I upgraded from an ATi Rage 16mb to an Ati Radeon 7500 32MB.
(Seller was supposed to give me a 9000 64MB - I already complained)

Anyway, Im not sure, i may be wrong but going through the drawers in MorphOS and prefs etc, i seem to see the menus build up a bit slower than how it was before.

You are not the first that complains about that... I had the same Radeon and screen build up seemed very slugish. I upgraded to 9000pro 128MB for that reason. You might want to set ambient to a 16Bit display, it saves you +/-10MB videoram.

Did you buy it on Ebay ? I hope that at least you can get your money back.

Check your debug log for Radeon DMA timeouts.

Yes, bought it from ebay. I paid for a Radeon 9000 64MB and when i started up MorphOS it said it is a Radeon 32MB 7500. I booted into OSX and it said the same thing.

I told the seller. Maybe its an honest mistake. Waiting for reply.

@jacadcaps

How?

@Dougal

Radeon 9000 is essentially Radeon 7500 with upgraded GPU (R200 vs. RV200), even the cards look pretty much identical. Obviously it could be a mistake. But since you got it from ebay, it could also be reflashed PC card with wrong vbios.

Right click the screen depth gadget and enable the Debug screenbar.

Model number don't reflect speed.
The old rage 128's were unbelievably fast.
I do have the 9000 pro 128mb (sold to me as 64mb, but mos says it has 128mb). It is much better.
Since the desktop is 2D then the rage would fair better anyway.
More than likely the 7500 isn't as good as the older cards at 2d, just better at 3d.
I had a rage card for a PC once and beat out all of the 3d cards on 2d performance.

> Radeon 9000 is essentially Radeon 7500 with upgraded GPU (R200 vs. RV200)

I think it's more like RV250 vs. RV200.

> it could also be reflashed PC card with wrong vbios.

Interesting. I'm surprised that this would run.

It is def not a reflashed pc card as it has VGA and the ADC port. So def a mac edition.

In OSX i did notice a considerable speed improvement, for example when minimizing stuff, the animation when they go to the dock, and then maximizing. Much faster

Point is that OSX says its a 7500 with 32MB .. There cant be a mistake with that. Could there?

@Andreas_Wolf

In that case It likely wouldn't, but according to wikipedia It's RV200, so it could be possible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R100#RV200) Im running 9100 with 8500 vbios. But as it has a ADC port, its not a reflash.

Here is what system profiler says:

Chipset Model: ATY,RV200
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 32 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x5157
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-91701-222

> according to wikipedia It's RV200

Yes, and Radeon 9000 is RV250.

> Im running 9100 with 8500 vbios.

That's another matter. 9100 basically is identical to 8500(LE), while 9000 and 7500 are much more different from each other.

> Yes, and Radeon 9000 is RV250.

Right, yes my mistake, I don't know what I've read from that wiki page :)

But anyway, could have been honest mistake, the cards are quite similar:
9000pro64_agp_mac.jpg
radeon7500.jpg

A bit off topic, but related.

Is there a general consensus/agreement as to which graphics card is the best/fastest for MorphOS2.6?

There may be two answers, the best/fastest which has 3D support, and the best/fastest that has only 2D support at this time.

I thought that the 8500 might be the fastest after reading the specifications posted by Andreas Wolf in another thread, but then there were some disputes and questionable benchmark results that muddied the opinions of some members and I never saw a clear answer.

I purchased an 8500 and installed it into my G4 PowerMac, but have not done any testing to find out if it is any faster than the 9000Pro I had installed prior to the 8500. Both have 64mb VRAM, which was a mistake on my part, as I should have looked for a graphics card with 128mb VRAM instead, to replace the 9000Pro w/64mb VRAM. Edit: 128mb VRAM 8500 graphics cards for the Mac appear to be very difficult to find.

Also, is the maximum recognized amount of VRAM for MorphOS2.6 still limited to 128mb, like it was in MorphOS2.0 through 2.4, and if yes, will future versions of MorphOS beyond 2.6 ever be able to use all the VRAM on a 256mb (or larger VRAM size) graphics card?

[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/11/6 12:34 ]

@amigadave

I think part of the problem is the availability of Mac rom for card with 256mb of ram. To my knowledge, there is none for a card that currently has 3D support. Of course on pegasos this is not a problem. Is there any software to test the 2D/3D speed of a gfx card? Im currently using flashed 9100 (8500) and would like to know if there's something faster.

Quote:

Quite right. That would mean that there are even more answers to the question of which card is the best/fastest, depending on which MorphOS computer you want to put it into. It also means that for Pegasos2 users, there should already have been some discussion and answer in the past. Pegasos2 owners probably have the chance to use the fastest graphics cards for MorphOS2.x, as they have more choices than Mac users will have.

Hopefully someone will find a good set of tests for graphics cards that will show which cards are the fastest for us to choose. It would be nice to have clear information to build the best/fastest MorphOS2.6 computers, such as choosing the FW800 MDD G4 PowerMac w/1.8GHz G4 upgrade CPU & which ever graphics card, SATA card, USB2.0 card, etc. will give us the fastest MorphOS2.6 computer, or is the Pegasos2 able to use a CPU upgrade and would it be a better choice to create the ultimate MorphOS2.6 machine?

It will likely be a very long time before MorphOS2.x is ported to the G5 PowerMacs (if it is ever finished), so I won't waste time thinking or writing about things we don't have yet, or may never see finished. MorphOS users have been fortunate that we have had finished hardware to use and not something that is "in progress" and will hopefully be delivered some day in the future.

Only a "full" 8500 is faster as the 9000Pro. 275Mhz against 250Mhz.... 8500LE has the same clockspeed.

Is there any MorphOS software that asks for faster 3D and +128MB vram ? Maybe someone could port Radeon overclockapp ? My Radeon9000pro has passive cooling, I guess it can be pushed a little harder with a ventilator on it.

Quote:

From what I read in the specifications for all Radeon cards, the bandwidth of the 8500 was greater than the 9000Pro and the fill rate was much higher, not just a slight improvement. Perhaps there are no current MorphOS2.6 applications or games that require graphics speed faster than a 64mb VRAM 9000Pro (which seems to be the most common graphics card found in the later G4 PowerMacs), but I would guess that will soon change as more games are ported to MorphOS2.x from Linux, or other sources. Games and programs such as MPlayer, Blender, or Lightwave, running on MorphOS2.x should benefit from faster graphic card performance.

> I thought that the 8500 might be the fastest after reading the
> specifications posted by Andreas Wolf in another thread

I stand by that the 8500 is the fastest currently supported card that has 3D support.

> then there were some disputes and questionable benchmark
> results that muddied the opinions of some members

Do you have a link to those?

> 128mb VRAM 8500 graphics cards for the Mac appear to be very
> difficult to find.

AFAIK there are no stock 8500 128 MiB Mac compatible cards.

> is the maximum recognized amount of VRAM for MorphOS2.6 still
> limited to 128mb

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7339&forum=11&post_id=76358#76358

> I think part of the problem is the availability of
> Mac rom for card with 256mb of ram. To my knowledge,
> there is none for a card that currently has 3D support.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=32654&forum=28#588184

> Of course on pegasos this is not a problem.

MorphOS on a Pegasos with Radeon 9250 and 256 MiB VRAM can currently use only 128 MiB as well.

> Im currently using flashed 9100 (8500) and would like to
> know if there's something faster.

There is: a full 8500. 9100 is only a 8500LE.

> is the Pegasos2 able to use a CPU upgrade

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7474&forum=11&post_id=78018#78018

> and would it be a better choice to create the
> ultimate MorphOS2.6 machine?

167 MHz FSB in PowerMac G4 MDD is faster than 133 MHz in Pegasos II. And 1.8 GHz is faster than 1.4 GHz as well.

> Only a "full" 8500 is faster as the 9000Pro.
> 275Mhz against 250Mhz.... 8500LE has the same clockspeed.

Let's compare:

Card: 8500 | 8500LE/9100 | 9000Pro
Clock (MHz): 275 | 250 | 275
Fillrate (GT/s): 2.2 | 2.0 | 1.1
Bandwidth (GB/s): 8.8 | 8.0 | 8.8

So we can see that while the 9000Pro has a bit higher bandwidth than 8500LE/9100, the latter has nearly double the fillrate of the former.
Btw, 9000Pro has 275 MHz as well. Only 8500LE/9100 has 250 MHz.