@sg2

Yes, and can an A1 read 98MB/s from the IDE interface? Articia S based Peg1 can't, if the A1 can then good.

Articia S and Marvell Discovery II are different chips. Articia S is a northbridge, Marvell Discovery II isnt. Marvell is a communication controller. Articia S provides built-in AGP support when Marvell doesn't but in contrary Marvell is better at high speed data transfers. Remember MV64361 includes two gigabit ethernet controllers (overspecced for a desktop computer).

@CheatX

Even without AGP per se, Marvell Discovery II would be still classified as a ?Northbridge? i.e. refer Intel 430xX chipsets?

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

Just as a matter of interest, I did a quick survey of my friends who own Mac's (I'm talking around 40 people) and all but the most demanding (ie; artists) still use the old gold fish bowl iMacs which I believe are all G3's.. Not everyone in the world set's their lives around the life cycles of computers. Which also tells me that nothing has changed since the days of the A500. If it does the job you need it to do, why change?

Anyway, all this talk of the extra features of the G4 used by photoshop is a little moot considering it and the other programs mentioned don't bloody work on the Amiga..

Hello, this it is my first post. First, sorry for my bad english.
I want to congratulate Hyperion for the work with the AmigaOs 4.0.

Now talk about the micro A1.
In principle I find good the idea of a MoBo MicroITX that, in certain way, comes to occupy the place that had the A1200, A500 in their day and even the CD32. A small, flexible and compact machine. The problem that is what will put on for sale.

To a quite high price we have a MoBO with some poor characteristics. Without speaking of the processor, problem that had been solved allowing the user to choose between three or four micro models.

The Mobo micro A1 has.
- A good graphic processor for the 2d but bad for the 3d. I have read in amiga.org that I Rogue commented that from the programming the T&L is preferable to the vectorial unit. Well the Radeon 7000 don't have T&L.
The option goes to add a card of Slot, thing that it is necessary to add to the price of the badge and that they facilitate third parts besides the price of a new graphic card that also provides a slow port AGP in way PCI... In theory here can have problems of speed of transfer of data between the MoBo and the GFX.
It has already been commented in others post that has been more interesting to substitute this Radeon 7000 for another card (a 7500 minimum or a 9200 with 64 Megas like more interesting option).

- USB. The micro A1 already incorporates those old USB 1.1. Keeping in mind that it is a compact MoBo a good part of the amplification possibilities they go by the use of external devices. To add USB 2.0 of series has been a better form of facilitating these external amplification possibilities I use devices USB 2.0 for a quick transfer of data and sincerely I would not buy anything that doesn't have these ports...

- Support of diskettes in format AMIGA. It is worth, I know that it is a thing to disappear but it bothers a little that one doesn't keep in mind facilitating the users the transfer of the data from their old diskettes to the current supports... The micro A1 (the same as the other MoBo Amiga1 and the Pegasus) they don't facilitate any series solution for this problem and it relegates it to the use of solutions of third parts. Also the micro A1 only available, of series, of an only port PCI that would be occupied by this solution. It is also necessary to add the price of the card.

I worry about this badge to be taken as base for a basic AMIGA of new generation. Certainly I won't wear out an euro in this solution. As I don't see that Pegasos whose characteristic neither they delight me, be an alternative and me what I want is a machine that works with AMIGAOS 4.0, because I see that plays me to wait and a lot to future more interesting solutions. That or to that some other company (ELBOX?) does offer solutions, either to enlarge my poor A4000 or in form of a new Mobo that if it fulfills a minimum expectations of quality price.

Greetings.

@DruidPoet

Quote:

I did a quick survey of my friends who own Mac's (I'm talking around 40 people) and all but the most demanding (ie; artists) still use the old gold fish bowl iMacs which I believe are all G3's.. Not everyone in the world set's their lives around the life cycles of computers. Which also tells me that nothing has changed since the days of the A500. If it does the job you need it to do, why change?

Interesting! Though, I think, we have two different situations. The work-computer and the home-computer. Here at work, I use a 500MHz PC, which can dual-boot into win98 and some RedHat Linux (can't remember the version, it's some years old). I don't have sound output. I don't have a big need to change, because it gets the job done. (Actually I prefer not to change, because they would probably put some WinXP on it, and then I'll have a lot of trouble. I would also have to reinstall Linux myself.)

My computers at home are totally different. I want to have fun with them, so I use a lot of different Amigas, modern PC (for games, but also to develop some under Linux), I have sound, connection to synths and so on. I plan to get an AmigaOne soon.

I also think, a lot of A500 users back then bought A1200s with or without tower, PPC acc. boards and so on.

A home-computer has to be fun. A work-computer shall get the job done (and may also be fun).

/John.

@sg2

"
> competitor product [...] does have faster northbridge to RAM -bus

Nonsense. We made extensive uncached memory bandwidth tests on a1, peg1, peg2.

Short story :
- peg1 does in the 75 MB/s
- peg2 does in the 350 to 400 MB/s
- a1 does exactly the same as peg2
- cached bw is the same on all machines at the same clock speed of course.
"

I wonder how that test was done?
If it was done by using some CPU activity, it does not test the northbridge-RAM interface.

What is needed to test it: DMA transfer from RAM to somewhere that can accept the data flow. AGP1x is too slow for that, also the CPU bus is too slow for that, same for the gigabit ethernet....

So, IMO, it's impossible to test on Peg2.

It might show up when you put 100% load to AGP-RAM, CPU-RAM, GigaE-RAM, Firewire-RAM, PCI-RAM buses. But how would you measure it???

99% of the users would never notice the difference if Peg2 had SDRAM or DDR RAM (except on their money pocket).

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@marcik

" AGP on Articia has shared bus with PCI, but I'm not sure."

Artisia has two PCI buses.
The other one can handle AGP2x and one PCI66Mhz slot (fourth PCI slot).
Three PCI slots are connected to the other PCI bus.

I would be interested in knowing where the Gigabit ethernet and PCI-104 is connected in miniA1. I hope they do not load the same PCI bus with the southbridge/IDE cntrlr etc..

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Rogue

"I never said anything about prices. If you can point me to somewhere where I said the Micro was cheap, please do so. I also never said that the 7447 with Altivec would be slower, quite the contrary, I have one of them and can compare it."

I have never written YOU said it was cheap. I said "people" not "you". Check my post

So we agree: a 7447 with altivec is faster than a 750FX. As the 7451 with Altivec is. I know you haven't said that a 750FX was faster than a 7447 with altivec. But omitting Altivec in the comparisons of speed can't be a good idea.If altivec is available we'll use it, and of course it will make the 7447/7451 faster than a 750FX in the end (even if normal operations are usually faster on a 750FX).

@Eric_S
"An 750GX @733Mhz costs about ~$80 (US)"
wow! 64? for a 750GX@733! Thats 43 pounds! It seems that eyetech will earn a lot of money with the MicroA1! :-/

@DruidPoet:
"Anyway, all this talk of the extra features of the G4 used by photoshop is a little moot considering it and the other programs mentioned don't bloody work on the Amiga.."

Of course but the new ArtEffect OS4 version may benefit a lot from Altivec, as other software that will be developed for our platform. As we have a G4 since the start of the OS4 platform lot of software could take advantage of it. The example of Photoshop is just to show that contrary to what Ben Hermans wrote, more than 5% of applications would benefit of it... and these aren't rare apps, a gfx processing program is something quite usual.

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

@salteadorneo

Quote:

salteadorneo wrote: Hello, this it is my first post. First, sorry for my bad english. I want to congratulate Hyperion for the work with the AmigaOs 4.0.

Hi, and wellcome here!



Quote:

The Mobo micro A1 has. - A good graphic processor for the 2d but bad for the 3d. I have read in amiga.org that I Rogue commented that from the programming the T&L is preferable to the vectorial unit. Well the Radeon 7000 don't have T&L. The option goes to add a card of Slot, thing that it is necessary to add to the price of the badge and that they facilitate third parts besides the price of a new graphic card that also provides a slow port AGP in way PCI... In theory here can have problems of speed of transfer of data between the MoBo and the GFX. It has already been commented in others post that has been more interesting to substitute this Radeon 7000 for another card (a 7500 minimum or a 9200 with 64 Megas like more interesting option).

Good point. I do not think a 9200 would cost that much these days and it woudl surely be a better low-end solution.
Keep in mind that current GFX drivers still not support hardware 3D at all (even without T&L), but they will be surely available WHEN IT'S DONE.


Quote:

- USB. The micro A1 already incorporates those old USB 1.1. Keeping in mind that it is a compact MoBo a good part of the amplification possibilities they go by the use of external devices. To add USB 2.0 of series has been a better form of facilitating these external amplification possibilities I use devices USB 2.0 for a quick transfer of data and sincerely I would not buy anything that doesn't have these ports...

Another very good point. Again, I do not think USB2.0 is a lot costier than USB1 and you will need to have those external devices plugged to your microA1.

Quote:

- Support of diskettes in format AMIGA. It is worth, I know that it is a thing to disappear but it bothers a little that one doesn't keep in mind facilitating the users the transfer of the data from their old diskettes to the current supports... The micro A1 (the same as the other MoBo Amiga1 and the Pegasus) they don't facilitate any series solution for this problem and it relegates it to the use of solutions of third parts. Also the micro A1 only available, of series, of an only port PCI that would be occupied by this solution. It is also necessary to add the price of the card.

I do not agree here. A1 is meant to be a step forward and we already have software solution for saving orginal Amiga disk images to file for transferring it to the new generation machines.
Keep in mind that several websites provide a plenty of legal downloads of those disk images (there are utilities, games, demos, fonts...). Why increase the cost of the board with a costty floppy that few people will use?

_________________
God created Paula so that Allister Brimble and Dave Whittaker could do music

Check my Amiga gameplays (ITA)!

@Intuitioned

Excactly!

(And I think you might be right about the 030 and the cache. Me bad.)

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@ErikBauer

Well, many people would use them, but only ONCE per floppy (there's no way I run something off of an original 15 year old floppy these days. I just know it'll stop working at some point). So for the amount of work involved in getting it right it is not worth it. And it would add to cost of boards sold to people who don't have ANY floppies as well.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@ErikBauer

Quote:

- Support of diskettes in format AMIGA. It is worth, I know that it is a thing to disappear but it bothers a little that one doesn't keep in mind facilitating the users the transfer of the data from their old diskettes to the current supports... The micro A1 (the same as the other MoBo Amiga1 and the Pegasus) they don't facilitate any series solution for this problem and it relegates it to the use of solutions of third parts. Also the micro A1 only available, of series, of an only port PCI that would be occupied by this solution. It is also necessary to add the price of the card.

Quote:

I do not agree here. A1 is meant to be a step forward and we already have software solution for saving orginal Amiga disk images to file for transferring it to the new generation machines. Keep in mind that several websites provide a plenty of legal downloads of those disk images (there are utilities, games, demos, fonts...). Why increase the cost of the board with a costty floppy that few people will use?

Hello Erik.

Well, I won't refuse that that reasoning is good but the A1 is a piece of Hardware the sufficiently costly as for not taking this characteristic. If was a very economic Hardware then it would be well that doesn't take the support of a system of old storage. But besides games and programs I have many data in disquette and clear I don't feel like lose many hours passing them to another format to be able to use them with the A1.
It is certain that some programs and games can get off internet but you need first to have that connection and that could be a problem for some users.
In all ways it would agree completely with you the reason if the A1 (MoBo + micro) possible more economic version costs between 200 and 300 Euros.

Greetings.

@salteadorneo

You can still use your Amiga floppies with the microA1. It has a PCI slot, so you can put a Catweasel board in it.

> ...I have many data in disquette and clear I don't feel like
> lose many hours passing them to another format to be able to
> use them with the A1.

Transfering the data from your diskettes to CD will actually save you time. The CD is much faster than the floppy. Also, older diskettes tend to get read errors suddenly, so your data is more safe on the CD.

Kind regards,

Dennis

@salteadorneo
Quote:

Support of diskettes in format AMIGA

I never use disks anymore. Did throw away over 1000 Amiga disks last month. I only use CDs and progs from Internet.
It is cheaper to do CDROMs than disks. And disks are only reliable for 5 years. Most disks loose data after 10 years.

_________________
A computerworld without MS products and Windows!
Connect your Amigas ...
...The Red ONE-A1XE G4 - A3000T- A3000 - A4000 - A2500- A1000 - A600 - CDTV - CD32...
and your PDAs and laptops ...
Psion 5mx Pro - Psion NetBook - Apple iPhone - MacBook Pro

@Crumb

Quote:

. But omitting Altivec in the comparisons of speed can't be a good idea.If altivec is available we'll use it, and of course it will make the 7447/7451 faster than a 750FX in the end (even if normal operations are usually faster on a 750FX).

Alticvec is a _VECTOR UNIT_. That means it's main purpose is to work with vectors of either 16 bytes, 8 half words, 4 words, or 4 floats.

However, it's _just_ that. You can use it for some other things, for example, a slightly faster memcopy (because vector load/stores are 16 bytes). But that's it.

Now _most_ stuff can't be vectorized. There's a certain set of algorithms that work great with Altivec, generally everything that classifies as "signal processing", or vector arithmetic (which is of course prominent in 3D applications). However, it will not make things like a 68k emulator faster. It will not accelerate programs that can't make use of it. As such, saying "a 750FX is slower than a 7447 with Altivec" is completely off the mark. You can also say that a 750GX is faster than a 7447 with Altivec because the 750GX has 1 MB of on-die level 2 cache. For some tasks (let's say a compiler), the larger level 2 cache will make a difference, so you could expect a compiler to be much faster on the 750GX compared to the 7447 (minus disk latency, but that's a different story)

In the end, it depends on your needs. From our experiences, the 750FX and even more the 750GX performs better in _general_ use. Of course, the Altivec enabled dnetc client is 3 times faster. But that doesn't help your compiler.

Don't get me wrong, please, Altivec is a great extension to the processor, and will help in many fields (video/sound decoding, 3d graphics, image processing). But it's not the holy grail.

_________________
Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

@Crumb

Sigh... I said I wouldn't but...

Quote:

So we agree: a 7447 with altivec is faster than a 750FX. As the 7451 with Altivec is.

No, we don't. The 7447 is faster because it is usually clocked at a higher rate (you know mine's a 1.4 Ghz). I never tried it at 800 Mhz, so I can't comment.

I've seen a 7451 at 800 MHz though.

To get this straight, the mere presence of Altivec will obviously not make a difference. It isn't used unless the program uses it. Altivec is a SIMD vector processing unit, which stands for "Single Instruction Multiple Data". It means that the same instruction is executed simultaneously on a whole set of data items, for example perform a multiplication on two four-floatingpoint vectors. This requires, however, that the program being executed actually CAN work in parallel.

This is true for typical large-data-simple-operation problems like video/image processing, 3D graphics and the like. It is not true for a word processor, a compiler, workbench, 68k (or any sort of) emulation and a whole bunch of other problems that occur in everyday life. Granted, wherever this opportunity is there, the presence of Altivec will speed things up considerably, but it ALWAYS depends on the specific problem.

Even *if* the problem would benefit from Altivec, the question arises if the program actually *implements* it. Your run-of-the-mill video processor might not have any Altivec support at all, in which case it will not be used.

In general, it is wrong to say that the "7451 with Altivec" is faster than the 750FX. That is about the same as saying "A car with a CD player is faster than a car without it".

For something like the 68k emulator (and hence all classic programs) it will not help you at all. In that scenario (which will be, as you will agree, quite common at least for the first months of OS4's existence) the 750FX will be faster than the 7451, with altivec. Period. If you don't believe me ask someone with a 750FX and a 7451 to run e.g. voxelspace demo and compare the FPS you get.

I am not disputing the usefulness of Altivec at all - in fact, we'll support it in the next generation of MiniGL - but it DOES NOT MAKE your computer generally faster UNLESS the software uses it. Right now, that is pretty much non-existent. It will most likely change in the future (I hope).

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

Well, it's nice to see you Hyperion guys are all singing from the same song sheet

@Crumb

Quote:

Crumb wrote: @Uncharted "Do you have any idea how many CRT iMacs and G3 iBooks are still in use? No I didn't think so. If G3 is so dead, why would Apple (not known for thier backward thinking) support G3 machines in Panther and (so I've heard) Tiger?" Well, I only know a Mac user with a G3/500, the rest (maybe 15 or so) have as minimum a G4. MacOS X may run on G3, but it doesn't run as smooth as on a G4 Come on, with X PostFacto you can even run it on a 604e... well, it won't run, it'll crawl, but that's another thing. If they supported actively G3, MacOS X would run smoothly on a G3/266 for example, but I doubt that's the case.

*Sigh* You appear to miss the fact that Apple were still shipping G3 iBooks less than a year ago. Who mentioned any Clock speeds anyway? I was not talking about 266 G3s. Does the u-A1 run at 266? Was the iMac only ever released in a 266 spec?

Quote:

"Define most users. I'm a Mac user, I couldn't see much difference for everyday tasks." Don't you use photoshop, freehand, premiere or any sound tool? Don't you watch DivX?

I do use Photoshop fairly regularly, as do those I know with a G3, That's about it. I have used various multimedia apps in the past, but that was only because of University work, (which is Multimedia stuff), and I'd consider it out-of-the-ordinary. (Oh yeah, people did exactly the same work on G3 iBooks)

My main uses of my Mac though are:-

Web
Email
Word Processing
Listening to MP3s
IRC
IM

I do some gfx for various peple from time to time and so I also use Photoshop for that.

And no, I don't watch DivX, I have once, but that's about it. (How legal is ripping DVDs anyway?)

Quote:

Most of users I know convert DVDs to DivX, use Photoshop, dreamweaver (that's one of the few apps that come to my mind that wouldn't benefit much of Altivec), Premiere (or similar). Others convert their old records to cd cleaning the samples with filters etc. Others create 3D models.

See below

Quote:

"It's not available in quantity anymore, apples and oranges mate." That's it. We are not in 1990. We should adapt to the new times. And if we want to adapt we should start using Altivec as soon as possible.

You seem to completely miss the entire point. In 1990, the was vast worldwide sales, there was investment in the platform. We were (only just) still ahead of the game. Now we are so far behind it's not funny. G4 on the MicroA1 is not going to make the slightest difference to that. It's almost sounding as you're taking the pro-choice aregument too far and not wanting G3s at all on the consumer version. After all wouldn't those that'd want a G3 anyway would be holding the platform back wouldn't they?

Quote:

"By slow I gather you mean, normal everyday operations that 99% percent of the computer using population use thier machines for. In all honesty how many normal folk would convert a DVD to DiVX? How many people actully know what DivX actually is for that matter? I bet being able to read Email is severly hampered without vector processing." I don't know anyone know doesn't know what DivX is. Well, my grandfather probably not, but he won't never touch a computer anyway...

I don't know how to put this without sounding offensive, but you should really try expanding your social circle, because it sounds as if you only know Computer geeks. There is this myth that all Mac users are Graphic designers who own Adobe and Macromedia's entire software catalogue. This is just untrue. I only bought a Mac because I couldn't face coming home to a PC after spending all day at work fixing Windows problems (which was my job at the time).

To push this point further, I asked a bunch of people at the office I was working in today "Have you ever heard of DivX?", the only answers I got were "What?", "Erm, no", and "Why?". (These people were probably more concerned at why they were being interrorgated about gibberish by a temp that had only started today, than they were about finding out what the true answer was ). Mrs Uncharted has never heard of it either, niether has any of my immediate family. All these people are computer users (My family all have a computer each and most of the people I asked at work were working at a computer at the time). I bet if I asked in one of the Amiga IRC channels they'd all know, but then a group of die-hard computer fanatics are representitive of the general computer using population.

Quote:

"If you want to do serious stuff then you need a serious computer, and need to spend serious cash on it (G5 or High-end x86). I think you're looking in the wrong place for the perfomance you need." There's no point in spending huge quantities of money in a computer that does everything 3 times slower than any computer bought by the same price (x86 or ppc with altivec)

You've missed what I meant. If performance is a major concern for you, then I don't think an AmigaOne or Peg (or any pre-G5 PPC system) is what you should be looking at.

@Rogue

"In general, it is wrong to say that the "7451 with Altivec" is faster than the 750FX. That is about the same as saying "A car with a CD player is faster than a car without it"."

I meant if the App supported it, of course. I know that it's the same as an FPU, if your program doesn't use it you won't get advantage of it. And you can see I agree that the 750FX is faster in normal operations.

"For something like the 68k emulator (and hence all classic programs) it will not help you at all."

With the current AmigaOne's G4 it's already faster than a real 68060 so I guess I can live with that speed. I'm more interested in future apps like ArtEffect using Altivec than in a 750FX running DPaint making a colour fill 50% faster than G4(an emulated 680x0 already faster than a 060).

"but it DOES NOT MAKE your computer generally faster UNLESS the software uses it. "

I haven't said the opposite. Or at least I didn't meant that. I'm always talking about NEW software coded with Altivec support. Not the old WarpOS Voxel Demo recompiled without changes to support Altivec.

It's as if someone pretended that his fixed point math code used the fpu automatically, because it's impossible. Well, same with AltiVec, but I haven't denied that. I'm talking about new OS4 software, 68k software will already run fast and it doesn't need so much speed. We want OS4 to have NEW software, and won't restrict us to run 68k-only apps.

But most of programs that require brute force will benefit from Altivec (if recoded to support it). That leaves out things like compilers or 68k emulators, but the current AmigaOne G4 already provides a decent speed in emulation and I guess it compiles quite fast.


BTW, the latest compilers have AutoVectorizing options so in some years most of compilers will generate code that takes advantage Altivec in some parts without the developer noticing it. AFAIK, the most advanced one is developed by IBM...

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

@EntilZha

Regarding the bigger cache on the 750xx CPU: Does ExecSG support the L3 cache on the CPU modules of the A1XE? (even if it has very little influence on the performance)

Geri

_________________
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec
microA1: G3@800MHz, 1GB

- A1 Linux support -