@thread

so let's review. the thread began by @JayCee posting about the new version of Q2 for OS4, and it not requiring any patches:

Quote:

Got QuakeII from Amigakit for my Sam and installed it last night and it works great. It came with a cd with os4.1 installer and did not require a patch from hyperions web page as I was told. It also came with an extra cd that had some other quake files on it but I honestly do not know what they are for. Just thought I'd post this for any Sam owners that were thinking about getting Quake 2.

and the very next post took the thread in an unintended, but predictable, direction: OS4 is terrible, the SAM is pathetic, etc., etc. and, yeah, we know 3D gaming isn't exactly the strength of either OS4 in general or the SAMs specifically, but that wasn't what the thread was about.

this is what gets some of us annoyed. next time, please start a different thread.

-- eliyahu

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"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

@BigD

I don't play that many games anymore, my PS3 is mostly unused, I have not more then 7 games on disks.

now days I play Rift on my PC, I like to play online games whit frends not single player games.
Tried Bioshock Demo, did not like it, Portal 2 was cool.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 27-Jun-2011 at 05:39 PM.

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@all

Just for fun tried Q2 with
FPSE (PSX-Emulator).

At the moment only the first level but
it runs in Fullscreen, 640x480x16,
with no scale quite well on my
SAM (667Mhz&Onboard Graphics).
Ok the Screen is a little small
Looks like it halves the size of the 480.
It breaks no records but shine to get
roundabout average 20FPS so far.

Another fine week with all of your Miggys
wish....Tears

@eliyahu

WTF are you talking about? Seriously, wtf? The original thread is generally geared towards Q2 on OS4. The first post states that Q2 works great on Sam. I am an owner of Sam and I do have installed Q2. I am not dreaming the benchmarks. How much more evidence do I have to bring, to counter that claim? Hell, I 've paid more than 1100 euros, so as to speak from first hand experience. It's nearly impossible to play smoothly Q2 on Sam440. You cannot get more than 24 FPS, depending on the scenery of the game! No one, NO ONE, would ever suggest playing the game that runs on par with a P133MhzMMX+TNT2 16MB/ Win 95 in 2011. Should we start a thread about Q1 framerate? Because I did do that as well, around 2 years ago and the result will time travel you back in mid 90s.

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@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

The original thread is generally geared towards Q2 on OS4. The first post states that Q2 works great on Sam. I am an owner of Sam and I do have installed Q2. I am not dreaming the benchmarks. How much more evidence do I have to bring, to counter that claim? Hell, I 've paid more than 1100 euros, so as to speak from first hand experience. It's nearly impossible to play smoothly Q2 on Sam440. You cannot get more than 24 FPS, depending on the scenery of the game! No one, NO ONE, would ever suggest playing the game that runs on par with a P133MhzMMX+TNT2 16MB/ Win 95 in 2011. Should we start a thread about Q1 framerate? Because I did do that as well, around 2 years ago and the result will time travel you back in mid 90s.

i guess i see your point in retrospect. the point i was trying to make was the OP was not discussing Q2 performance whatever, merely that he did not need to apply any patches as might be indicated, and that this was a general heads-up to those of us with SAMs. it just seems that any and every thread goes negative almost instantly around here. of course, in this case, there is actual basis for that negativity.

and, yeah, you're right on the smooth playing issue. there is something here that ain't right. for example, you would expect that if i degraded the rendering level, the framerate should get faster, right? it doesn't, or at least, any increase is marginal, e.g. from 18.3fps to 18.6 fps by dropping from highest quality to the next quality level.

-- eliyahu

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"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

@Cool_amigaN

We got two problems.

1- MiniGL and Warp3D are slow, I'm not blaming this, it will be solved. Tomorrow, next year, next decade, I don't know, but we WILL have a faster 3D, someday. I hope so.

2- And I'm sorry about this, people will say I'm trolling. Please STOP saying a PPC440 is a Pentium 3 class CPU. IT'S FALSE! Please STOP saying it performs like a G3, IT'S FALSE. The G3 is a Pentium 3 class CPU, the PPC440 isn't.

Just run Quake2 on a PPC440 vs G3, even an old 750cxe, with the same GPU, and compare. No match!

A PPC400@800 suffer from stuttering on some Divx a Pentium 2@333 decode without hardware help.

I'm sorry, I don't want to be considered troll, I don't want to hurt ACube, Sam440 are wonderful, brilliantly designed, stable boards. BUT the CPU don't have *any* power.

3- Ok, I know this doesn't solve your problem, but I feel better

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@Crisot

like I said before, the crusher benchmark for Q2 will show you what the cpu power is in the sam range.

I would like to know how all SAMs perform against other cpus in the tests shown.

maybe even an Installer so anyone can setup a benchmark tool and test systems.

If its less that 24/25 fps it aint playable.

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@Crisot

Quote:

1- MiniGL and Warp3D are slow, I'm not blaming this, it will be solved. Tomorrow, next year, next decade, I don't know, but we WILL have a faster 3D, someday. I hope so.

Absolutely true, although I am certain that you won't have to wait till next decade, so you can scratch that off the list.

Quote:

2- And I'm sorry about this, people will say I'm trolling. Please STOP saying a PPC440 is a Pentium 3 class CPU. IT'S FALSE! Please STOP saying it performs like a G3, IT'S FALSE. The G3 is a Pentium 3 class CPU, the PPC440 isn't. Just run Quake2 on a PPC440 vs G3, even an old 750cxe, with the same GPU, and compare. No match! A PPC400@800 suffer from stuttering on some Divx a Pentium 2@333 decode without hardware help. I'm sorry, I don't want to be considered troll, I don't want to hurt ACube, Sam440 are wonderful, brilliantly designed, stable boards. BUT the CPU don't have *any* power.

While I expect that you already know this, for the benefit of those who don't, this isn't as simple as the 440ep "not having *any* power." CPU speed undoubtedly has a big impact on performance with things such as Quake II. However, have a close look at the memcopy results for a Sam440, and an AmigaOne. Lower bandwidth means that it takes more time to copy anything to or from the card, including rendering commands and vertex arrays. Slower command submission can easily become a bottleneck.

You can see one of the effects of this on rendering speed by comparing compositing performance with 16x16 rects between the two results linked to above.** With small blits, the PCI/AGP bus isn't able to deliver commands fast enough to keep the GPU busy, and the bus becomes the bottleneck. If you click on show raw data, you'll see that the Sam440ep result maxes out at ~44,000 16x16 composite ops/s, whereas the A1 gets up to ~53,000 ops/s. If you think that this is a coincidence, then why would This Sam440ep test get ~37,000, whereas this A1 G4 @1GHz test and this A1 G3 @800 MHz test get ~56,000 and ~58,000 ops/s respectively, in the same tests. There's clearly a pattern here that is independent of CPU power.

So what's causing this? Well, the G3/G4 + ArticaS combo is able to chain multiple consecutive writes to the PCI/AGP bus into bursts, whereas the 440ep cannot. The 440ep, must use DMA for burst transfers, which is why this WritePixelArray result on a Sam440 is so much better than the one above. To see burst transfers really making a difference, compare the WritePixelArray performance between the top two results (here and here). Impressive, eh?

The good news is that the 440's burst transfer limitations can be overcome using something called GART (which would boost performance across the board). However, making that happen is going to take time. Adding GART support to the Radeon HD drivers sits right after getting 3D up and running. How much difference would this make with something like Quake II? No idea, as I don't know exactly how much influence each factor has on the overall performance. It would push performance in the right direction though.

Hans

** NOTE: The two tests don't use exactly the same card, so it isn't a perfect comparison. It's good enough for illustration though.

EDIT: Fixed a broken link

Last edited by Hans on 27-Jun-2011 at 11:25 PM.

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@BigD

Quote:

I'm thinking of buying Bioshock for my latest Intel Mac. Is it as good as the hype suggests?

The fist one? I loved it. The story line, the atmosphere.

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@Crisot & Hans

Thanks for taking the time to reply in this thread. I know that sometimes have been called "moaner", but imho, we shouldn't shoot the messenger. I never provide feedback and benchmarks out of my mind. In regard to Q2 and Sam explanation, I am not somewhat satisfied. Because if Sam has some bottlenecks, a Peg2 G4@1Ghz, 1GB Ram + 9250 128MB Ram AGP mGL 2.4 hasn't many of these factors. Getting ~35 fps with maxed out settings on 800x600 isn't normal for sure (although it is totally playable and enjoyable).

Furthermore, I have tested most, if not all, games found in OS4Depot. For example, Prboomgl, found
here, runs significantly lower when comparing SamEp 667Mhz, 512MB Ram, M9, OS4.1 u2 mGL 2.5 with Motorola Rokr Z6 running POL (Power of Linux). I mean, you can't be getting lower performance than a cheap mobile phone of 2007!

Some simple SDL games are unplayable with medium to high settings, like Mechanized Assault and Exploration Reloaded, OpenBOR port has significant framedrop and many times loading (depending on the mod) can take ages to start. I can name many, many other games as well.

The only two games that run excellent is Jagged Alliance 2 and FS2Open (although I haven't tested extensively the latter one). And if you think that JA2 is a tbs, just take a look at GemRB, it's impossible to have >18fps and although the game is playable, again the low performance is visible.

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@opi

I agree, pretty nice game. The second game isn't as good but worth playing as well IMO.

@Crisot

Just a minor note...
Quote:

A PPC400@800 suffer from stuttering on some Divx a Pentium 2@333 decode without hardware help.

Pentium II includes MMX i.e. a 64bit integer SIMD hardware.

With MMX and dual integer ALUs, Pentium II can process up to 4 32bit integer data per cycle.

Quote:

2- And I'm sorry about this, people will say I'm trolling. Please STOP saying a PPC440 is a Pentium 3 class CPU. IT'S FALSE! Please STOP saying it performs like a G3, IT'S FALSE. The G3 is a Pentium 3 class CPU, the PPC440 isn't.

Unlike the normal PPC G3, Pentium III has 64bit integer/float SSE SIMD (2X packed 32bit data, 4X packed 16bit integers, 8X packed 8bit integers).

The Pentium III is between PPC G3 and PPC G4.

Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2011 at 10:48 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2011 at 10:43 AM.

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@asymetrix

Quote:

asymetrix wrote: @thread According to some x86 benchmarks. (SNIP)

On AMD C-50/Z-01** (on my ACER Iconia W500 tablet, MS Windows 7), Quake III (normal settings, 640x480, timedemo demo001) it scored 116 FPS.

**My ACER Iconia W500 tablet's APU has AMD brand id of "1821h" i.e. AIDA shows it as Z-01 with stepping B0....

Last edited by Hammer on 29-Jun-2011 at 08:58 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2011 at 11:13 AM.

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I don't care what anyone says, Quake 2 plays great on my Sam and I am having a lot of fun with it. It came with the OS4 installer on CD which was a big deal to me because I'm not online at home. It was one less thing I had to attempt to download at work. Thanks goes to Hyperion and to Amigakit! I posted the info for someone maybe in a similar situation as myself. I was a little surprised how nasty some statements get. We all know pee cees and weez are fast but that has nothing to do with preferring to use Amigas and OS4. For me To use it is to choose it.

Last edited by JayCee on 28-Jun-2011 at 05:07 PM.

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@JayCee

Quote:

I don't care what anyone says, Quake 2 plays great on my Sam and I am having a lot of fun with it. It came with the OS4 installer on CD which was a big deal to me because I'm not online at home. It was one less thing I had to attempt to download at work. Thanks goes to Hyperion and to Amigakit!

i think based on this post i'll go ahead and purchase a copy of the new version. thanks for sharing your experiences.

-- eliyahu

_________________
"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

Cool_amigaN wrote: @Crisot & Hans Thanks for taking the time to reply in this thread. I know that sometimes have been called "moaner", but imho, we shouldn't shoot the messenger. I never provide feedback and benchmarks out of my mind. In regard to Q2 and Sam explanation, I am not somewhat satisfied. Because if Sam has some bottlenecks, a Peg2 G4@1Ghz, 1GB Ram + 9250 128MB Ram AGP mGL 2.4 hasn't many of these factors. Getting ~35 fps with maxed out settings on 800x600 isn't normal for sure (although it is totally playable and enjoyable).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say/ask. Are you now asking why performance on a Peg2 isn't as high as you'd like? In that case, we're back to Crisot's point number 1: "MiniGL and Warp3D are slow." Also, Radeon 9250s are slow.

Hans

P.S. Please do NOT use MiniGL2.4. It's a buggy release, which is why 2.5 exists.

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@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @DBAlex Quote: DBAlex wrote: 14fps for Quake II is not an achievement. Didn't the Blizzard PPC with BVision achieve better FPS than this? I seriously doubt it, unless it was at a basic 640x480 16-bit resolution without light maps turned on. The fill rate on the Permedia2 is poor compared to later cards and quake style games require that all the lightmapped polygons are textured twice. Which means that for every pixel rendered you are talking about 2 texture reads, 1 framebuffer read, 2 localbuffer (depth) reads, 2 framebuffer writes and 1 local buffer write at least (best case scenario, it could be worse depending on the state of the render pipeline).

not sure what the speed is but will do a time demo when i have time with 800x600 16bit OS3.9.

its very fast and in some places its super smooth so i expect it to be higher than 14fps with my system.

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@asymetrix

Quote:

like I said before, the crusher benchmark for Q2 will show you what the cpu power is in the sam range. I would like to know how all SAMs perform against other cpus in the tests shown. maybe even an Installer so anyone can setup a benchmark tool and test systems. If its less that 24/25 fps it aint playable.

to add another data point, i decided to grab crusher.dm2 from the interwebs and give it a spin. earlier i reported that on map #1 at the highest quality settings available i found i was getting 18.3 fps fairly consistently. running the crusher map we're looking at 10.9 fps. despite these rather poor numbers, for single-player action, it runs fairly smoothly in normal gameplay. the only noticeable lag appears when exposed to the 'sky' in outdoor sections of a given map. otherwise it's fairly smooth.

at least that's my subjective view.

-- eliyahu

_________________
"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

@eliyahu

Interesting result. Please can you tell me what settings you used and screen res ?

The crusher benchmark tests mainly cpu speed so one can get a good idea of for example Sam PPC CPU against x86 in Q2.

Were you using the settings I posted above in the benchmark list ?

Disable VSYNC
disable dynamic lighting (gl_dynamic 0)
enable flash blend (gl_flashblend 1)
switch off 'polyblend' gl_polyblend 0

try 16bit and 32bit screens
try lowest settings in game

if crusher is correct, you should get same result for low settings (as it is mainly a cpu test).
the 10.9 fps is not only a cpu benchmark, but says when you play Quake and you get into a firefight ( the most important time) - the framerate will drop below 24 fps, which means its not playable - from a gamers point of view.

If you do get lower than 24 fps, you need to tweek it further or lower the screen resolution until you get higher than 24 fps (which gaurantees a decent gameplay when in the middle of battle).

If we Amigans want to compare against the PC Gamers out there, this is one of those tests to try keep the same settings in Q2.

right now you compare near to :
W/AMD k6-2 150 mhz, NVIDIA Riva TNT - with crusher at 460x480.

which either means the Q2 source code is not optimized or a poor performing CPU.

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@asymetrix

For less than 10 watts CPU category.

My Acer Iconia W500 tablet's Quake 2 OpenGL benchmark
- video mode: 640x480
- screensize: max
- texture quality: max
- 8bit textures: no
- benchmark: map demo1.dm2
- vsycn: off
- result: 156.5 FPS.

- video mode: 1024x768
- result: 146 FPS.

Hardware
- CPU: AMD Desna** Dual Core 1.0Ghz (C-50/Z-01 APU), 512KB L2 cache, steping B0, X86-64, MMX/SSE1/SSE2/SSE3/SSSE3/SSE4a. 3DNow not supported.

- GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6250M (C-50/Z-01 APU), 276Mhz

- Memory: 2GB DDR3-1066

**According to AIDA64 Extreme Edition v1.80 (registered), it marks this APU as "AMD Z-01" i.e. 5.9 watts.

With Doom3 PC vs Mac, I recall PowerPC has issues with
1. register data movements between FPU and GPRs. PPC has to copy it back to main memory (cache). X86 CPUs can move register data between FPU, SSE and GPRs without hitting main memory.
2. function calls.

Last edited by Hammer on 29-Jun-2011 at 01:01 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 29-Jun-2011 at 12:53 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 29-Jun-2011 at 12:43 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 29-Jun-2011 at 12:42 PM.

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