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[DJS]

Elbox Computer wishes Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Amiga users!

For a Christmas Gift, Elbox will release the new pci.library, which allows to use the PCI gfx cards' memory (Voodoo 3/4/5 and Radeon 9000/9200/9250) as Amiga system memory also for users of Mediators for A1200. The minimum hardware requirement for this feature is an Amiga 1200 computer with any A1200 Mediator model (1200, ZIV, 1200LT2, 1200LT4, 1200SX, 1200TX), a turbo card based on 68030 with MMU and the Voodoo 3 or Radeon 9200 gfx card. In case of the Radeon gfx card the new drivers enable adding even up to 250 MB of DDR400 SDRAM to the A1200 system memory!

For Amiga 3000 and 4000 users, Elbox extends the bundle offer till the end of the year for the Mediator PCI busboards for A3000 and A4000 computers with a special 5V-only version of the Mobility Radeon 9200 gfx card with 256MB of fast SGRAM memory.

If you plan on purchasing any Elbox products in near future, do it by the end of this year. With the New Year, prices for most of them (Mediators, FastATA, memory expansions, etc.) will go up about 30%. This will be due to much higher costs of the components used in the production. Most of the necessary connectors and 5V CPLD chips are now very difficult to acquire and much more expensive than ever before.


Elbox Computer Team

[motorollin]

That's cool! What's the performance like when using video card memory as fast RAM?

[klx300r]

great incentive for all the classic users to upgrade to OS4.1 now

[Lando]

I love the way the product information for Mediator still gives compatibility with Shark PPC G3 / G4 as one of the features. How many years is it now?

[Zac67]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html

G3/500 $29.95 - anyone?

[yssing]

Could be nice if AOS4.1 could run on those Crescendo cards.

[ToddH]

Originally Posted by yssing

Could be nice if AOS4.1 could run on those Crescendo cards.

Considering that you can pick one up for around $30, that would indeed be nice.

[A1260]

I am still waiting for some news about the DRAGON 1200 project & your SHARKPPC project....

[Piru]

Originally Posted by motorollin

That's cool! What's the performance like when using video card memory as fast RAM?

It will be abysmal. Much slower than real fast memory and certainly nowhere near DDR400 SDRAM performance.

Another case of misleading marketing from Elbox.

[motorollin]

Originally Posted by Piru

It will be abysmal. Much slower than real fast memory and certainly nowhere near DDR400 SDRAM performance.

Another care of misleading marketing from Elbox.

Disappointing, but not massively surprising

[Plaz]

Tough crowd even on Christmas. To bad I can't try it on my Prometheus card.

Plaz

[Piru]

Originally Posted by Plaz

Tough crowd even on Christmas.

Polishing turd won't make it any more appealing. It's still a turd.

up to 250 MB of DDR400 SDRAM to the A1200 system memory!

The memory might be DDR400 SDRAM on the graphics card, but there is no way the amiga could access it even remotely the actual speed of DDR400 SDRAM (3.2 GB/s). In reality the memory speed is slower than the 70ns SIMM memory on your average accelerator.

Especially reading the memory is really slow. Graphics card memory was never meant to be used for reads and this is not optimized for it.

Elbox will spin this "DDR400 SDRAM" story for months no doubt.

[Matt_H]

I'll stick with what I've been saying for years: slow RAM is better than no RAM.

[RMK305]

Originally Posted by DJS

If you plan on purchasing any Elbox products in near future, do it by the end of this year. With the New Year, prices for most of them (Mediators, FastATA, memory expansions, etc.) will go up about 30%.

30%! Geeee, that just pushes them even further out of most peoples price range. Anyone know how well the Mediators sell these days?

[actung_bab]

Originally Posted by Zac67

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/crescendo_7200.html

G3/500 $29.95 - anyone?

imagine if amiga people brought up all the cards the ac people be angry as ...hehe
sounds like a plan