mmm nice

But i love my XE still

I hope they have a good marketing plan worked out for this as it gots the potential to bring the amiga back to the masses like the 500 & 1200 did.
Still I would of thought the non upgradable graphics lesson would have been learnt by now.
ATI 7000 is old even by todays standards and is now relegated to the budget end of the graphics card market. Even my 8500 is obsolete and its less than a year old.
If they are aiming for mass public comsumption by Q1 2004 its got to have at least a 9200 or a 9600 ATI on board.

Slightly of topic why are they using ATI chips when I though Amiga had some sort of relationship with Matrox ? Or has that fell by the wayside.

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A1200T 603e 330Mhz - Mediator TX OS4.1 F.E.
CDTV 8MB Fast, OS3.1, SCSI, MicroSD SCSI & CD32 FMV
X5000, X1000, A1XE with OS4.1F.E.

@jurassiccamper

I wouldn't exactly call it "non upgradable graphics". There are tons of modern PCI cards that can provide an upgrade path.

Yes and with performance as well, integrated graphics usually have memory bandwidth problems since they share RAM with the rest of the computer, making them low performers, in which case a modern PCI card with onboard graphics is a great deal faster.

Though I do agree that the 7000 chipset is far too old. But it's not set in stone yet AFAIK, it's just what is used on the current prototypes IIRC.

(Hmm read a test suite of a large range of different PCI cards, but can't find it. Hmm, I thought it was on tomshardware.com but I can't find it there. Anyone else read that article somewhere?)

/Björn

From what I can see on the pictures from down under, there's proper graphics memory on the underside of the board (would that be "down under"? ). So I don't think you'll suffer any penalties for using the onboard graphics.

Which is a good thing, imho.

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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.

well, to avoid confusion I would call it Mini A1 because its size is mini-itx... MicroA1 may be used for the Micro-ATX version... or maybe they are planning to add DDR and other stuff and release it when the G3VX appears and call it AmigaTwo

Next year will probably be even more fun with the availability of ppc970 northbridges...

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The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

seriously, for what the amiga does, the 7000 is more than enough. And what good are state of the art cards, bleeding edge technology when our drivers only uses 20% of what they can do? I'd rather buy a 7000 and know that the OS uses almost the full potential of the card (which it might not do, not sure) than getting a 9xxx card where I know for certain that the drivers does not even do more than the basic 2d operations..

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If I started a site about cow dung, and someone wanted to discuss dog poo, I wouldn't give a ####.

@olegil

>Which is a good thing, imho.

Yepp.

Still though, PCI cards are an available upgrade option.

/Björn

after years of waiting ,upgrading classics and being disapointed tomorrow marks a historic day , a micro with the NEW OS most fans have only dared to dream of ........ I await reports with interest

Quote:

Slightly of topic why are they using ATI chips when I though Amiga had some sort of relationship with Matrox ? Or has that fell by the wayside.

That announcement came at a time when Amiga Inc were forming "partnerships" with all and sundry. I suspect the content of that partnership to be nothing more than Amiga getting early access to hardware, for drivers to be written.

Still, if I'm wrong here, I'll have a set of drivers for one of these thanks!



Of course, if we're looking at the low end, then the ATI Radeon9000AIW is a handy piece of kit as well.....

-john

woodshed57 welcome to AW! And join the revolution

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ikir

What we realy need to know is the frame rate for, say, Quake 2, running on OS4 with a 7000 card installed and compare that to some other versions of hardware/OS. Then you know if it's worth getting a £20 7000 card or a £200 9000 ?

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Cheers

Doug.

Could you get a better screen shot, if not more? It's kind of hard to read the screen. I didn't notice the A1 at first til I saw the back end of it off to the side in a case.

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Quote:

seriously, for what the amiga does, the 7000 is more than enough. And what good are state of the art cards, bleeding edge technology when our drivers only uses 20% of what they can do? I'd rather buy a 7000 and know that the OS uses almost the full potential of the card (which it might not do, not sure) than getting a 9xxx card where I know for certain that the drivers does not even do more than the basic 2d operations..

Well, for the time being, that is. But what happens when Nova comes out and 3D is a concern? When people start clammoring for developers to support the Amiga lite because it has sold so many units, but they look and say, "The graphic chip used there cannot handle the complexity of this new game".

The 7000 is very old, and was not extremely powerful even for it's time. The 9200 would be a much better choice for onboard, even if it cost a bit more, and would give you support for more modern functions in hardware to support the new feature that Nova will look for. If I'm not mistaken, the 7000 doesn't support Hardware T&L, which is a big bonus for games.

Quote:

The 7000 is very old, and was not extremely powerful even for it's time. The 9200 would be a much better choice for onboard, even if it cost a bit more, and would give you support for more modern functions in hardware to support the new feature that Nova will look for. If I'm not mistaken, the 7000 doesn't support Hardware T&L, which is a big bonus for games.

I have to agree completely

I built a Duron 1.3GHz PC with 256MB 2100 DDR Ram and a ATI 7000 recently for my father to surf / word process on etc. I installed a few games just to play when i go and visit him. Games like Mafia and vice city, toca touring cars suck big time on an 7000.
Only modern game that I found playable at a decent frame frate was insane racing.
If this A1 is to be sucessful and we all want it to the 7000 has gotta go. It has to appeal to the masses and that includes PC people. While it may be better than anything we have had in amiga land before, PC / Console people, who we need to bring accross, will just laugh at it if its not a PS2 XBOX beater.
OS4 can't make up for what the graphics card is missing as much as we would all like.
Its a sad world but joe public is only going to buy it if it comes in a shinny box with a list of specs down the side as long as your arm. The first and only thing people will be interested in is XX Million Textued polygons per second.

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A1200T 603e 330Mhz - Mediator TX OS4.1 F.E.
CDTV 8MB Fast, OS3.1, SCSI, MicroSD SCSI & CD32 FMV
X5000, X1000, A1XE with OS4.1F.E.

Can anyone give a brief idea of how close in performance the 32 meg ATI 7000 is to a 32 meg GForce 400mx?

I can't wait to find out what the price point will be for these boards!

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A3000D (16mhz, 2MB Chip, 4MB Fast, SCSI (300+MB), SuperGen Genlock, Kick 3.1)
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Back in my day, we didn't have water. We only had Oxygen & Hydrogen, & we'd just shove 'em together

Quote:

Can anyone give a brief idea of how close in performance the 32 meg ATI 7000 is to a 32 meg GForce 400mx?

Read some of these and you'll see why I say it's not a good chip to stick into a system that has no AGP slot. The two are close, but the Geforce2 MX400 beats the Radeon 7000 hands down.

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-02.html

http://www.barefeats.com/gr7000.html

http://www.bytesector.com/data/bs-print.asp?ID=56

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2002/05/06/radeon7000/

Those benchmarks don't make the ATI 7000 look too good. It won't keep me from buying a MicroA1 if the price is right though, because for now (and probably for a while to come) that gfx chip will be plenty anyway. It would, however, be nice to have a little beefier chip on there though. I have a 32 meg MX 400 and for the price it's awsome (though most people seem to think they suck). It can run 3D games at 800 x 600 32bit and they just fly, I run most my games at 1024 x 768 32 bit and they're zippy to say the least.

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A3000D (16mhz, 2MB Chip, 4MB Fast, SCSI (300+MB), SuperGen Genlock, Kick 3.1)
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Back in my day, we didn't have water. We only had Oxygen & Hydrogen, & we'd just shove 'em together

Guys, you are all assuming that the 7000 will be included in the final spec! Afterall what is being shown is a preproduction Micro A1 and so the specs may change alot between now and when it is finally released.

@All

What you have to realised is that the MicroA1 isn't neccesarily aimed at people who need to use top spec graphics cards for the latest games...

however, having said that - a Radeon Mobility socket (MegArray) style would be nice

Maybe eyetech should produce a MicroA1-SE version, with soldered processor and Radeon - and a MicroA1-XE version, with sockets for both? What do you think?

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Life starts at 030, is fun at 040 and causes impotence at x86.

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I have a 32 meg MX 400 and for the price it's awsome (though most people seem to think they suck). It can run 3D games at 800 x 600 32bit and they just fly, I run most my games at 1024 x 768 32 bit and they're zippy to say the least.

That's why I kick your butt on UT! LOL .... I'm running a Geforce3 Ti200. It does fairly well, but is way behind the specs of todays cards.

Seriously though, it will depend upon the game you are playing. And one thing I found out when I got this Geforce 3 was that until you change to something better, you won't see why there is a difference. I thought my Savage2000 was doing pretty good (it out performed my Geforce2 MX400) but then when I installed the Geforce3, I almost had to relearn the game mechanics for everything I played. The response times felt different, and I didn't have to "overcompensate" for frame loss like I use to. I never realized that I was compensating to the extent I was when using the old cards.

Btw, I agree it's not enought to make me not buy the MicroA1 (shouldn't that be Mini-A1???) But it makes me wonder why they would pass up the great gaming possiblities of this little gem.

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That's why I kick your butt on UT! LOL ....

I don't think that's the only reason! Maybe I'll try it at 300 x 200 and see if can kick your butt! Something tells me that won't help

Great you're gonna make me want to go out and buy a new grafx card now.

It's probably way to early to know what the price will be as they don't even have the final specs set in stone, but has anyone one heared what price they might be shooting for?

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A3000D (16mhz, 2MB Chip, 4MB Fast, SCSI (300+MB), SuperGen Genlock, Kick 3.1)
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Back in my day, we didn't have water. We only had Oxygen & Hydrogen, & we'd just shove 'em together