Amiga PiStorm32 Lite - New AGA Speedup

Amiga PiStorm32 Lite - New AGA Speedup - Does it help?

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Күн бұрын

This week on 10 Minute Amiga Retro Cast I am looking at the latest update for the PiStorm32 Lite board that speeds up AGA Chipset and CHIP RAM access - but does it help?
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Пікірлер: 51

@brettjns Жыл бұрын

Thanks for your bench-marc-ing. Was very informative. I am going to continue to stay on the sidelines as this matures. I have severao other Amiga ambitions to keep me occupied in the meantime. Thanks!

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

It is improving, which I am happy about.

@HoldandModify Жыл бұрын

Kevin Saunders-NEMESIS!! :) I kid. You both are great. Thanks for the video and shout-out Doug! It really shows all this clearly. There’s another update coming soon that looks to max out chip-ram speeds. Fingers crossed.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Hey! It's Kevin Bacon himself! or maybe Kevin Hart? I get confused...

@HoldandModify Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC lol! FREE KEVIN!

@cullmaster7361 Жыл бұрын

@@HoldandModify Not related to the British Musician “Suzie Quattro”? 🤔

@HoldandModify Жыл бұрын

@@cullmaster7361 Actually , yes. She’s a distant aunt of mine.

@gerrymangione Жыл бұрын

I think your benchmark test came too early. They are still working on the chip ram speed. I saw memory benchmarks of unreleased versions of EMU68. Writespeed to chip showed 7.1 MB!!! But the software is not ready yet.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

No, my Benchmarks were not too early. If that was the case I could never do any videos at all! I do mine based on what is commonly available at the time of filming - hence the original tests based on what was available when I made my first video noting the issue last month and my new test based on the "current" release. PiStorm has always been a "well, it may have problem X now, but just you wait and see" type of product and so far many, but not all issues have been addressed. This is perfectly acceptable as it is really a labor of love, but people who use it need to know the truth about it, not some Halcyon image of what it may become.

@LeftoverBeefcake Жыл бұрын

Thanks for keeping us updated! Guess I got some downloading and installing to do tomorrow.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Yes, the new update is totally worth it. Maybe more improvements can be made in the future. I am happier with it now.

@StefanHolmes 10 ай бұрын

I remember playing with 1280 width mode in DPaint on the newly released A4000 and this video looks like about the same performance as I saw way back then.

@10MARC 9 ай бұрын

The PiStorm in those Hi Res modes is absolutely slower, by quite a bit. It's not easy to notice with the naked eye in 640x480 but higher modes I can see it right away. The memory tests prove it though. PiStorm chugs when dealing with CHIP RAM, especially when stressed. The new update supposedly helps but I have not tried it yet

@StefanHolmes 9 ай бұрын

@@10MARC Display DMA is the absolute killer. I think that's why your benchmark numbers for bustest look low. If you ran bustest while the display was set to 640x200 4 colours, chipram access speed would improve by a lot.

@HuguesBalzac 8 ай бұрын

Yeah chip ram has always sucked donkey balls for CPU access, theoretically the Pi 4 GPIO can do between 650Mbps and 3.25Gbps which *should* be enough overhead once the SW for the Pi storm is sorted to get closer to the limits of chip ram. Theoretical max for 1280x720x8@60hz would be ~5MB/s if I got that right off the top of my head so the 4MB/s or so on the 060 seems to confirm that... Funny to think how much slower the Chip ram speed is than the 113MB/s I can get off my internet connection :)

@more.power. Жыл бұрын

Thanks Doug you are the man. Cheers

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

I hope you found the video useful!

@andreaslizart7984 Жыл бұрын

Thank you Doug! I like your videos :) full of technical amiga knowledge - not like some other youtuber who only tests his whdload games with this high performance cards.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Everyone has their specialties, I suppose. Thanks fort the kind words!

@andreaslizart7984 Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC Thats true, for me it make complete no sense to review a Pistorm or a BFG or a Vampire if you only test R-Type or Turrican with it. Cards like that are not designed for this games :D But Doug, i'm glad to have found your channel with the real shit :) go on and keep the spirit alive :)

@Typewriter71 Жыл бұрын

Thanks Doug, nice to see someone doing some rational tests on this device!

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Yes, for some reason there is an entire group of people who just never wanted to admit to a single shortcoming on the PiStorm, but instead just irrationally defend it. Inexperienced that from the first release where I mentioned that it was in fact, not a $15 accelerator and never was, to the audio issues with many, many games and the slow CHIP RAM access. All these things have been addressed one way or another, but if everybody just pretended they did not exist, they never would have been fixed.

@Typewriter71 Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC totally agree - been on the receiving end of it myself. Seems all many folks want to do is run sysinfo and see an ever longer red line…rather than a genuinely faster Amiga. IMHO PiMiga offers a better experience than the PiStorm right now.

@LemaruX Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC but the PiStorm boards, when first released, were £11 each to make. That's a fact you cannot argue with so not sure why you always say otherwise. Myself and other Discord members were making them and selling them for that much before the parts shortages bumped the prices. Yes you needed a Pi to use it, but then you also need an Amiga. Should you count the Amiga in the price too. Anyway, the PiStorm board, on its own, were available for £11 each.

@LemaruX Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC I guess I see your point a little in that the "complete" PiStorm setup was never $15, if that's what you mean, but the actual PiStorm on its own was at one point being sold for......... £11

@PaulGates-po4uq Жыл бұрын

Woohoo a new nightly build ready for testing 😀 released 1 hour ago.

@joeteejoetee Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the pains-taking effort to benchmark this for thousands of we subscribers!

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Interesting results, really. The HAM8 gradients performed better than I thought they would.

@alk7934 Жыл бұрын

Another great video.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Thanks so much! I appreciate it.

@EXITMUSIC2011 8 ай бұрын

The release candidate should be a big improvement 🎉

@10MARC 8 ай бұрын

It is a nice improvement. 640x400x256 colors seems pretty close to the speed of my 68040 now. The higher res modes still choke on the PiStorm, but only nerds like me use those modes. They are faster than before. At 1280x720x 256 I used to be able to watch the pixels redraw, but now they refresh at a fair clip. Again, not the speed they do with a regular accelerator, but acceptable

@cullmaster7361 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the update Doug 👍🏻 I still need to put together my PiStorm32 system. Good to know that this is still being worked on. Do you know if the PCMCIA issues were fixed? What’s it like with a Elbox Mediator system?

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

I have had reasonable luck with PCMCIA on mine. My data transfer works with it, and my CNET networking card seems OK. I exclusively use EMU68K, though... Maybe the other branch has more issues?

@davethorne3925 Жыл бұрын

lol @ 9:35 1.7 minutes i havnt done the math on that but as uk person .... it just sounds wired 😄

@gerrymangione Жыл бұрын

On my 1200+030 i needed to speed up AGA with FBLIT and FTEXT and the latest ICON library to make the Workbench usable. Why not use these enhancements with the PiStorm?

@LemaruX Жыл бұрын

Because FBlit and FText are hacks that fo against the development guidelines and can cause issues with the PiStorm. Due to this they are not recommended. Even the OS3.1.4 and OS3.2 FAQs advise against using them for this reason

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

I have not used FBLIT in years. I do use Picasso96 with the "Native" driver to free up CHIP RAM, and it seems to work OK. These hacks do not solve the slower CHIP RAM access, though.

@jimbonobodycares10 11 ай бұрын

With Beta2 that came out yesterday I've noticed better improvement in games. Hybris now works perfectly, no more music speeding up, nothing I tried previously worked. Also, not just games, Demos are improved such as Audio - X it now displays perfectly (previously was completely glitched out) sadly music still missing channels/speed issues.

@10MARC 11 ай бұрын

Glad to hear about the improvements! I will be testing it out this weekend and see if it solves some of my issues.

@NorthWay_no Жыл бұрын

My BFG doesn't get perfect chipram speed unless running 100MHz. You will not get 7MB/s bustest results unless you run (practically) without a screen on (or at least something like 1 or 2 bitplanes 320 wide PAL/NTSC).

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

100% true. I tested in 640 x 480 256 color mode intentionally as I wanted to stress things out as bit., My BFG is at least 30% faster than my PiStorm in these tests, at first and about 15% faster after.

@MariaEngstrom Жыл бұрын

I think the gradient ball in DPaint have no significance on AGA speed, the CPU power is the bottleneck in that test.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Agreed on that. This was a true, live test of the performance and not rehearsed in advance. I literally did the update while filming the video. Going from 32 seconds to render down to 28 was a real improvement, though. Animating an image would have been a more accurate test

@semicuriosity257 Жыл бұрын

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/baqmkr2pmbGtZ2Q.html I run BusTest Chip from RTG Workbench with AGA displaying a blank grey screen, and the benchmark reached 5.1 MB/s writem.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

Sure. blanking the screen will certainly speed up the results - but we don't blank the screen when moving AGA images around. It needs to be nice and fast with the chips actually in use.

@semicuriosity257 Жыл бұрын

@@10MARC 5.1 MB/s is about 28% slower than the max 7.1 MB/s. I have seen bustest chip benchmark results from GVP/TekMagic A4000T T-REX II/060 chip writem 7.1 MB/s All tests from no startup-sequence, Call Setpatch, then BusTest >ram: A3000's chip ram rivals AGA's chip ram performance, it's too bad A3000 doesn't have an AGA chipset. chip writem 6.9 MB/s The poster is "thebajaguy" from abime's forum.

@Alphadec Жыл бұрын

thanks for info now I know what I will not buy so better stick to terriblefire, vampire.

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

In many cases those are better choices. If I were using my Amiga exclusively for gaming I would not even consider a PiStorm at all, but stick with a 68030 solution. Vampire is certainly more "stable" when it comes to performance. PiStorm can be faster with some things like FPU emulation and raw speed, but slower in other things.