Atarian Computing's Raven Build

[Atarian Computing]

In my limited usage, I haven't seen any artefacts. Why did you make a custom resolution when there was a built-in one?

my bigger (and more modern) monitor is 16:9 and all standard resolutions were 4:3
In fact I had to fine tune all the resolutions to make them work with my 16:9 monitor
I also have a NEC 1990FXp which worked fine with the standard resolutions - need to check if there are artefacts, too

But that's what I'm saying. There is a 1280×720 resolution in the Raven BIOS as the last options.

[LarryL]

But that's what I'm saying. There is a 1280×720 resolution in the Raven BIOS as the last options.

Will have a closer look… didn’t realise, maybe because most of the resolutions did not show any picture on my monitor
Thanks!

[Atarian Computing]

Now that @agranlund created the 1280x720x8 resolution for the Cirrus Logic cards, I wanted to bench my three cards (sans Mach64). I am using the very latest drivers and ROM as of today.

By the way, the GD5434 output at 1280x720x8 is excellent. So clean and sharp compared to my W32i. The colours were still off, but this time I had the OSSC and set the Pre-ADC Gain to 6 from the default 8, which fixed them 100%.

My W32i is 1MB, so essentially plain W32.

Here are a few screenshots to compare with and without NVDI:

ET4000AX

ET4K.png (50.39 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

W32i

w32i.png (51.14 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

GD5434

GD5434.png (50.76 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

Then some Kronos benchies. There doesn't seem to be much difference in these benchmarks. The blue "Your computer" is the GD5434 running in MagiC, NVDI, and WT cache, unlike CB in TOS.

KRONOS1.png (21.63 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

KRONOS2.png (15.05 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

[Atarian Computing]

Hmm... During testing I used the ethernet card to transfer files. I guess at some point it stopped working. UIP won't load. MiNT won't ping. @PhilC are these really prone to fail?

[PhilC]

Hmm... During testing I used the ethernet card to transfer files. I guess at some point it stopped working. UIP won't load. MiNT won't ping. @PhilC are these really prone to fail?

I've not had any problems with my network cards, maybe look and see if it's still showing in its ISA address space? $81000300 IIRC.

[agranlund]

@Atarian Computing , nice comparison!
Yeah I managed to figure out that ghosting issue I was initially having with 720p on Cirrus and it looks super nice and sharp here too

Right now we're only accelerating blits and vr_recfl, but there is a hook in place to allow accelerating general vdi primitives as well.
Started adding v_bar some time ago but left it disabled with this comment

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11 : v_gdp
disabled since Kronos draw v_bars in reverse order so apparently that's legal.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Should get around to handling that by sorting the input coordinates.
Most of these vdi primitves could probably be accelerated more or less efficiently and even circles by doing them as hardware line-strips.
I think the real-world benefit outside of benchmarking is questionable but still something that can be worked on every now and again for fun

Perhaps plain text with the system font could be quite good bang-for-the buck.
Driver could cache that font in vram and have such text be drawn with the blitter.

[exxos]

So going by the GB6 results, NVDI is a hindrance with graphics cards?

[agranlund]

So going by the GB6 results, NVDI is a hindrance with graphics cards?

Yeah NVDI over Nova-VDI makes it slower compared to just Nova-VDI.
But you gain the nice font support that NVDI provides so I use it, you can't really feel the difference in use anyway I don't think.

[Atarian Computing]

Hmm... During testing I used the ethernet card to transfer files. I guess at some point it stopped working. UIP won't load. MiNT won't ping. @PhilC are these really prone to fail?

I've not had any problems with my network cards, maybe look and see if it's still showing in its ISA address space? $81000300 IIRC.

Ok, this is weird. By your prompting I looked around and sure enough, according to the ISA log it was using 220. All this time it was hardware configured to use 300. I set it to PnP and set it to 300 and now it's back up and working. No idea...

@Atarian Computing , nice comparison!
Yeah I managed to figure out that ghosting issue I was initially having with 720p on Cirrus and it looks super nice and sharp here too

Right now we're only accelerating blits and vr_recfl, but there is a hook in place to allow accelerating general vdi primitives as well.
Started adding v_bar some time ago but left it disabled with this comment

/*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11 : v_gdp
disabled since Kronos draw v_bars in reverse order so apparently that's legal.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

Should get around to handling that by sorting the input coordinates.
Most of these vdi primitves could probably be accelerated more or less efficiently and even circles by doing them as hardware line-strips.
I think the real-world benefit outside of benchmarking is questionable but still something that can be worked on every now and again for fun

Perhaps plain text with the system font could be quite good bang-for-the buck.
Driver could cache that font in vram and have such text be drawn with the blitter.

How interesting! I wish I had the time to sink into learning all this...