[BuildLog] Vampire V2-128 received and it's just pure p0rn.

[Lord Aga]

Alrighty then Good news for me.

[kipper2k]

it is great to hear all the positive comments on the Vampire II. It's going to be a constantly evolving concept and with room to grow and improve the future for the Amiga looks even brighter. Well done to the team for the behind the scenes work (and frustration) I intend on finding better/faster methods to get the board out to people ASAP. For the a500 we expect an even bigger demand so we intend to be ready.

For the mounting of the a600 vampire we all know that it can be a pain in the donkey. so i am going to include an isopropyl alcohol swab and a qtip for people to clean the pins on the CPU (Yes!, it does make a difference). There needs to be a very good connection to the CPU, oxides build up over time and this will cause unwanted resistance between the socket and the CPU. You will be able to see the black on the swab after you clean the pins.

[Amiga1992]

Can't wait to get one of these, kipper!

[Lord Aga]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

For the a500 we expect an even bigger demand so we intend to be ready.

This is going to be insane

[Aegis]

Any thoughts on a CD32 version?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Any thoughts on a CD32 version?

That would be quite something.

[TjLaZer]

Can't wait to get the A600 and A500. Hopefully the P96 stuff is figured out soon

[Aegis]

Originally Posted by Akira

That would be quite something.

Wouldn't it just? Especially if they could work a floppy drive port into the design

[TjLaZer]

Originally Posted by Aegis

Any thoughts on a CD32 version?

Let's not jump the gun, they still have to get the 600 version out to everyone, then the 500 version, then see about getting the 1200 version. Not including seeing if it will work on a 1000, or 2000!

[matthey]

Originally Posted by cgugl

please can you run adoom in this way an post here the result?

> adoom -nosfx -forcedemo -timedemo demo3 -cpu 68060 -fps -width 640 -height 480

i got 18,6 fps on my dev vampire, with the last dev core (i'm slow, but i can still increase the mhz)

My CSMK3 68060@75MHz with 50ns memory only managed 7.9 fps on a RTG screen at 640x480x8 (unplayable). If you are getting 18.6 fps then you would probably beat a 68060@100MHz for this code and it sounds playable unlike anything over 512x384 here. It is likely that the larger caches of the Apollo core will run modern bloated and poorly optimized compiled code significantly better than the 68060. It has much more potential if compilers were improved and a good instruction scheduler added.

Originally Posted by lantus360

hey Matt, i can try but i dont have access to the newest core that supports that screenmode. I can only run in EHB modes for now

Yea, EHB does not work on ECS in hires and interlaced is glitchy here (3000T ECS with P96 installed).

[cgugl]

Yes, i really have 18,6 fps with the core at 84mhz
Here my adoom test, on both my amigas (amiga 4000+a3640+cvision3d and vampire):
http://www.easybytez.com/9ewsltfuzwqt


sorry for easybytez...

[Overflow]

Out of curiosity;

With the same core/fpga performance on both A600 and A1200 Vampire, will the A1200 still outperform A600?

If so, any ballpark guess how much and in what operations?
And why?

I guess should have been posted in Silly question thread

I realise its going to be a long time before A1200 vampire is available, but just curious as to the potential.
I have been wondering about aquireing an A600, but for now holding off (got an A1200).

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Overflow

Out of curiosity;

With the same core/fpga performance on both A600 and A1200 Vampire, will the A1200 still outperform A600?

If so, any ballpark guess how much and in what operations?
And why?

I guess should have been posted in Silly question thread

I realise its going to be a long time before A1200 vampire is available, but just curious as to the potential.
I have been wondering about aquireing an A600, but for now holding off (got an A1200).

There are no silly questions

The Vampire/Apollo is the first step to standalone versions and if everything runs on the card including chipset then from the old hardware only keyboard and interfaces are left so I think it should be the same. At the moment software that runs on ECS uses the existing hardware so I guess at the moment there would be a difference when not using RTG.

[grond]

Yes, Olaf is correct. Right now all non-rtg software still goes through the chipmem bus which has twice as much bandwidth in AGA then the ECS of the A600 and thus will run faster. How much will depend on the amount of graphics output the program produces. Later on the A600 and A1200 would be the same. But since the v1200 hasn't been designed yet, it might use a different FPGA. Who knows what will appear feasible in half a year, prices of electronic components drop all the time...

[LuMan]

Originally Posted by lantus360

I received mine yesterday - amazing piece of kit. Check out my review of the unit with some benchmarks and other fun stuff

[ Show youtube player ]

As others have said, Lantus, great review. I liked and commented

Back to topic: With respect to the board, this looks fantastic. The HDMI output is also excellent, as I only have room for one tv/monitor in my (ahem) office, so my HD LG 42" acts as a screen for Amigas, Playstations, Mac, Speccy and whatever else I throw at it... I can feel a purchase coming on..

[PortuguesePilot]

Originally Posted by LuMan

(...) The HDMI output is also excellent, as I only have room for one tv/monitor in my (ahem) office, so my HD LG 42" acts as a screen for Amigas, Playstations, Mac, Speccy and whatever else I throw at it... I can feel a purchase coming on..

The HDMI port is also one of the major aspects I'm interested in. With the 15kHz-compatible monitors dying out due to age, the alternatives are becoming more and more restrictive as time goes by. The Amiga has to come up with alternative methods of video output and the HDMI move is a giant leap forward compared to the SCART+RGB alternative... I'm really interested on the A1200 and even the A500 versions of the Vampire II (since I don't own an A600 and since I already have an A500 and an A1200, I don't think I ever will).

But with the immediate need to accelerate (and, more importantly, provide extra memory to my almost-stock A1200) I will have to buy something else in the mean time. It definitely doesn't mean that I won't get the A1200 Vampire II when it comes out. If it proves to be just as good for the A1200 as the current version is for the A600, I'll definitely buy it. I was also one of the purists that frowned at the FPGA alternative, but one has to give in when the evidence proves it's the right move.

One question, though (to anyone who can answer it)... due to all the hardware limitations of the A500, will the A500 Vampire II also feature HDMI output?

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

due to all the hardware limitations of the A500, will the A500 Vampire II also feature HDMI output?

I don't see why not, the A500 isn't that different from an A600. The card does not use the Amiga at all for the HDMI output if I understood correctly, so it should work fine.

[cgugl]

the a500 is better, the cpu connector is better, it is more robust, has more space inside, has a real keyboard (not T9 as the a600), it is easy to repair...

why you say that the a500 is worse than the a600 ?

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by PortuguesePilot

One question, though (to anyone who can answer it)... due to all the hardware limitations of the A500, will the A500 Vampire II also feature HDMI output?

I dont see why not.
Technically speaking, the current HDMI output is a FPGA based framebuffer that has 4MB of video memory and has the capability of being Picasso96 RTG compatible with resolutions up to 1920x1080 in either 8, 15 or 16 bit depth.

Of course this features can be modified to be further extended.

I would love to get my hands on a Zorro II version of that same framebuffer as a standalone Amiga graphics card without all other stuff that the vampire has.

[IanP]

The Zorro II bus is too slow I think. Using a CPU across the Zorro II bus to manipulate the data in an FPGA graphics card based on the Vampire/Apollo architecture would be a big performance hit. A Full HD 16 bit frame is about 4MB so you wont get many frames per second from it with heavily animated images.