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[News] G-Rex newsANN.lu
Posted on 06-Dec-2000 14:29 GMT by Teemu I. Yliselä29 comments
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There are now a couple of photos of a 5 PCI-slot model of G-Rex and a screenshot of Workbench running on a Voodoo4 4500 through the G-Rex on the CyberGraphX homepage. The G-Rex should be up-and-running at the WOA2000 show next weekend.

G-Rex news : Comment 1 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by db on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
so, a pci board that plugs into a PPC card.
limited audience - dont you think?.
Why are they taking so long to make stuff?
they might have drivers for the 4500(which is slightly soupped up voodoo III)
SO WOT!.
anyone can create drivers
G-Rex news : Comment 2 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Alcemyst on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
well its looking good for P5 PPC owners.
but there is some big drawbacks
1 u will have to get the voodoo4 card strate away because you can not
use the BVision with the G-Rex as it uses the BV connection
2 even if u want to put a PCI G3 or G4 card in you will still need the
P5 PPC card in.
3 if the P5 PPC card stops working..then you will not beable to use
any of the things on the G-Rex with out it.
leaving you with no choice but to buy another P5 PPC card so that u
can use the G-Rex again, u will always need a P5 PPC card unless
they make a zorro connection option later on for the G-Rex.
but if your not worried about that then go ahead make that most out of
your Amiga :)
G-Rex news : Comment 3 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
Too bad there's no AGP slot. Then I'd have a good place to stick a Voodoo 5 :). I've got one in my PC - its fast at 3D, but for the price the GeForce goes about twice as quick.
Seriously though - the Voodoo 3/Voodoo 4 - (I'm not sure about the 4500) the differences are pretty big. The Voodoo 4 is based on the VSA100 chip which runs at 166 mhz. It can do 32 bit colour, 2048x2048 line textures (the voodoo 3 can only do 256x256...) and support AGP 4x.
Michael Jantzen ^_^
G-Rex news : Comment 4 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by CCRider on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
Now we just need some decent software to take advantage of such hardware.
And please, don't tell me "Heretic II and Shogo"... :P
G-Rex news : Comment 5 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Remco Komduur on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Alcemyst):
Yeah, well what are you going to do then if your BlizzardPPC does stop? Run your Amiga with the 68020? That's not going to happen because you don't even have fast RAM anymore.
G-Rex news : Comment 6 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (CCRider):
What's wrong with Heretic 2 and Shogo?
They are great games.
Besides, you are being totally unrealistic. If you have a BlizzardPPC the CPU performance is so crappy that Voodoo 4 or not, you'd be happy if you would be able to run Heretic 2 and Shogo at all.
G-Rex news : Comment 7 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
Don`t worry guys, I`m sure someone will finally give us a perfect PCI bridge
better than Mediator, G-Rex or Predator... and I`m sure it will be soon.
G-Rex news : Comment 8 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (Anonymous):
BULLSHIT!
H2 runs fine on my blizzardppc 603e/240(to be 280 as soon as I find a 70mhz
oscillator;)if you call 293mips crappy cpu performance then...
The problem with H2 is not the ppc it's the bv! How is it possible to get
the same speed in 320x240 and 512x342 whereas the SOFTWARE renderer is FASTER
in 320x240 than the h/w renderer?? In the software renderer the ppc has to
calculate everything and render everything. In the h/w renderer the ppc has
to calculate just the game psysics and some other (important) stuff such as
the polygon attributed etc...AND don't tell me bull shit as I run the game
on a friend's K6-II 500(overclocked), 128mb ram Permedia 2 based GFX card
and it actually as slow as the amiga version. So the problem it not the CPU.
G-Rex news : Comment 9 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Amifan on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Alkis Tsapanidis):
Voodoo4 4500 PCI uh??
Well the Voodoo3 wan't hard to get some months ago, but can't buy it anymore in the store which sold me a voodoo3.
Yes...you can buy the voodoo5 PCI/AGP anywhere and even a voodoo4 4500 AGP now, but where can I buy th voodoo4 4500 PCI??
And by the way, the 24bit 3D gfx and the large texture support is very nice, but no T-buffer (disabled).
So if you want some real power for a couple of more bucks, then buy a voodoo5.
But I doubt if a 603p can drive the Voodoo4 to max speeds.... If you believe the test on a PC, you'll need a serious CPU (>=PII 450).
G-Rex news : Comment 10 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Bowman on 05-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Michael Jantzen):
>>Too bad there's no AGP slot. Then I'd have a good place to stick a Voodoo >>5 :). I've got one in my PC - its fast at 3D, but for the price the GeForce >>goes about twice as quick.
>>Seriously though - the Voodoo 3/Voodoo 4 - (I'm not sure about the 4500) the >>differences are pretty big. The Voodoo 4 is based on the VSA100 chip which ??>>runs at 166 mhz. It can do 32 bit colour, 2048x2048 line textures (the voodoo >>3 can only do 256x256...) and support AGP 4x.
Hmm..AGP would have been good especially if you wanted to play decent games at high colour depth and resolution. The NVIDIA series of gfx cards at each price point and AGp would have given access to cards by all manufacturers assuming driver support was available.
One thing that people have forgotten is that other decent PCI solutions such as TNT,TNT2,TNT ultra, TNT2M64 etc aare availble at way cheaper prices in PCI variants and the performance of most of these things are reasonable and way better than a BVision or S3 virge. Heck even a 16MB banshee is going to waste all of the existing cards.
Given the option I would probably use these cards rather than the pretty pricey PCI voodoo series of cards.
I'll stop whingeing anyhow and say its good anyhow as it's good to have a choice but I am waiting for something that is not connected via a connector to a connector relying on an old an possibly unreliable a1200/a4000mb. However all this other stuff makes me want to resurrect my old a1200 that has been gathering dust for some time now.
For my money in this situation I guess the mediator would be a better answer due to the fact that PPC accels are not availble readily in Australia. I'm more interested in networking the box to my current PC's for a bit of fun...But again if you already have a PPC accel thent eh grex seems defiantely the way to go until a more integrated solution is available.
Anyway I think I've rambled on enough and lost the point of my reply about 4 times
G-Rex news : Comment 11 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (Amifan):
Walmart are selling Voodoo3 PCI cards for $99 with a $20 mail-in rebate.
G-Rex news : Comment 12 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by PaulT on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
I haven't bought one but from a quick Web search I found a half-dozen places offering Voodoo 4500 PCI for Mac and another half-dozen for PC. Prices vary, but at http://store.yahoo.com/upsource/830165.html there's one for $136 USD. One auction place showed them at 95 UKP.
So it would seem that someone's not shopping hard enough.... :)
PaulT ...can't decide whether to build a 1200 tower or wait for AmigaOne bplan...
G-Rex news : Comment 13 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Remco Komduur on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Mark Bowman):
Nonsense!!!!!!!!!
Do you people still don't understand it. We don't have the processors to generate information for graphic cards that would require an AGP bus. The only thing we would have it for is for compatibility and that would make the card much more expensive.
3D sends even less data if you are playing a game. So PCI is not the bottleneck here, it is the processor.
NVidia drivers will never come because they don't give the source to other people. They are very paranoid. By the way, why would you want their cards and drivers. They haven't been able to create a stable set of drivers since Detonator 1. 3Dfx have much better and more stable drivers.
So it is apperent why DCE, Elbox and Cybergraphx choose for VooDoo.
G-Rex news : Comment 14 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Anonymous):
Oh no not another one!?
G-Rex news : Comment 15 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Dave on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Mark Bowman):
The Banshee was a voodoo card, it was their first attempt at creating a 2d/3d combo card. I think it used the voodoo2 chipset?
G-Rex news : Comment 16 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Dave):
The Banshee was originally nothing more than a 2D/3D bridge that was supposed to sit in place of the original Voodoo processor. Since the chip was designed so well, the Banshee was released as a stand alone chip. It had all the power of the original Voodoo but only limited power of the Voodoo2. Some of the Voodoo2 components were thrown out to make room for better 2D performance.
G-Rex news : Comment 17 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Alcemyst on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Remco Komduur):
NP for me i have Apollo 60/80Mhz & a Mediator :)
G-Rex news : Comment 18 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by victor # on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
And what about the S3-Savage4? I heard often it outperforms Voodoo3, and much more cheap, probably drivers are not a problem. Though, I'm not sure if there is a PCI version of it.
G-Rex news : Comment 19 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Mark Bowman on 06-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Dave):
I know about the Banshee I have owned one it's not a bad if totally old card that can out perform the Voodoo2 in scenes where it doesn't have to use multi-textureing as it only has one texture pipeline...
It is available dirt cheap and in PCI so it could be an option for those without lots of $$$.
G-Rex news : Comment 20 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Dee on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
so how long are we going to wait for the G-REX?, 3, 6, 12 months?
What happens if the Cyberstorm PPC or Blizzard PPC breaks down, where can we find these boards again?, how long are we going to wait to get these boards repaired if they do break down?
Thats where mediator will win out.
It will be CSPPC + Mediator 4000 for me...
G-Rex news : Comment 21 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Remco Komduur on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Dee):
DCE still make these things. They will also be making an NG series without the PPC processor.
I can't believe how much people watch news pages and simply seem to ignore news and remarks made. There are still people that think that you can only program for WarpOS with StormC which is nonsense. You can also use VBCC which is free.
G-Rex news : Comment 22 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Dee on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Remco Komduur):
The point being, when will these products be available?, when will the G-REX NG be available?
How long are we going to wait?, Forever?....
G-Rex news : Comment 23 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Stephan Neise on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Dee):
According to Amiga-News.de, the G-REX is already in production and will be
available at the WOA in Koeln. I understand your criticism though and I there
are two major things that concern me about this board:
- If the G-Rex uses a PPC card, I'd like to have some kind of a commitment
G-Rex news : Comment 24 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Stephan Neise on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Dee):
According to Amiga-News.de, the G-REX is already in production and will be
available at the WOA in Koeln. I understand your criticism though and there
are two major things that concern me about this board:
- I'd like to have some kind of a commitment from DCE regarding further
Development of the PPC cards. The 603e is starting to get old (although still
very usable).
- They definately will have to change their attitude towards service issues.
I'm not willing to wait 6 or 7 months for a repair and having to deal with all
the hassles associated with it. When the BlizzardPPC goes kaputt, I would render
my whole computer useless.
Just IMHO
G-Rex news : Comment 25 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by victor # on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
Well, I'd like only to say that it's maybe reasonable to use a G-rex in case of BPPC (A1200), but to use such on the A4000??? Why didn't they done a card that slices in-between the CPU-slot and the CSPPC?
G-Rex news : Comment 26 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Carl Mohlin on 07-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Remco Komduur):
Not to be cruel, but I guess you mean without the 68k-processor? =) That sounds interesting... do you know when we can expect these cards?
G-Rex news : Comment 27 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Remco Komduur on 08-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Carl Mohlin):
No, without the PPC processor. It's the same deal as with the Cyberstorm mkIII. Releasing this board without the 68k doesn't make sense because emulation is not an option. Too slow. Then we would have to have a much faster 603e on it.
It could become an option if the PPC version of AmigaOS sees the light of day.
G-Rex news : Comment 28 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by victor # on 08-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 27 (Remco Komduur):
Interesting. In what is it better than the MK3?
G-Rex news : Comment 29 of 29ANN.lu
Posted by Remco Komduur on 09-Dec-2000 23:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (victor #):
The Cyberstorm MK III is basicly a CyberStormPPC without the PPC for Amiga 4000 and 3000. The BlizzardNG will be for the A1200 without the PPC. They aren't upgradeble.
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