I'll still stick with my Radeon 9250. It's slow, but it supports 3D.

It is still much faster than this Silicon Motion 502 chip.

Actually, I checked on the web and the only site I could find that reviewed the 502 rated it with the slowest GPUs used in laptops. Right down there with VIA and SIS integrated video.

Why not use an ATI embedded GPU?

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/5 5:08 ]

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/5 5:12 ]

+1 for ATi embedded cpu, I have to say in recent months I have grown to hate nVidia's lack of driver support for alternative OSes. You can't get 3D on the early iMac G5/ all G4s and that limits MOS's development platform

Alright, it's very expensive, but I'd say we should keep pricing matters aside: We morphers also love our very expensive operating system.
It looks like a worthy choice, in the scope of this almost invisible PowerPC computer space, where new developments are extremely rare. The fact that it's completely made in Italy (and not in Chine, where people still work for almost no payment) is almost unbelivable, a huge effort that alone raises the cost a lot.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 25.04.2011 - 07:20 ]

1280x1024 is not okay for my 24" TFT which does 1920x1200 Lack of 3D support also suggest it lacks lot of 2D acceleration... for embedded use it wont matter of course.

> +1 for ATi embedded cpu

ATI/AMD do Power Architecture CPUs? ;-)

Quote:

Yes, but I've red that link that Andreas provided, about the graphics and audio subsystem, and it can still do some clever tricks. I feared it was worse.

1280x1024 is fine by me. I like to be able to read text without eye strain.
And the 502 can be supplanted by a Radeon PCI video card (PCIe cards aren't supported yet).
And Andreas is right, they do appear to have Amiga OS 4.1 video drivers written for the 502. While the reference he posted mentions that the display was generated by a SAM440, it apparently was equipped with a PCI 502 video card.
So the board is likely to support Amiga OS and it does feature a faster processor (than Acube's earlier products).
It's still a little underwhelming (and overpriced), but its an improvement (over the SAM440).

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/5 17:54 ]

> the 502 can be supplanted by a Radeon PCI video card (PCIe cards
> aren't supported yet).

In the A-Eon Q&A #3 on amigaworld.net 3 days ago the X1000 is said to come with an R700 family gfx card. That means that OS4 must support that card when the X1000 comes out. As the Sam460ex is supposed to be released after the X1000 an R700 family PCIe gfx card might be supported by the time the Sam460ex comes out.

Quote:

Same for MorphOS.

[ Edited by kolla on 2010/4/5 23:43 ]

That's weird. I'm using remoteshell and I cannot see any difference for myself between putty on pc and remoteshell on morphos.

Production of the R700 family is winding down. Many models of the HD4XXX series are hard to find. It would be nice to have a more up to date GPU on a PPC based system, but how are you going to get the documentation to write the drivers? ATI has never completely documented their GPUs.

Quote:
That's because you're not being serious.

[ Edited by kolla on 2010/4/6 7:31 ]

@kolla

Same for MorphOS.

SSHCon fits my needs. AmigaOS 4 has nothing comparable.

Quote:
Well, it was you who wrote "serious", how was one to know that all you meant was "fits your needs"? :)

Quote:

Sure, it's a shame. Just like new models being completely incompatible with previous ones. I guess GPUs suffer dramatic changes through different generations.

It would be great if a couple of tweaks in an old driver were enough to drive a new model, even if it doesn't use at all any new features.

Just because old models will be completely unavalaible some day... Going back to the scrapyard age that many amigans had to suffer for years is too hard to take at this age.

> Production of the R700 family is winding down. Many models of the HD4XXX series
> are hard to find.

R700/HD4xxx is just one generation behind the most recent ATI/AMD GPU family. Where I live all HD4xxx series cards are still everywhere to buy.

> It would be nice to have a more up to date GPU on a PPC based system

That would only be R800/Evergreen/HD5xxx series.

> but how are you going to get the documentation to write the drivers? ATI has never
> completely documented their GPUs.

I don't know how Hyperion are planning to accomplish this. Work on supporting R700/HD4xxx series cards in OS4 is going on by 3rd party devs (RV710/HD4350):

http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-chip-radeon-hd-4350-pci-vga-output-is-working/
http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-driver-hardware-compatibility/

@kolla:

Any features you'd like to see in SSHCon ?

In this US, higher end 48XX cards are disappearing. Many lower end R700 cards are still common. Frankly, I think the R700 is a better thought out design than the R800. Nice small die.
The 4350 doesn't really cut it for me. At bare minimum I'd want to see a 4650 or 4670 (and a 4770 would be better still).

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 25.04.2011 - 07:21 ]

Dreamcast

Ummm actually Nvidia is much better supported in Linux than ATI atm.... there are even open source kernel drivers for Nvidia boards in Ubuntu 10

I didn't know that Nvidia provided enough information to build a decent driver. How does its performance compare to their proprietary drivers?

I'd like to add a note about my negative comments on the Silicon Motion SM502. I've looked over Silicon Motions offerings and contacted their tech support. Considering that the company provides relatively complete documentation for their products, perhaps the choosing them isn't such a bad idea for alternative operating systems.

After reading about the struggle to get ATI's 4350 to provide just VGA output (with no 2D or 3D acceleration) under AOS 4.1, I can see the advantage of picking a company that is more forthcoming on the technical specifics of there products (even if their potential performance might be lower).

Being able to easily write a fully functional driver beats "potential performance" any day.

BTW - Did anyone else look at the posting Andreas mentioned? They're hoping to get hardware acceleration on the R600 series working soon (under AOS 4.1).
That would give them the 2900 and possibly the 38XX cards.
AOS is clearly inferior to MorphOS, but their video card support is getting pretty impressive.
With Acube and A-EON providing new PPC hardware for AOS, its not hard to feel jealous.

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/7 21:06 ]

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/8 0:29 ]

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 25.04.2011 - 07:21 ]