GREX 1200 PCI Testing :D

[fitzsteve]

*Sorry for the crap pics, Mrs Fitz broke the Camera and I'm using my phone*

Anyway! I picked up a GREX PCI 1200 a while back, not had a chance to test it until now as I didn't want to strip down my A1200T (Mediator 1200 project)

However I saw a cheap barebones tower on eBay, ok it wasn't really that cheap but it was ready to go with Rev2B Motherboard, Keyboard connector, PSU & of course the case...

I already have a Rev2 BPPC which is the best one for the GREX so I flashed the GREX Firmware and assembled everything in the Tower





For some reason the case switch does not fire up the GREX so I've used a PSU that comes on when you flick the main switch and everything seems to work fine



Just to check the Voodoo is working I've installed CGX V3 over a basic Classic Workbench, as you can see, working great






Some of you may remember I tried before to get a GREX running and had no luck so I'm really pleased, next up will be to take CWB OS3.9 and pimp it out with CGX4

[Bamiga2002]

Gongrats for the G-Rex . It's faster than Mediator Voodoo-wise and for those power-hungry 3D-games. What about 2D-performance? Could you post benchmarks so we could compare results. SysSpeed maybe?

[fitzsteve]

Thanks Bamiga2002, I will do benchmarks to compare once I get the GREX fully up and running

[zipper]

http://www.amigaspeed.de.vu/

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by zipper

http://www.amigaspeed.de.vu/

Ahh, I saw that before nice. Interesting the 040 based BPPC + GREX runs Quake 2 faster than the 060 based BPPC, both with the same 240mhz PPC

[fitzsteve]

A small update

I managed to get an early version of mfilos' custom OS3.9 running with the GREX which works really well, I think I need to re-install Warp3D as my games don't run but I'm making progress





Apologies for the rubbish pics, need to get a decent Camera pronto

UPDATE

I got my Games working just by re-installing Warp3D for the Voodoo 3

[ Show youtube player ]

GREX is quite a bit faster than the Mediator (something like 10% in Quake II), and especially for 68k usage, GLQuake (68k version) is really fast and now you can use screen modes 640x480 and above even in software rendering which are very slow on the mediator

Benchmarks in QII Timedemo were 14.7fps with the Mediator/Voodoo and 16.2fps with GREX/Voodoo (Same BPPC used in both tests, my Stachu upgraded 330mhz PPC)

Thanks again Marios for sharing your Workbench packs my friend, it saves us noobs a headache setting up CGX4

Anyway, back ta da gamez

[mfilos]

No problem my friend! Always glad to help ya out

Your Grex is teh rox0rz
Nice to see it working at last bro.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by mfilos

No problem my friend! Always glad to help ya out

Your Grex is teh rox0rz
Nice to see it working at last bro.

Thanks bro, it's not the same GREX by the way, I sold the other as spare parts since I was sure it was faulty, the person who bought that sold me a this working setup

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

GREX is quite a bit faster than the Mediator (something like 10% in Quake II), and especially for 68k usage, GLQuake (68k version) is really fast and now you can use screen modes 640x480 and above even in software rendering which are very slow on the mediator

What makes Mediator so slow with 68k games?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Bamiga2002

What makes Mediator so slow with 68k games?

I don't know for sure, but I guess it's because the G-Rex has direct bus access to the BPPC

More info here:

http://grex.amigaworld.de/index.php?lang=en&page=1

[fitzsteve]

Small update, now running with IDEFix Express which boosts the IDE to 3.5mb/sec without any extra drivers installed. Makes quite a difference to the overall speed/respose from the IDE