A4000 Picasso RTG vs Mediator PCI with graphics card

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by alexh

Have you priced up PCI cards for mediator? Amiga users/resellers have bought up most/all compatible cards raising the price considerably.

To be fair, the retro PC scene has expanded considerably in recent years, like the Amiga scene and most other retro scenes, and I'd imagine that's more to blame for the shortage of retro PC video cards than the relatively small market of Amiga dealers and PCI users. But yes, regardless of the root cause, prices of some cards have skyrocketed in recent years. I bought my Voodoo 3 around 20 years ago for a tiny fraction of the price they go for nowadays; the Voodoo 3 is seen as a sort of sweet spot for retro DOS 3D gaming builds.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by NunoUFO

I did none of the modes seem to work they all come up as not suitable for this board 256 and 800x600 and even lower...

Unfortunately I will have to return my GBA PII++ to get it checked. PicassoMode wasn't picking it up properly and when it did it only picked up the scandoubler and not the other card. I tried it in all the Zorro slots and even though it was showing in EBD...
What a shame, but let's see.

Well, you're probably using the old version of P96 in which case you need to create the modes yourself. The new version comes with a lot of pre-set modes, and the card itself is capable of 1280x1024x8, and 1024x768 in hi-color or 800x600 in true color, so it's definitely a fine card. I wouldn't just return it because you failed to set it up. This problem does not go away with any other card either...

[NunoUFO]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Well, you're probably using the old version of P96 in which case you need to create the modes yourself. The new version comes with a lot of pre-set modes, and the card itself is capable of 1280x1024x8, and 1024x768 in hi-color or 800x600 in true color, so it's definitely a fine card. I wouldn't just return it because you failed to set it up. This problem does not go away with any other card either...

Good point, I had the old version at first with only 4 modes.
The seller then sent me the new version with loads of modes. Unfortunately none worked...

[trixster]

Mediator / Prometheus gives you the option of messing around with ppc stuff. Not cheap tho

[matt3k]

I recommend a Radeon unless your a gamer. Radeons run much cooler than the Voodoo 3s

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by alexh

Have you priced up PCI cards for mediator? Amiga users/resellers have bought up most/all compatible cards raising the price considerably.

Not really, the only exception is the Voodoo 3/4, which is harder to find and more expensive than it should be. However they can still be found in not the usual places reasonably priced.

Radeon 9200s are still available and cheap but you miss out on Warp3d* and BE modes*. 100MB NICs, PCI Soundcards and NEC USB cards are still cheap and available.
ZZtop9k has all of this stuff and I'm not sure of the performance of any of the non-video extras, conceivably they are much better, but I don't know for sure.

Originally Posted by jbenam

Do you have link with benchmarks, etc.? I was wondering if it's worth for me to build a Firebird 4000, even if I already own a Mediator Mk. I.

Thanks!

Unfortunately I don't, I want to say the Prometheus is getting somewhere around 75% of the performance of the Mediator with a PPC PCI card and a Voodoo in Warp3D. Assessment was that the Prometheus was just slower in general due to either the PCI logic or the RTG driver, I don't have a Prometheus to test with.


















*Not counting shameful acts against society

[Jope]

Originally Posted by alexh

Have you priced up PCI cards for mediator? Amiga users/resellers have bought up most/all compatible cards raising the price considerably.

It's also peak pentium currently, so PCI cards are also sought after by the large retro PC crowd. I just sold my hoard of ISA/PCI and socket7 recently and even the mundane stuff was snapped up pretty fast.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Unfortunately I don't, I want to say the Prometheus is getting somewhere around 75% of the performance of the Mediator with a PPC PCI card and a Voodoo in Warp3D. Assessment was that the Prometheus was just slower in general due to either the PCI logic or the RTG driver, I don't have a Prometheus to test with.

Looks good enough for me, I don't care that much for performance. I will probably buy a Firebird PCB from Hese soon. Looks like a fun project and I have an AGA Flickerfixer I could use again with the Firebird. I also need to repair that borked Prometheus repro I was sold some time ago...

Originally Posted by Jope

It's also peak pentium currently, so PCI cards are also sought after by the large retro PC crowd. I just sold my hoard of ISA/PCI and socket7 recently and even the mundane stuff was snapped up pretty fast.

Luckily enough PC stuff already sold in plentiful numbers back in the mid-90s so unless you're looking for certain specific cards (like the Voodoos) you can still purchase almost everything for peanuts.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Luckily enough PC stuff already sold in plentiful numbers back in the mid-90s so unless you're looking for certain specific cards (like the Voodoos) you can still purchase almost everything for peanuts.

The Voodoo 3/4 PCI cards were an anomaly. PCI had been deprecated as the GFX card slot in favour of AGP almost four years before they came out. You can find AGP versions of Voodoo 3/4 in great numbers at very low prices but not that many PCI ones.

There is talk above of Voodoo 3/4 PCI being in demand for "retro PCs" but surely a PCI Voodoo3 card isn't really period correct for a motherboard with no AGP.

I still believe the strong prices are down to Amiga owners/resellers (plus low production numbers)

[Daedalus]

Using PCI for graphics cards (including Voodoo 3) was very common back at the time. Plenty of people were upgrading slightly older PCs with them, and it's no different today - people trying to recreate the system they had (or wanted) back then. Just because AGP was released at the time doesn't mean it was immediately widespread. In reality, AGP still wasn't guaranteed on a motherboard until some time later. And the first AGP motherboards weren't even available until later in 1997, less than 2 years before the Voodoo-3 came out. That means there were 4 years of Pentium-class motherboards without AGP slots.

[jbenam]

Back then upgrade cycles were longer than in the early 2010s.

In 1999 most people were still chugging along with a Pentium machine (some had barely just upgraded from 486 to a used Pentium) and Voodoo Banshee, 3 and 4 were popular upgrades for these users. Glide was just broadly supported, had a lower CPU overhead (perfect for these slightly older machines) than competing GPUs and AGP was still very much a power user's thing back then.

Voodoo 3s in AGP form were also widely deployed on brand-new machines back in the day, either OEMs or shop-assembled.

OEM machines were purchased in bulk by companies, and company-owned PCs had a higher chance of being carried to a recycling center rather than just being trashed and that's why a lot more Voodoo 3 AGPs are floating around.

PCI cards were mostly for end-users upgrading, which probably trashed them after they became obsolete instead of keeping the cards around.

[alexh]

I worked for Microdirect in the UK in 1999 which was at the time the UKs largest computer component reseller. I must have sold 100:1 AGP:PCI Voodoo 3/4 cards.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by alexh

I worked for Microdirect in the UK in 1999 which was at the time the UKs largest computer component reseller. I must have sold 100:1 AGP:PCI Voodoo 3/4 cards.

Well, Italy historically was (and still is) a poorer country than the UK were (are)

I didn't start seeing AGP often enough around here until the latter part of the year 2000.

Stills saw plenty of Celeron and Durons sold, and while these systems had an AGP slot, most upgrades were still mainly PCI until the onslaught of cheap NVidia AGP Vantas (I must have a drawer full of these) during the mid-2000. After that, AGP was pretty much everywhere.

[grelbfarlk]

PCI really became a standard around 1996 where you could buy a Pentium-166 and a GD5446 (or for an Amiga a Picasso-IV) for really not that much money (but the Amiga version cost 4x as much) and offered gobs of bandwidth. A couple years later the Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo-II PCI came along and we suddenly had the mainstream birth of 3D acceleration.

[Daedalus]

I don't doubt that more AGP than PCI were sold, given the gradual adoption of AGP around that time, though it would be good to see reliable figures. Nowadays you still see more AGP cards than PCI (recent sold listings on eBay are around 3:1 AGP:PCI), but I would like to know where great numbers of AGP Voodoo 3 cards can be found at very low prices, because there's a killing to be made; the most recent AGP Voodoo 3-3000 sold on eBay went for more than the most recent PCI Voodoo 3-3000 sold, and the most expensive of both variants sold are within a couple of quid of each other, just over £200.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

[...]the most recent AGP Voodoo 3-3000 sold on eBay went for more than the most recent PCI Voodoo 3-3000 sold, and the most expensive of both variants sold are within a couple of quid of each other, just over £200.

I paid £65 shipped on eBay for a V3-3000 AGP just a few months ago. And that's because I got impatient and didn't want to wait for one to show up at a lower price. I am pretty sure I could've snagged one at £50 if I had waited a bit longer.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I would like to know where great numbers of AGP Voodoo 3 cards can be found at very low prices

Last one sold on eBay £12.99 maybe an anomaly as it is also lowest price... highest price is only £135. Most are around the £80. Still more than I thought they would be.

By the time Voodoo 3 came out Intel 440BX + Celeron 300a combination had been out for over a year and were in the budget cycle, they were so so cheap and overclocked 50% it was so so much bang-4-buck. You couldn't really justify keeping an older computer, certainly not buying it a £200+ gfx card

[NunoUFO]

Once more thank you all for your patience and attention, however I think I'm still a bit confused about what's best for my needs.

So I've been able to buy a second hand mediator card just to try. It's the 4000D towerised version which most likely I will not keep as I have no intention to turn my A4000 into a tower setup

I did slot it in but nothing came up in sysinfo, my next question is do I need any cables? I did check Elbox's site but they don't mention any cables, however in the installation instructions I can see the board has two cables going into it.

Thank you once more

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by NunoUFO

Once more thank you all for your patience and attention, however I think I'm still a bit confused about what's best for my needs.

So I've been able to buy a second hand mediator card just to try. It's the 4000D towerised version which most likely I will not keep as I have no intention to turn my A4000 into a tower setup

I did slot it in but nothing came up in sysinfo, my next question is do I need any cables? I did check Elbox's site but they don't mention any cables, however in the installation instructions I can see the board has two cables going into it.

Thank you once more

Yes, IIRC (it's been six months since I have last used one) the Mediator 4000D (the one for desktop is 4000Di) needs an AT power supply to be attached to work.

Also if I remember correctly, you have to disconnect the 4000's original power supply and power everything through the Mediator and the AT power supply.

[NunoUFO]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Yes, IIRC (it's been six months since I have last used one) the Mediator 4000D (the one for desktop is 4000Di) needs an AT power supply to be attached to work.

Also be careful not not leave the 4000's original power supply connected. You have to power everything through the Mediator.

Okay so I plug the AT straight into the Mediator and then from the mediator to the 4000 motherboard.

The Mediator did come with the Elbox ATX adapter. Which ATX PSU would you recommend?