Correct, its not the driver, but all of those cards are closely related.
The 8500 is an R200. The 9000 is an RV250.
The 9000 is actually a downgraded design when compared to the 8500.

According to Wikipedia "Among hardware removed is one of the two texture units, the "TruForm" function, Hierarchical-Z, the DirectX 7 TCL unit and one of the two vertex shaders."

after reading the test comparisons for all Radeon cards I figured out that it was not the driver, but the card itself. It was just surprising that so many cards that came after the 8500 were slower in the fill rate and some other categories. It makes me wonder now what kinds of apps and games for MorphOS2.x take advantage of the faster functions of the 8500 (if any) and if it would be worth while looking for one to purchase, or if the difference is not that noticeable for 95% of the things I do with MorphOS2.x right now, or will be doing in the future (I am transitioning toward using MorphOS2.x for more of my computing needs and away from MacOSX, which is currently my most used OS). I would imagine that certain games could, or already do take advantage of the 8500's faster performance, specially if they are 3D.

I also think that there must not be any TV functions that are supported for the Radeon cards, or someone would have already added a comment saying that they use one of the Radeon All-in-One cards to watch, and/or record TV/video on their Pegasos computer. I do think that there are a few other TV cards that were made in the past that work on MorphOS, because they were advertised and sold specifically for use with MorphOS1.x, but I don't know the extent of their capabilities and supported functions, or if they still work on MorphOS2.x.

About video card support, I was just wondering how much video RAM MorphOS can handle? Does a Radeon 9250 with 256MB works?

> how much video RAM MorphOS can handle? Does a Radeon 9250 with 256MB works?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7135&forum=11&start=48

Sorry, I didn't see it was already discussed.
Thank you for the related link.

So, by now it is useless to plug a 256MB Radeon 9250 graphic card into a Pegasos2. Btw, some graphic cards are available in AGP or PCI, does it make any difference in a Pegasos2?

It's not useless, you just don't get to use all memory on the card, AGP should be faster than PCI.

Remember the next part of that thread.

[Quote:}
Kronos schrieb:
@pega-1

How much effort would it be to map those extra 128MB as Fast-RAM ?

Sure it wouldn't be really fast, but it should make an Efika just that much more usefull......
[Quote:]

[Quote:]
Pega-1

In fact, I already added the LOWMEMPROFILE option to the MorphOS 2.5 Radeon driver which does not keep a backup "fast" memory copy for video memory bitmaps and which is automatically activated for EFIKA if you use a >= 128MB video card. This already saves quite a bit of system memory if you use a lot of screens/graphics. [Quote]

This option should work with other MorphOS platforms as well, making some use of the extra 128MB of video memory.

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/8/24 16:33 ]

> Remember the next part of that thread.
> [...]
> This option should work with other MorphOS platforms as well, making some
> use of the extra 128MB of video memory.

I think you misunderstand this "feature". It has nothing to do with usage of VRAM exceeding 128 MiB on a 256 MiB Radeon 9250. The fact that it's triggered beginning with a total of 128 MiB VRAM (">= 128MB") already should give you a clue.

Sorry, I misread that >= part.

Still, as its there (the extra 128MB) and it appears to be unused, I wonder if something could be done with it?

Never mind! I had to read the previous posts a couple of times before I understood what they were talking about.

I need to update my Efika to 2.5.

[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/8/24 18:56 ]

Addendum:

> The Pegasos II manual states both AGP 2.0 (which would mean 1.5 V) and 3.3 V,
> which is contradictory. My take on this is that the real specs of the Pegasos II are
> AGP 1.0, 3.3 V, 1x speed.

Another one going for the AGP 2.0 (and thus 1.5 V) hypothesis:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=33123&forum=33&start=20#598895

Yeah, I read this earlier tonight. Apparently I'm not the only chronically stupid person on the internet.

The posters on this thread are deluded enough to think you can run an HD Radeon based AGP card in a Pegasos AGP slot.

At best you might get a Radeon 9800 to run in an 2x compatible slot, but the last AGP cards are never going to run in an Pegasos.

Here's where the Sam460EX makes sense for AOS4.1.

Quote:

Deluded people on amigaworld.net? I'm shocked...

> Apparently I'm not the only chronically stupid person on the internet.

I wouldn't link to some pantaloon's opinion on the Internet as there's really too much of them ;-) But here it's different because it's a MorphOS Team member making the AGP 2.0 claim. That's why I've found it worth highlighting.

Update:

> Let's see if HD5000 series ("Evergreen"/R800) will also
> come with AGP/PCI models. I've yet to spot one.

Now I did, PCI models that is:

http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-580.shtml
http://www.powercolor.com/global/products_features.asp?id=326
http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/radeon-hd-5450-pci-noiseless-edition.html

To date, no HD6000 ("Northern Islands"/R900) as AGP or PCI model.

That's a curious design. I wonder if PCI will bottleneck performance?
One thing we can still be fairly sure of, even if AGP Radeon HD cards start to become common they won't work in a Peg.

"Pantaloon"! I don't think I've ever seen that word used before. Hilarious.

> I wonder if PCI will bottleneck performance?

From a December's review at Newegg, awarding 4/5 eggs:

"Runs Doom 3 (despite being outdated) at a nice framerate (smoother than my ATI Radeon 9200 AGP), however in some spots it's still slow but not too slow (10-15 FPS). [...] PCI is slow but if you are going to do simple OpenGL stuff or do anything not super intensive (Quake 3 and such), you will be fine. [...] If you have AGP or PCIe, use those instead of this card if you want performance."

> even if AGP Radeon HD cards start to become common

I don't know about "common", but so far they've been available for every Radeon generation through HD4000 (R700) at least.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7261&forum=11&start=39

> they won't work in a Peg.

Yes, that's also my take on this.

> "Pantaloon"! I don't think I've ever seen that word used before. Hilarious.

My dictionary presented this as one possible translation of the German "Hanswurst" ;-)

Yes, I'm aware of the 4650 and 4670 AGP cards and I've owned older cards like the AGP version of the 3850 (which I found to be an more even performer than a lot of later cards).

And yes, pantaloon's is a completely valid word, its just no longer in common use any more (its like reading an old term from a Dickens novel).

Quote:

Wow - neither leo.org nor dict.tu-chmenitz.de know this word. Let me guess: you're using a Pons "Großwörterbuch ". It's on page 1624 in the 4th edition. Nice word!
My Collier's dictionary says the word comes from the Italian comedy and is as PAntalone a nickname for Venezian saints

[ Editiert durch Zylesea an 2011/2/1 18:20 ]

> neither leo.org nor dict.tu-chmenitz.de know this word.
> Let me guess: you're using a Pons "Großwörterbuch ".

Actually, I used dict.cc as "my dictionary" ;-)

http://www.dict.cc/?s=hanswurst

Interesting:

"Many thanks to Frank Richter: The vocabulary of dict.cc is based on the word list he released at dict.tu-chemnitz.de."
http://www.dict.cc/?s=about%3A&l=e

So it seems "pantaloon" has been added to dict.cc at a later date.

Congratulations Andreas. Not only is your English concise and well worded, but your functional vocabulary is larger than most people that speak English as their primary language.

[ Edited by Jim on 2011/2/1 19:20 ]