RTG questions

TreacleWench · 03 March 2012, 00:48

Hi, I am considering upgrading my A1200 to a tower unit with Mediator and graphics card but I am wondering if it will increase performance...

At the moment I have a Blizzard 1230-IV with 64mb RAM and an Indivision AGA in my machine. I use Classic Workbench ADVSP v26 with the HighGFX HD720 driver in Super High-res Laced mode with 64 colours. The performance I get is acceptable, basically when opening windows I have to wait 3 or 4 seconds for the icons to draw. I feel it is a fair compromise for the superb 720p resolution (which looks fantastic!).

I tried replicating my setup in WinUAE, then adding 256mb RTG and installing Picasso 96. This seemed to make no difference as the screen still drew quite slowly. I am assuming that WinUAE doesn't give an accurate respresentation of RTG because it doesn't emulate the actual graphics card or use it's drivers?

Now the card I am considering getting is the Radeon 9250 with 256mb RAM, if I have done my research correctly, is the best card you can get and I am hoping that it will draw the screen much faster. If I could up the colour depth or even the resolution and still keep things speedy I would be overjoyed!

Has anyone had any experience with this? If anyone can offer any advise I would be most grateful.

thomas · 03 March 2012, 06:18

Being able to disable Amiga gfx DMA should speed up the machine a lot. Being able to put bitmaps into Fast RAM rather than Chip RAM should give another little boost. And certainly you should be able to increase colors from 64 to 256 without speed loss and even 65k or 16m colors should be faster than Amiga native gfx.

I am wondering a bit why you get such poor results from WinUAE. It should feel a thousand times faster than the real thing already without RTG. With Picasso96 it should feel even faster than the Windows it runs on.

You need to select an RTG screen mode in Prefs/Screenmode, otherwise you won't benefit from the gfx card. You didn't mention that you did this.

TreacleWench · 03 March 2012, 17:43

Thanks for the advice, but can you let me know how to disable gfx DMA and use the fast ram for bitmaps?

I did select the 800 x 600 Picasso96 screen mode in winuae. When I tried a higher one, winuae crashed.

I think something is wrong with my winuae setup as I replicated the setup of my existing machine with only 16 colors (instead of my 64) and it runs slower than my real Amiga!

Anyway, I think you have answered my original question and I am looking forward to doing the upgrades!

03 March 2012, 00:48	#1
TreacleWench Amigaaaarrrrgghhh Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK Age: 45 Posts: 95	RTG questions Hi, I am considering upgrading my A1200 to a tower unit with Mediator and graphics card but I am wondering if it will increase performance... At the moment I have a Blizzard 1230-IV with 64mb RAM and an Indivision AGA in my machine. I use Classic Workbench ADVSP v26 with the HighGFX HD720 driver in Super High-res Laced mode with 64 colours. The performance I get is acceptable, basically when opening windows I have to wait 3 or 4 seconds for the icons to draw. I feel it is a fair compromise for the superb 720p resolution (which looks fantastic!). I tried replicating my setup in WinUAE, then adding 256mb RTG and installing Picasso 96. This seemed to make no difference as the screen still drew quite slowly. I am assuming that WinUAE doesn't give an accurate respresentation of RTG because it doesn't emulate the actual graphics card or use it's drivers? Now the card I am considering getting is the Radeon 9250 with 256mb RAM, if I have done my research correctly, is the best card you can get and I am hoping that it will draw the screen much faster. If I could up the colour depth or even the resolution and still keep things speedy I would be overjoyed! Has anyone had any experience with this? If anyone can offer any advise I would be most grateful.

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03 March 2012, 06:18	#2
thomas Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 7,002	Being able to disable Amiga gfx DMA should speed up the machine a lot. Being able to put bitmaps into Fast RAM rather than Chip RAM should give another little boost. And certainly you should be able to increase colors from 64 to 256 without speed loss and even 65k or 16m colors should be faster than Amiga native gfx. I am wondering a bit why you get such poor results from WinUAE. It should feel a thousand times faster than the real thing already without RTG. With Picasso96 it should feel even faster than the Windows it runs on. You need to select an RTG screen mode in Prefs/Screenmode, otherwise you won't benefit from the gfx card. You didn't mention that you did this.

03 March 2012, 17:43	#3
TreacleWench Amigaaaarrrrgghhh Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK Age: 45 Posts: 95	Thanks for the advice, but can you let me know how to disable gfx DMA and use the fast ram for bitmaps? I did select the 800 x 600 Picasso96 screen mode in winuae. When I tried a higher one, winuae crashed. I think something is wrong with my winuae setup as I replicated the setup of my existing machine with only 16 colors (instead of my 64) and it runs slower than my real Amiga! Anyway, I think you have answered my original question and I am looking forward to doing the upgrades!

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