Quote:

PCIe is just a bus standard, it's no magic key technology or such. The day they port MorphOS to some HW that uses a bus like PCIe, they will obviosly write drivers for whatever controller providing this bus on that particular motherboard. They do this all the time, writing drivers for controllers is pretty much what adding HW support is about.

I believe the last G5 Macs had a PCIe bus. If the MorphOS Team decides to support this model, they will have to write drivers for the controllers, including the PCIe bus controller. The same with Sam460.

But PCIe isn't very interesting in itself, it's just a bus, it's what's connected at the other end that might be interesting. And here is the thing, if you look back over the years and think about it a little, you may perhaps see that the developments of CPU's, chipsets, and GPU's kind of goes hand in hand, "generation-wise". They kind of matched each other.

Sure, upgrading a GFX card has always been a "poor-man" solution for prolonging the life of your old PC computer, but only to a certain degree. Like putting in a card from the next generation above or so the current you have. But putting a R9 in a Sam460 will not give you performance enough for games like Skyrim, etc. The computer is way too weak to handle a card like that and saturate it in a meaningful way. They are many generations apart, they are dimensions apart.

The PowerMac G5 with PCIe shipped with 2004 level GPU, Nvdia GeForce 6600 LE, which is a good match. Same generation as the rest of the HW. The 6-series cards came in versions for both PCIe and AGPx8 interfaces, which is telling something about the age of things here. The comparable Radeons of the time was AFAIK based on the RV370/RV380 which were sold under the names X300 and X600 respectively, essentially the same thing as Radeon 9550 and 9600, but with PCIe interface instead of AGP.

The most relevant reason I can think of for the MorphOS team to put any time and effort on things like support for R9 GPU's and such on Sam460/PowerMac G5 PCIe, is probably to develop MorphOS native drivers for these cards ahead of an ISA migration to HW that can actually utilize cards like these to the fullest. "Our" HW today can't. Or maybe they want to start developing OpenGL 4.4 for MorphOS or such?

Quote:

Honestly, the (PCIe) GPU support in OS4 sucks big time, and they are far worse off than us on our fully supported R200/R300 etc cards. In all these years they haven't even had 3D support. They still haven't. Pretty useless in other words. Unusable for what it was intended.

@takemehomegrandma

That's a very interesting point. I've read somewhere that people using HD gfx cards on SAM 460 are a little disappointed about the performance because the CPU can't handle it. Even though a G5 is a lot faster than a SAM 460, you can only get that far with a single core.

But as you say, it's a good thing for the future (?) ISA shift. And we can expect *some* increase in performance at least.

Quote:

For many years now, notebooks have outsold desktop computers by a large margin. Furthermore, a large percentage of "desktop computers" are nowadays all-in-one systems as well as mini computers (Mac Mini-types, USB / HDMI sticks, etc.) that are simply not expandable via PCIe cards.

Quote:

Firstly, there are and have been "long-life" CPUs, motherboards, etc. that are being made available brand new for many years. Secondly, ARM´s and Intel`s GPU release cycle is not shorter than AMD´s or nVidias.

Quote:

They're far from being "fully supported", we lack any (non-overlay) video acceleration (sure, not very important), better dual monitor support (can live without), and last but not least, shader support.

I'd say what we have is more like "bare minimum" to be usable...

And with that I mean exactly that, system is usable, not missing anything "critical", but there's a lot of space for improvement.

Is shader support worked on right now for upcoming releases?

Quote:

I have never heard of any work on shader support for any Amiga, or MorphOS, or AROS versions, but I could be wrong.

Quote:

Well, actually MorphOS already does use shaders for several things internally, but of course "The Big Thing" with shaders is users being able to create them, and that's what is missing currently.

AROS has had shader support for quite a while already. The mythical gallium is supposed to bring them to OS4 too.

> I have never heard of any work on shader support for any Amiga, or MorphOS, or AROS versions

Agreeing with Jupp3, I think AROS has shader support since it got Gallium3D half a decade ago.
Regarding MorphOS, this is the last I heard:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=8904&start=125

@Jupp3
Quote:
http://hdrlab.org.nz/projects/amiga-os-4-projects/radeonhd-driver/radeonhd-driver-hardware-compatibility/


@ ASiegel
Quote:

... of which none of them can be used with MOS. But many Power Macs with an Nvidia card can be turned into a MOS machine by replacing the Nvidia card with a supported Radeon card. It cannot be easier. Same could go for G5 with PCIe if there was support. This is why PCI and PCIE support for MOS plays a very important role because our niche system can only run on a very small number of computers and this will not happen so soon.

Quote:
which is irrelevant becausse MOS does not run on any of those modern systems but it runs on G5 which *have* PCIe and if MOs team offers desktiop support in the future it is needed for this as well.

Quote:
I have the ffeeling that you try to misunderstand me all the time. I said that support for PCIe has to be made once and then can be used on other boards as well. If you plan to avoid all mainboards forever that offer OPCIe then you can avoid PCIe support as well but this is not the status quo of MOS. And I said that is should be much easier to support newer Radeon generations as we already have older generations support rather then completely chainging to Intel or Nvidia drivers whcih will work totally different.


@takemehomegrandma
Quote:
I know what it is and it is necessary to offer support for graphics cards, sound cards, memory and many other plugin cards that could be used if MOS had that support.

Quote:
Which they obviously did not as we all know from the existing G5 support.

Quote:
Again I point you to the list of supported cards to see how much better support there is for OS4. Plus they have high resolution support like 4k displays working, they have multi monitor support for every combination of cards, not just for very few combinations like we have.

Quote:

It's not very smart to say "it's not needed so everything is alright" when you know that many other people make use of it because with the same argument you must conclude that MorphOS is unusable too because it has no memory protection, no virtual memory and all the basic stuff that every modern OS has for 10 or 20 years and even mobile phones, tablets and clocks.

OS4 has support for much more modern Radeons than we have. Nweer cards, much faster, higher resolutions ... this is what counts for me. 2D is there and not everyone needs 3D. I don't gamble and I don't need it. But as Amiga was a gamble machine and most MOS users come from there they "need" 3D support for still playing games from the 80s or 90s. For those a Radeon from 10 years ago is enough. But for more modern baords with higher resolution, modern connectors to displays, multiple displays etc. PCIe is a must. Unless you only want to support single embedded boards with fixed but not replacable graphics. So if you want to be flexible in at least a bit you must support PCIe. It's an old story to MOS indeed as we had the same situation with PCI already. PCI Radeons were supported of special series in Pegasos.

Quote:

Au contraire. You either misremember what you wrote, which is certainly excusable, or you are trying to twist your own arguments.

Here is your exact quote (which I quoted myself in my first post):
Quote:

So, just to emphasize, you claimed that any next generation version of MorphOS running on PPC, x86, x64 or ARM must (!!!) support PCIe in any case.

In my reply to this specific claim (which I quoted verbatim), I merely pointed out that this bold and absolute statement could not be true since systems equipped with PCIe graphics cards are already a minority niche today and will most likely be even moreso in the future.

In all my subsequent posts, I merely expanded on the argument that there are very strong alternatives to PCIe graphics cards when you consider future hardware targets, which does not mean that I generally oppose support for PCIe cards, mind you.


Quote:
See above. You were not discussing the status quo but future versions that would potentially run on other processor architectures even.


Quote:
Clearly, Frank and Mark would know much better but I remember statements indicating there were rather drastic differences between AMD´s different GPU series.

> it is necessary to offer support for [...] memory [...] plugin cards

I don't think so.

> most MOS users [...] "need" 3D support for still playing games from the 80s or 90s.

In the 80s there were no real 3D games. So for playing them, 3D support wouldn't be needed.

> It's an old story to MOS indeed as we had the same situation with PCI already.
> PCI Radeons were supported of special series in Pegasos.

Would you care to elaborate?

Quote:

Quote:

Well, that is the only case. However, any support for G5 PCI-E Macs and forthcoming SAM460ex is made to make a platforms available where drivers for Radeon based PCI-E cards will be made and tested. So it is path for the future that can later be used once "transition to new architecture" is made. All drivers can be recompiled once they are for the same OS.


Quote:

Quote:

While it has been a huge improvement in 2D support on OS4 front, its not that big at this point. I do have X1000 with Radeon 6000HD and all you get is 2D resolution where only 256MB out of 1GB on the card is available. For 3D you need a Radeon 9250 or software emulation. Until 3D is fully supported on Radeon HDs in reality, you just get a high res workbench, where you can`t do any 3D or play games.

Honestly, I prefer full support to such partial.


Quote:


Quote:

Different development team size and lifecycles. MorphOS was grown at times when all that wasn`t a standard, and surely will grow to it, as AROS and AmigaOS 4 strive for. But since its apps aren`t huge, its livable for time being.


Quote:

3D is not just gaming. Surely PCI-E is a must and MorphOS team will surely work on it. On current 3D support OS4 and MorphOS are equal, in some models MorphOS even stands a bit better.
http://www.morphos-team.net/hardware

There are PCI-E cards that currently can be used - Radeon X800 XT cards. Surely, not much, but that is anyway currently high end MOS card.

Back on topic, nVIDIA card support is welcome, at least those used in PPC Macs and maybe some newer PCI-E model for the future, but I understand why it isn`t a priority. Having PCI-E supported Radeons is.

Quote:

Care to elaborate on that?

Here is a list of supported HW, directly from the horse's mouth:

http://morphos-team.net/hardware

To help you even further: Specs for PowerMac7,2 and PowerMac7,3.

Quote:

That's just a list of cards tested to work, not about *what the drivers supports*!

Quote:

What do you mean "plus they have"? Higher resolution pretty much concludes it, and that comes for free with the specs of the cards! Look, nobody is denying that the Radeon HD cards are technically much better than the ancient R200/R300/R420 cards, they have higher resolution, faster 2D acceleration, 3D, etc, etc. Faster, bigger, better in every single way. But while you seem to think that the current OS4 GFX drivers on Radeon HD offers a very superior situation compared to the current MorphOS situation, I am of the opinion that it's *incomplete*, hence less usable. And if one is in a "marking words" mood, the driver support *in OS4* for these cards is actually even worse than this, what you get with OS4 is a limited demo version that can be used to install the OS etc, the real drivers are third party SW that isn't part of the OS4 package. The potential implications of this are many.


Quote:

This is because MorphOS is an Amiga operating system, and Amiga can't per definition support things like that while retaining backwards compatibility. And since Amiga compatibility has been one of the key features of MorphOS since day 1, this in extension also means that "lack of" memory protection etc is *also* a feature, hence it's not "missing", it's purposely made that way per design. MorphOS is a niche hobby OS, we are here for the Amiga, and we get "memory protection" from other OS's. So this was a rather bad analogy of yours...

Quote:

Third party drivers for OS4 offers *partial* support for more Radeons, that's true.

Quote:

Maybe you think I'm excessively picky here, marking words yet again, but PCIe is just a bus standard. It's only a must when developing support for motherboards that relies on such controllers.

No such controllers exist on *any* MorphOS supported motherboard. Which makes it a bit difficult to "support PCIe", doesn't it?

The only motherboard with PCIe that has been announced to have upcoming MorphOS support (if this is still happening), is the Sam 460. And that one is less than ideal.

First it only has 4 x PCIe 1.1 lanes, meaning a theoretical max speed of only 1000MB/s. This in comparison to the 1066MB/s of AGP 4x (widely spread in currently supported Mac's), or 2133MB/s of AGP 8x (in supported G5's). So even if your superior "OS4 supported cards list" above lists some very new and modern "Sapphire Radeon R9" as supported, it's choked beyond belief by the limitations of the Sam, *very* far away from the PCIe 3.0 speeds of 15.75 GB/s that users of such cards usually expects (Crossfire/SLI nowhere to be seen of course).

And then, GFX is only one part of the equation of overall performance and user experience. The 460ex CPU of the Sam is really weak compared to what most people are using to run MorphOS, my Mac Mini G4 is probably twice as fast. And the 460ex doesn't have proper functioning cache coherency; in order to improve stability (there has been many, many public reports about instability from OS4/Sam460 users over the years) OS4 completely disables all L2 cache writes on Sam460, which is hardly helping the performance. And it lacks Altivec. Honestly, the 460 couldn't do anything meaningful with the potential that a card like "Sapphire Radeon R9" offers, it's *way* too weak. And the incomplete drivers cripples it even further, degrading it to some 2D display á la De Luxe. We already have plenty 2D display options, and PCIe isn't a requirement for this.

To sum up/compare the "much superior" (in your eyes) OS4 HW/driver situation in a MorphOS context (the Sam460):

A PCIe Radeon HD card in a Sam460 only has about *the same* GFX transfer speed as my AGP 4x Mac Mini, no matter how "new" it is. And while 2D acceleration on a Radeon HD is obviously a lot faster, I have never really thought of the less fast 2D speed of the Radeon 9200 I use as a real problem. It's when it comes to 3D that the Radeon HD's stand out, but the third party drivers for OS4 does not support this at all! So the main benefit would be higher resolution for a monitor I don't have and don't plan to buy anytime soon. This at a price of almost 1,000 EUR (incl VAT) and less than half the overall performance (CPU wise) as my Mac Mini. I'm sorry, but I'm not prepared to pay that price, it is a big FAIL in my eyes! This is certainly *not* "a must" as you put it. PCIe in the shape of Sam460 (which is the only thing on the table ATM) is not even desirable at all, the downsides are way too big, and there aren't really any upsides.

The PowerMac11,2 G5's could perhaps have been a better option (theoretically), but no future support for this platform has been announced. At least this one has 16 lanes PCIe, but the thing is it comes with nvidia geforce 6600, which obviously isn't supported by MorphOS, and you can't just put any x86 GFX card in a PPC Mac, which makes the point kind of moot. So what then? A Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition? Radeon X800 also came in AGP versions, which already makes it accessible with current HW (and it is supported by MorphOS), without the need of PCIe. Even nvidia support would be pointless in this case, since mac specific nvidia cards also stopped coming when Apple moved to x86. And even if standard x86 Radeon HD cards could be used, we are still talking about a computer with *ancient* performance, a *decade* old platform, more than three 3-year "computer generations". A lot(!) better than the Sam of course, but even this is too weak to make sensible use of a "Sapphire Radeon R9". So much has happened since 2005 when that platform was released. For example, an iPhone 6 has a SPEC int score just below a 2.5GHz G5 (I suppose he meant 970fx?). The platform is hopelessly left behind, and a Radeon HD wouldn't change that, even if it would have worked in a PPC Mac, which it doesn't.

The only reason I can think of to focus on "PCIe support" is to develop MorphOS native Radeon HD drivers ahead of some "MorphOS 4.0 x86" release. And for this, some Sam460 support could perhaps make sense? For all other purposes we are much better off with what we already have IMHO. The Sam is way to weak, limited and expensive to play any meaningful part for MorphOS. And no other platform with PCIe is feasible/meaningful, at least not *for the sake of* PCIe.

@TMHG

Very informative. Thanks

Quote:

Sorry for editing this down to this, but a lot of this discussion is pointless as we will eventual see support for PCI-e cards (its just a natural progression).

However, outside of the SAM460, the X800XT is pretty useless as there is no Apple PCI-e variant of that.
There is a G5 X1900GT card that would work nicely in the PCI-e G5.
But from the comparisons I've made of the PC variants of the X800XT and X1900GT, I'd have to say that the latter is not much of an improvement.

So, as far as performance with stock Apple hardware goes, we pretty much have it maxed with our current G5/X800XT combos.

And, I can not agree at all with the notion that discrete graphic cards won't be important part of the future of higher end computer systems. Frankly, while I can tolerate the performance of AMD's APUs (which don't suck nearly as bad as Intels built in GPUs), I still value the much better performance of their discrete GPUs.
AND, outside of AMDs products, I can't see how we can obtain the needed documentation for drivers.

What I'd love to see (and I've already mentioned this) are drivers that would allow us to use PC video cards in Apples under MorphOS.
BIOS emulation would allow us to use more modern Radeon cards (anything from the HD4650 to the R9 290X) in PCI-e G5s.
Combined with the better memory bandwidth of the PCI-e G5 this could really kick ass.


[ Edited by Jim 01.02.2015 - 16:36 ]

> support for [...] forthcoming SAM460ex

More like "forthcoming support for existing Sam460" :-)

> Until 3D is fully supported on Radeon HDs in reality, [...] you can`t [...] play games.

I don't think this is true.

> http://www.morphos-team.net/hardware
> There are PCI-E cards that currently can be used - Radeon X800 XT cards.

Your link says R420, which is an AGP chip. Currently, there is no PCIe support in public MorphOS.

> So what then?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=9647&forum=3&start=8
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=9888&forum=11&start=23

> a Radeon HD wouldn't change that, even if it would have worked in a PPC Mac,
> which it doesn't.

See posting #33 in this thread.

Quote:

Ok, that's a start. Now the next phase.

Which ones of the listed cards are supported at least as well as, say, Radeon 9000 Pro on MorphOS?

Few really basic features to consider:
-Basic OpenGL 3D acceleration support (fixed function only, no shaders)
-Fullscreen video playback in any resolution screen, without any slowdown compared to playback in non-scaled window

Quote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's that much affordable PCIE hardware on the PowerPC market... Afaik, it's basically certain Apple G5 models, and that's it...

(meaning, suporting them wouldn't really increase the hardware base much)

But yeah, support wouldn't hurt, it's just that the MorphOS team has a "bad" habit of not announcing features before they're more or less certain

> Fullscreen video playback in any resolution screen, without any slowdown compared
> to playback in non-scaled window

http://www.a-eon.biz/PDF/News_Release_RadeonHD24.pdf
(I know, not really part of the OS)

Quote:

Doesn't have to be (imho).

So if it works that well (seems to be more advanced than our overlay), that can be checked off the list. Still leaves basic 3D acceleration for OpenGL.

Some people just seem to think that if they get desktop on their monitor, their gfx card is (fully) supported. Or at least try to get others think like that.

[quote]takemehomegrandma wrote:
[quote]connor wrote:

@takemehomegrandma

[quote]Again I point you to the list of supported cards to see how much better support there is for OS4. [/quote]

[quote] That's just a list of cards tested to work, not about *what the drivers supports*! [/quote]

True, its even sad that picking a stock card doesn`t resolve the thing, but one must look at the list of tested cards.

Moreover, it happens that soft reset of AmigaOS 4 doesn`t reset the RadeonHD card, so hard reset is needed (x86 BIOS as I was told)

[quote]Plus they have high resolution support like 4k displays working [/quote]

[quote] What do you mean "plus they have"? Higher resolution pretty much concludes it, and that comes for free with the specs of the cards! Look, nobody is denying that the Radeon HD cards are technically much better than the ancient
R200/R300/R420 cards, they have higher resolution, faster 2D acceleration, 3D, etc, etc. Faster, bigger, better in every single way. But while you seem to think that the current OS4 GFX drivers on Radeon HD offers a very superior situation compared to the current MorphOS situation, I am of the opinion that it's *incomplete*, hence less usable. And if one is in a "marking words" mood, the driver support *in OS4* for these cards is actually even worse than this, what you get with OS4 is a limited demo version that can be used to install the OS etc, the real drivers are third party SW that isn't part of the OS4 package. The potential implications of this are many. [/quote]

That has come to be situation with recent OS 4.1 FE edition. Before that, one would need to buy the OS and driver, install it with supported card and then burn a new CD in order to boot from CD an X1000 with Radeon 6xxx HD. Even with full driver experience is very limited down to 2D apps. Not to mention that it was promised long time ago to be 3D, now its down to 2D driver "as layer for Gallium", which means users will have to buy driver (and that is each time with next version release)+ OS 4.2 one day to archive 3D. Thats a bit ... milking, but progress anyway.

In MorphOS defense, certain cards such as 9600, 9800 and X800 models, CGI and Voodo are far better supported under MorphOS. Surely, it doesn`t mean much in today world, but at least shows intention to have a wider range of supported cards.

Maybe you think I'm excessively picky here, marking words yet again, but PCIe is just a bus standard. It's only a must when developing support for motherboards that relies on such controllers.

[quote] The only motherboard with PCIe that has been announced to have upcoming MorphOS support (if this is still happening), is the Sam 460. And that one is less than ideal. [/quote]

PowerMac G5 11.2 is also a viable target, not to mention maybe X1000 if AEON pays the port, which are better

[quote] The only reason I can think of to focus on "PCIe support" is to develop MorphOS native Radeon HD drivers ahead of some "MorphOS 4.0 x86" release. And for this, some Sam460 support could perhaps make sense? For all other purposes we are much better off with what we already have IMHO. The Sam is way to weak, limited and expensive to play any meaningful part for MorphOS. And no other platform with PCIe is feasible/meaningful, at least not *for the sake of* PCIe.
[/quote]

Could be seen as G3 Mac comparative, avaliable and as listed high priced. With all the bottlenecks that come with such system on chip, that isn`t simply comparable to full systems. There is also a onboard SATA that supports only one device and only one PCI slot, and quite strange onboard audio.

But as motherboard, comes at half price of system. Well elaborated. I suppose is MorphOS PPC goes 64-bit and/or multicore, POwerMac G5 11.2 could be nice testbed, alongside RadeonHD driver. So could platform of transition.

> With all the bottlenecks that come with such system on chip, that isn`t simply
> comparable to full systems.

Yes, it makes no sense comparing chips to full systems. And it's nothing inherently worse with SoC-based systems.

> There is also a onboard SATA that supports only one device [...], and quite strange
> onboard audio.

...and video. But none of this is on the Sam460cr.

> as motherboard, comes at half price of system.

Where?

> MorphOS PPC goes 64-bit and/or multicore

It does?

> POwerMac G5 11.2 could be nice testbed, alongside RadeonHD driver.

...for secondary graphics card.

@vox

Quote:

Why is that better? You can get a PM 11.2 quite cheaply while an X1000 is really expensive. I know it's new and all that, but it's really expensive. Which is why not that many has been sold (hard to guess but somewhere between 120 and 500?). I simply have a hard time believing that more than a handful MorphOS users would buy one to run MorphOS on it simply because there are so much more cheap alternatives. And you even get more power with a G5. The only benefit (besides being new and comes with a warranty) would be faster gfx cards, but how many programs would benefit from that?

The red camp buy these hardware because they don't have a choice. They don't have cheap macs in plenty. They have new, expensive, not fully supported and underpowered hardware, or they have to buy hard to get and not that cheap hardware on the used market. When was the last time any of you saw a resonably priced Peg II on Ebay, or any Peg II for that matter?

> somewhere between 120 and 500?

According to Trevor Dickinson on AmiWest 2012, a production run is between 100 and 300 boards. Including the betatester batch, there have been at least 4 production runs so far, which means at least between 400 and 1200 boards produced. X1000/Nemo is currently in stock at AmigaKit, so not all boards from the last run have been sold apparently.

@Andreas_Wolf

I've heard about 3 runs and I also heard that there was about a little more than 50 boards each times, depending on the number of orders. Most on the first run and fewer on the last, which is why AmigaKit is selling the left overs. But I can of course be wrong there.

Still, 1200 boards is not much either but right should be right.

I read that Apple sold some 3 million PPC macs in 2003 and 4.5 million in 2005. Even considering that not all of these are supported or working anymore, there is still a lot of machines to use out there as they are or as spare parts.