wouldn't.

We're talking about 5 years ago for Warp3D and 4 years ago for Warp3D Nova.

> MorphOS [...] only recently needed to start rolling PCIe drivers.

The Sam460 port was released half a decade ago :-)

> To this day OS4 aims to stay on expensive boutique PPC hardware.

...and emulators on cheap x86(-64) hardware (see Z3 RAM usage enabled by Hyperion).

> MorphOS's goal over the last decade or so has been to use
> inexpensive commodity hardware.

Yes, one really wonders how the unpaid and certainly non-trivial Sam460 and X5000 ports fit this goal.

> iMac G5 20" isight [...] fully supported by MorphOS

The iMac G5 is actually fully unsupported by current MorphOS 3.13, but it runs quite well on it nonetheless ;-)

Andreas, of course you are right. But you got what I meant anway. It's not officially supported (yet), but MorphOs 3.13 boots up and all inbuild components have a working driver - except the webcam, remote control and the missing bluetooth stack.

Can I suggest a bootimage with a headless option for Sam460ex and X5000 with the VNC Server as the default display ?.

This would allow exploring and using most elements of MorphOS on these machines without having to change video cards.

> Andreas, of course you are right. But you got what I meant anway.

Absolutely, see the smiley. I was just jesting about the very different meanings of the word "supported", ranging from "can somehow run on it" to "being entitled to personal help by a MorphOS team member in case of problems" :-)