ACube/AEon - more info about PCIe cards in SAM440, please

This is an image of my test setup:




The SAM440-flex is mounted in a small mini tower so I couldn't fit a decent power supply in there. Therefore the mATX supply is disconnected while a 630W ATX PSU is used in its place.

Same with the R9 270X. There is no room to fit the card itself. And even if it fits in the lenght of the card, there no free space beneath the sam440EP-flex to fit the GFX card anyways.

components used:

SAM440:
SAM440EP-FLEX 800MHz with UBoot 1.3.1g.
1 GByte DDR memory
Amigaos4 FE Upd2 + enhancer2.0 and Warp3d SI driver
About X86 emulation: only fast and medium work for me. Slow (most accurate) will not work.
I have debug mode set to 1. This will print a PCI table. The IRQ for each PCI device is always set to either 0x00 or 0xFF. This can't be true so you can ignore this table.

PCI->PCIe adapter:
Startech PCI->PCIe x1 adapter: PCI1PEX (Don't buy them directly from startech. Prices on amazon or your local store a way better)
This adapter is based on the Pericom PI7C9X111SL. It offers a 66MHz PCI to 2.5Gbps PCIe x1 reverse and transparent bridge. Afaik, the RadeonHD driver doesn't want to do memcopy speedup setting improvements with this bridge chip. Maybe that's the reason why it works. The card must be fitted in the 66MHz (top) slot. Otherwise it will not work. You must also remove any other graphics card. Keeping a Radeon9250 in another slot did not work for me.
I've used this adapter succesfully as well with a low profile HD audio soundcard in my sam440ep-flex. (driver with sam4x0 fix will be uploaded to os4depot soon)



PCIe x1->PCIe x16 adapter:
Because those PCI to PCIe x16 bridge cards to not provide enough power to a graphics cards, I've used a powered passive PCIe x1 to PCIe x16 adapter with aforementioned x1 bridge instead. These adapters are used in crypto mining setups.
Make sure that you have a powered one (best with three connectors to have a choice what to connect). You can get it for example here
PCIe link is transferred over an USB3.0 cable. This cable allowes for 5Gbps in USB3.0 mode. That is enough for the PCIe connection (2.5Gbps). This adapter has 3 power connectors. Only one is allowed to be used at a time. Otherwise you'll fry the board. Since my power supply offered only 2 PCIe power connectors, I've used the included SATA power to PCIe power adapter cable to provide the adapter with power. The gfx card itself was also powered with 2x 6p molex PCIe power connectors.



Graphics card:
MSI Radeon R9 270X Gaming 2G. This is a dual slot card which required 2x 6p power connections. The card is RadeonHD friendly. It also works very well in my X5000.



RX500:
I did not get my Gigabyte RX560 card working in this setup. But this card has issues in my X5000 as well.
Maybe because the card is slot powered only. It could be that the adapter still isn't able to provide enough power. Maybe i'll try to connect two power cables. This is not allowed and will most likely end up in a room filled with smoke. But again: no guts, no glory

Experience:
I do not get uboot output (thought that I had that at some point but cannot reproduce it anymore). But this is supposed to be normal.
Compositing is enabled. That makes the system feels responsive enough for such a low performance processor. Even at 3440x1440. Of course this is not a X1000 or X5000. But it feels faster than with my Radeon9250.

I've only tried Spencer, Shogo and cow3d. Like I said in my other post, Cow3D manages >200fps in Os4 warp3d nova mode. Both spencer (w3dnova/opengles2) and Shogo (w3d/minigl) run smooth at 1920x1080.

gfxmem copy performance with ragemem is low (~23MB read/write). But I do not know if this is an issue with the test itself or if it can be improved with register settings in the PCI->PCIe bridge. Performance is there so better ignore this value for now.

I experienced some stability issues. But I do not know if this is caused by my test setup or by software drivers.

@mr2

Cow3d doesn't work in w3dnova mode on your Radeon9250. You'll need at least a card listed on this site.

Both the PEX811x and the PI7C9X111SL convert a 32bit/66MHz PCI bus into a PCIe 1x 2.5Gbps bus.

The PI7C9X111SL has a bit better bullet specs (eg max payload 512bytes vs 128bytes ; larger cache sizes). But I doubt that you'll notice the difference.

It would be nice to know what optimisation Hans made on the PEX8112. Maybe I can write a small prog to alter the I2C contents of the PI7C9X111SL card accordingly.

@mr2


Quote:

no there is no support in driver for UVD on HD cards, you need a RX card for UVD, you will only get 3D & YUV422 support with HD drivers.

@LiveForIt

That may be something to look forwards to in the future for Radeon HD SI cards.


Quote:

@geennaam

The last card that I experimented with when my Sam440ep-Flex was working was the model linked to below

https://www.newegg.com/visiontek-radeo ... 29263?Item=9SIAHT8BKN1141

I got U-boot output so the power would have been ok .
This was with a pex8112 adapter .

http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/pci-32-b ... -pci-express-adapter.html

@geennaam

If you need Cow3D nova you can download from os4depot (http://www.os4depot.net/?function=sho ... ility/benchmark/cow3d.lha)

but Radeon9250 IIRC is not supported by Nove, only some RX/HD cards, or do you mean R9-250?!?!

@geennaam

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation

Cow3D archive contains Warp3D (not Nova) version.
The test runs fine (cow is spinning ) but the counter shows 0 fps.
First the audio driver and now sukccess with the SAM440 and GPU, nice

@LiveForIt

I mean, in the future...

@Spectre660

I emailed the Virtuavia shop but they did not answered.
It would be perfect if one could try your Yeston RX 550 with the SAM440. The card looks like a perfect match for the SAM440.

PS. Just ordered the Startech adapter...plus fast delivery. Should be on friday. Yeah i'm just that stupid

@Spectre660

Hans focus is on newer cards you buy in the computer store, not older cards, so its where likely there wont be any UVD support for the older cards. I hope for Firemware update to AmigaONE-X1000, as that was something they indicated that they were going to do, to support newer cards.

@jabirulo

Yes, I have a Southern Island card working in my sam440ep-flex. The Radeon R9-270X.
This is a warp3d nova capable card.

So cow3D works on my sam440 with w3D nova.

@mr2

The archive contains:
- CoW3D6-os4 -> Warp3D
- CoW3D6-os4-Nova -> Warp3D Nova

I've tested the nova version on the SAM440 with R9 270X and manage to get >200fps.


Spencer is also a warp3d Nova game. This game also runs on my sam440 with R9 270X.

@LiveForIt

One of Matthew's favourite expressions is
"Watch this space"
so we will see what the future holds.

Quote:

@mr2

I dont have a working Sam440ep .

@Spectre660

"- Supports PCI slot 3.3V/1A, 3.3Vaux/100mA, 5V/5A and 12V/500m"

That isn't enough to drive a gfx card under load.

@geennaam

Quote:

Yes and I was trying Warp3D - 0 fps. I remember it worked. Maybe the system update changed something?

@Spectre660

Quote:

I know, just saying. I will test HD7750 but will not risk buying RX550 under the circumstanses I wrote about earlier.

@mr2

I also get 0fps as a first result for the warp3d version. Consecutive results are not zero for me. But the performance is much lower than for warp3d nova.

@geennaam

Quote:

Thats good to know.

There is no UBoot on both cards or just the RX?

Thanks

Is there any way to test this? Sam 440 install media doesn't basic driver. I do have needed things, execpt driver.

@mr2

R9 270X: No uboot screen. Starts working from the moment that the amigaos4.1 splashscreen is loaded.

RX560: sometimes detected by uboot (I can see this on the debug terminal output). No uboot. No workbench. No signal output at all.

Quote:


If I knew that the Startech adapter would be on my desk after 19 hours, I would have ordered the pcie x1 -> pcie x16 adapter earlier

Ranger shows PCI to PCI bridge, booting is way faster than with the previous adapter (no scanning?). So far so good...

Tried the RX560 again. It boots past uboot but is stuck during radeonrx driver initialisation. version 1.4,1.17 and 2.4 show the same result. So I created a problem report on amiga.org.