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[Kay]

Seems the Matrox G550 will not be supported by OS4 initially. That leaves me with two possibilities:
1.Strip my current setup of its Voodoo3.
2.Get a reasonably cheap Radeon while I am waiting for the Matrox driver.

I must say I like number 2 best. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the Radeon series is very limited. So I was hoping someone could help me choosing. Basically, I'm looking for a Radeon which:
*Is supported in OS4.
*Has better performance than the Voodoo3.
*Is cheaper/lower-end than the G550, or is overall better in 2d and 3d.
*Uses AGP (obviously).
Any suggestions? Oh, and also, I am noticing that there are a lot of cards using the Radeon chips while apparently being made by another manufacturer than ATI (like Hercules and Sapphire). Does anybody know if I can use these?

Kay

[xeron]

I havent seen any lists anywhere of cards that will definately be supported by OS4.. its probably best to wait until we get some sort of "definitive" list before buying a card specifically for OS4...

[jd997uk]

@Kay
Complete AmigaOne Systems listed by Eyetech has listed an ATI Rage in the low end system and an ATI Radeon 8500 for the high end.
AFAIK, none of the newer 9000/9500/9700 cards are guaranteed to work, although hopefully we'll know for sure nearer the time of release for OS4. This would apply to the OEM cards licenced by ATI as well.

-john

[Prmetime]

It really depends on what you want to use. The Radeon 7000 was their budget card and would be somewhere around the current GeForce 4MX. The 8500 was a better card and would be better than your GeForce 3.

Currently the budget processor is the 9000 series with the 9500 as a step up and the 9700 a step above that. I don't know if any of these are supported driver wise.
As for the other manufacturers, they still use the ATI processor chip so they should be just as effective as the one built by ATI.

[Crumb]

Yes, wait until the drivers are available (you will also benefit of lower prizes). There are 3 generations of radeons on sale (I guess I will have forgotten some models, but these are the most common ones):
Radeon1: VE,LE,7000, 7200, 7500, 7500AIW...
Radeon2:8500, 8500PRO, 9000, 9000PRO,8500AIW...
Radeon3:9700, 9500, 9700PRO (these 2 will be on sale pretty soon if they aren't yet)
The Radeon1 is a DirectX7 GPU, so AFAIK it doesn't make many things apart from T&L
The Radeon2 is a DirectX8.1 GPU, it includes the Radeon1 functions and adds some interesting ones like TruForm (a technology that creates additional polygons to give a smoother model, for example the CPU may calculate the polygons of an hexagon and the GPU may create a nearly perfect circle), that was the most impressive feature I can remember, they are also quite fast even with anisotrophic filters and FSAA...
Radeon3 is first card that fully supports DirectX9 (no, parhelia doesn't allow fpu operations with its gpu and the chip developed by 3DLabs also didn't have full hardware DX9 support), at last GPUs can do complex operations, loops like you may code in C, etc... they are a CPU in a graphic card but with a 256 bits bus at 500Mhz(DDR), so it's way faster than using the CPU.

Now, the problem is the support of these technologies in AmigaOS. By the moment (correct me if I am wrong) Warp3D doesn't support even T&L, which is a basic feature of the first generation of GPUs. We will have to wait until Warp3D-NOVA is finished to use the GPUs properly... so buying the latest model may not worth it if NOVA takes too much time to appear, only when it supports the latest generation. And then probably you will be able to buy a better model compared to that you may have bought initially. So my advice would be waiting until the card you want is supported and don't buy anything not supported because by the time it is supported you may buy it cheaper.

The G550 is quite slow compared to any Radeon, so don't worry about speed. The image quality of ATIs is quite decent also. The Voodoo3 is well supported, I would use it until a Radeon driver is released.

[amigamad]

From what i have read it should be able to use any radeon based cards although im not sure about the 9000 or 9700. i myself bought a hercules radeon 128meg 8500 le a slightly slower version of the 8500.radeon 7000 is a budget card and i have seen these for 40 pound and lower, the radeon 8500 should be cheaper now because it is being phased out by the radeon 9000 the 8500 i have will hopefully be ok. weather it makes a difrence being ati or another maker im not sure but because all radeon cards use the same pc drivers i cant see make being important. :-)

[Kay]

Thanks for the input folks! As for waiting for the drivers, my patience is very limited these days. I want an AmigaOne NOW :-). I had my eyes on the Matox card because of its excellent 2d capabilities. I know the Radeons are generally better on 3d, but I'm not sure how many Amiga games really would benefit much from anything faster than the G550. Anyway, seing that Eyetech put an 8500 on one of their systems, I guess it is fair to assume that it will be supported, so I might go for that instead (after reading some reviews to determine the 2d capabilities). Do you know how backwards compatible Radeon cards are, btw?

2d is really what matters most, I think. The excisting Amiga 3d games aren't really that demanding, and most of the time, it is the 2D capabilities I will be looking at. Additionally I have a very good monitor (Sony Trinitron 19"), so good 2d is essential.

Okay, off to read some reviews...:-)

Kay

[kd7ota]

I would have stripped your VooDoo 3 from your current setup. The VooDoo 3 drivers have been around awhile so it may be a card that will have less driver problems IF any. Thats why I decided to keep my VooDoo 3 3000 AGP when Amiga OS 4 + AmigaONE board is ready :-P

[Kay]

Okay, I'm back from reading reviews. Turns out Radeons are popular for a reason. Both the 7500 and the 8500 are apparently very good cards. So, the Matrox is off the list (I might consider a high-end Parhelia later on), and I'm now probably going for a Radeon 7500 or 8500, depending on price.

Kay

[Elektro]

Radeon 8500 has very good picture quality.

[odin]

I was looking into getting a more recent gfx card for my peecee a few weeks ago and concluded I should get a very low budget card (well my budget was very low :-)).

I went for a GeForce 4MX 440, I must say the picture is quite sucky. Dunno how much difference a cheapish Radeon would make, the cheapish OEM manufacturer of my card also might have something to do with it (Point of View). :-D.

[vortexau]

Well, I've put in an order for Anything Amiga's M system! It's got a Radeon 7500, and the Black Case isn't too bad either!
Pity about the 10% GST that go's onto the price! :roll:

>*Has better performance than the Voodoo3. :-o
Even the cheapest Radeon were miles more powerfull than the Voodoo3. The current budget Radeon the 9000 will blow the Voodoo3 and Matrox cards out of the water...
Dont know about drivers though.

[Kay]

> Well, I've put in an order for Anything Amiga's M system!

Nice! My Norwegian dealer hasn't replied to my email yet, so I still haven't got around to ordering...:-/ Unless they get moving, I might end up ordering directly from Eyetech.

Kay

[SlimJim]

@Kay

That's interesting. So you say that a Radeon (I don't
have time to go look for reviews right now) has a
2D picture quality comparable to the Matrox?

I need something good to feed this 20-inch Sony Trinitron I have...
.
SlimJim