Hello, I intend to buy one of those new Monitors with an aspect ratio of 21:9.

My favourite is NEC MultiSync EA294WMi.

It uses a native resolution of 2560x1080@60Hz.

I wonder if I would run into Problems with MorphOS, especially when defining a new resolution mode in the system preferences ?

And I wonder if my Gfx Chips are powerful enough to drive such a resolution et aceptable speed ?

I own:
Pegasos G3 with Radeon9200/128MB
Mac Mini G4 with 64Mb VRAM
Efika with Radeon 9200/256MB
PowerMac G5 with R300 based Gfx card.

And i wonder what happens if I rotate the Display into Pivot mode ?

Regards, Jean

Well AFAIK thats the Monitor that Frank used to implement the "R300-based Radeons now support screens up to 2656 pixels wide." mentioned in the 3.4 releasenotes so you should be pretty save buying that one.

edit: UPS somehow read "Dell" where it said "NEC"... getting old....

I recently bought a DellU2713HM (2560x1440 16:9 27") but that made some problems with 3.4 GFX-drivers.

Now about the needed video HW.

The release note state "R300 based Radeons" and last time I tried I had 0 luck with the Radeon9000(over VGA see below) so thats probraly that.

Now unless you want to use VGA all resolutions above 1920x1200 require D-DVI capable HW.
- all Radeon9000/9200/9250 I know of lack that
- Radeon9600 with 128 or 64MB also lack it
- PowerBooks with Radeon9700 AND 128MB do support it on the HW level, but we have no DVI support for these at all
- Radeon9650/Pro/?? and better with 256MB should work (have a orginal Apple 9650 here that I can vouch for)

ps:
So many pixels .... *g*
ps2:
59MB VMEM used after just booting a pretty clean install, so 256MB is really what you want.


[ Edited by Kronos 14.01.2014 - 17:11 ]

Quote:

You will see everything flipped :)

---- wanted edit hit quote---


[ Edited by Kronos 14.01.2014 - 17:07 ]

Oh, didn't know that. I thought as DVI is newer than VGA it is more püowerful, hmm....well my current setup (FW900, 4Port KVM, several PCs) is mainly based on VGA ...so I'll stick with that standard.

Quote:
While VGA can be used with very high resolutions in theory, the picture quality is subpar and this tends to become the more obvious the higher your display resolution is.

Reviewing two identical high resolution displays side-by-side that have been connected via DVI and VGA respectively, pretty much everybody should be able to tell the difference in picture quality.

If you have a monitor or KVM that only supports VGA, then it is understandable why you would stick with that standard. However, everybody else still using VGA should make the switch in my opinion.

Hello!

Sorry for a little off-topic, but, pOS, you are telling about your Efika...
Are radeon's 258mo reconised on yours? On mine, r9250/256, only 128 are "on deck"...

About large screen, I think about finding some as soon as possible, in order to second the one of my MorphBook for working on, e.g., Blender or sound stuff...

Amigalement!

> pOS, you are telling about your Efika... Are radeon's 258mo reconised on yours?
> On mine, r9250/256, only 128 are "on deck"...

That issue does not depend on the machine but on the Radeon driver of MorphOS, so should be the same on all machines with such graphics cards.

> About large screen, I think about finding some as soon as possible, in order
> to second the one of my MorphBook for working on

You are aware of the severe limitations of external monitor support with MorphOS?

Quote:

Yes, theoretically I agree, but practically the situation is like this:

No MOS supported hardware supports (or can be upgraded to) DVI Double Link. Thus using DVI means limited resolutions. More and more new and modern monitors however have a native resolution that is higher.

So one has the choice: using nativee resolution of the Display , ut with analog signals, or using digital signals with a resolution that is lower than the native one of the display, which meand the device will stretch it to fullscreen which also means loosing quality...

Quote:

Huh ?????????

PowerMac5 + 9650 (or better) -> no problem
PowerMac4 + 9650 (or better) -> reported to be possible
PowerBook5.6(*),5.7,5.8,5.9 -> supported in HW waiting for SW

PowerBook5.6 only in the D-DVI BuildToOrder-config with 128MB VMEM.

Hi!

"You are aware of the severe limitations of external monitor support with MorphOS?"

...Actualy, yes, but it seems to be on the way... A little test was made at the Alchimie, not that ok yet but... ...it will!

Amigalement!

Quote:

You mean G5 Mac ?

Earlier you wrote: "- Radeon9650/Pro/?? and better with 256MB should work (have a orginal Apple 9650 here that I can vouch for)"

sry, I overread that.

Not sure, which exact card is in my G5 machine, it's not in use currently.


Yesterday I tried the follwing.
My MacMini VRAM 64MB is connected via DVI->VGA converter and a VGA->BNC-cable to my 24" 16:10 CRT Flatscreen. MOS 3.4

I used Systemsettings->Monitor to define a new screenmode 2560x1080@60Hz. I used test button and it worked. Saved setting, rebooted. Now I wanted to use this screnmode with one of my public screens. I could select the screenmode, but I was not allowed to use a width > 2048. Result: Screen opened with a physical resolution of 2560x1080, but Intuition Screen was only using 80% of the display.

So,

MOS allows the definition of screen modes with a width > 2048.
It allows using these screenmodes.
It allows (horizontal scrollable) screens with a total screen width > 2048.
But it does NOT allow the visiable part of a screen to be > 2048 ??
Is this a bug, a ,limitation of the Radeon driver or a limitation of AmigaOS/MorphOS Intuition API ?

AFAIK thats a limit of r2xx Radeon cos it surely works with r3xx ones.
Issues in the 3.4 Radeon-driver might also add problems.

I fear you're right being a hardware limitation. Thus practically most MOS machines will not be able to use higher resolution -.-

http://osdir.com/ml/video.dri.user/2003-07/msg00041.html

Did you also try to generate a big non-enhanced-display screen ?

In screenmode prefs, I think I tried both. But I can try again. Or do you mean definition in Prefs/Monitors ?

More and more newer Monitors use higher resolutions. Not only 21:9 display but aalso 4:3 / 16:10 bigger than 24".

Just thinking the 2048x2048 limitation in 3D may only effect enhanced display.

As to supported HW:

- PowerMac G5 all have R300 based cards (or NVidia ones that won't work at all)
- PowerMac G4 and Pegasos2 can be upgraded with atleast a Radeon9600
- PowerBooks with 128MB-VRAM and Radeon9700 support D-DVI (just no use for us atm)
- PowerBook 5.6 with 64MB could still drive such resolution over VGA (not recomended)
- the lastes iBooks with Radeon9550 might also be able to drive such a resolution (mind you only analog and a measly 32MB)

Whatever HW might be supported in the future will sport PCIe, and PCIe cards with D-DVI should be the norm.

So it's really just the MacMini users who are left in the cold.

Some days ago I got the Display.

My observations:
I dont's see any difference in quality neither using DVI nor using VGA.

As I thougth screen width limitation to 2048 is a hardware limit, I defined a screenmode of 2048x1080. But seems the Device cannot recognize it correchtly, it "thinks" it's 1280x1080 and shrinks the picture horizontally (though I explicitly switched off Zooming in the settings).

Now I use a screenmode of 2560x1080 and a scgreen size of 2048x1080. On the right side there is a grey area with width=(2560-2048). The Monitor correctly recognizes the resolution as 2560x1080.
That means, I cannot use this are for Splitscreen feature, as it is part of the picture of the input.

BUT: It seems, that both the LCD Test Utility and the Preview Screen in Monitor Settings however can open a screen with the same width of the screenmode , i.e. 2560 !! So maybe not a Hardwrae but Software limitation ?? I checked , how often the screen mode definition window fits on the Workbech Screen and how often it fits on the Preview Screen, it was 1,3 times more often with the latter !. Assuming that windows size is exactly the same an both screen.

Using 2560x1080 will only work correctly with a r300 card, you can indeed open a 2560x1080 >vga<screen on a rv280/m9 equipped mac mini but it is limited in many ways and the visible ambient desktop screen is limited to a width of 2048 as you already figured out. Some hw accelerated features are disabled as well and have to be simulated in software.

And there definitely is a difference in quality inbetween a vga and dvi signal, albeit invisible for some ....