$dff|1-Cybervision 64/3D Review Part 1 $fbf by Amida/CrN $fffThis will only be a short review as I didn't have enough time allocated to edit this textfile. Well according to my A4000's expansion capabilities I have only 1 Zorro III slot + a video slot remaining. The other slots were used for an IDE CDROM controller, SCSI II controller and now the Cybervision. I've waited full 4 weeks for the Cybervision 64/3D. Its not surprising of the drop in price and Gordon Hardwood had ran out of stock. This will increase more competition against the Village Tronic's Picasso IV. It only costs £140 and compared to it predecessor CV64/4M at £430 when that was initially released. The PicIV is obviously a better board to buy for its performance but the CV3D will tempt more buyers because of the price drop but the cheap price is normally associated with not being equipped with a Scandoubler which all graphics cards normally come standard with. Even older cards like the EGS Spectrum for the A2000. The Scandoubler + CV3D will add to a total of approx. £220. Although certain benchtests have proven faster on the CV3D (3D tests) there are other expansion capabilities (3D module) that will allow PicIV to match those areas. One particular thing about the PicIV is it requires an AmigaDos 3.1 Amiga. Not 3.0. Well in the first few hours of testing the new expansion I was not impressed at all. I was required to use two monitors for switching screens. Most Amiga applications opens their own default screen which causes some inconvenience. Amospro, ImageFX, Sysinfo, Vt and so on. The board can only display Cybervision modes, not PAL. I realised that a Scandoubler/Monitor switcher is required if I wanted to use a single monitor setup. At the moment the CV screenmode is displayed on my Microvitec (output from gfx card) and the Amiga PAL/NTSC are displayed onto the Philips monitor via 23pin video out using the Amiga's custom gfx chips. Both screens can operate simultaneously and independantly to demonstrate the behaviour of parallel processing power using one machine. Very impressive stuff. Have one screen running a demo, and the other screen editing a textfile. It works. Can you do that with a PC? Screen swapping between CV to CV screens seem slower than the Amiga's custom PAL/NTSC mode. I didn't feel as fast as I expected or was this a faulty card? So I wasn't happy at first but later all that had changed after testing the card using the relevant software. Here I used a benchmark program to test graphics speed: $8ffScreenmode: PAL CV64/3D Difference Test: Put Pixel 213314 951883 4.5 Draw Lines 1187 70040 59 Draw Hor/Ver 2042 93462 45.8 Draw Circles 1150 60641 52.7 Draw Ellipse 1040 29935 27.8 Draw Boxes 56 11836 211.4 Scroll X 32 2247 70.2 Scroll Y 35 2263 5.2 Print Texts 3297 17226 5.2 CON: Output 305 967 3.2 Open Windows 49 102 2.1 Size Windows 102 188 1.8 Move Windows 12 32 2.7 Swap Screens 501 46 0.09 Areafill 35 36520 1043.4 PAL mode : High Res Laced 640x512, 256 colours. CV64/3D : 640 x 480 (8bit 256 colours). $fdfSystem used: A4000/040 2MB Chip 16MB Fast Cybervision 64/3D 4MB 4.3G Ultra IDE Oktagon 2008 SCSI II Controller Tandem CD IDE Controller Conner Tapestore 4000 NEC 4X CDROM Cybergraphx V3 Wspeed V37.37 $f9fWell my levels of confident rose after performing this test. It demonstrates how software support can make all the difference. Unfortunately AIBB does not allow me to open a cybervision screenmode to do the testing therefore tests cannot be performed because of that. One www (www.vgr.com) provides the best updated services for any Cybervision user wishing to be updated with the latest news and to download the latest version of Cybergfx and other components. CyberGL is one of many tools that demonstrated some serious power of the Virge S3 3D chip! There are tools within which shows LW 3D objects in rendered form. How fast? Almost realtime! Requires only seconds for objects to be rendered even on a large screen. My one wish for this is feature is for a Cybervision module to support the use of Imagine. Just imagine the speed of redraw, textured operations and rendering if the card had all of this support. I'm hoping that Imagine 6 will have this feature. $fcfThe screenmodes which the CV3D can handle: 340 x 240 x 8bit (256 colours) 640 x 480 x 8bit 800 x 600 x 8bit 1024 x 768 x 8bit 1120 x 832 x 8bit 1152 x 900 x 8bit 1200 x 1024 x 8bit 1600 x 1200 x 8bit 340 x 240 x 15bit (32K colours) 640 x 480 x 15bit 800 x 600 x 15bit 1024 x 768 x 15bit 1120 x 832 x 15bit 1152 x 900 x 15bit 340 x 240 x 16bit (64K colours) 640 x 480 x 16bit 800 x 600 x 16bit 1024 x 768 x 16bit 1120 x 832 x 16bit 1152 x 900 x 16bit 340 x 240 x 24bit (16M colours) 640 x 480 x 24bit 800 x 600 x 24bit 768 x 576 x 24bit $fddHowever, it is not impossible to edit and modify the screen resolutions. There are hacks available. The board however, is hungry for FASTRAM!! When opening a new CV screen a large chunk of your FASTRAM gets used. In normal conditions I boot my Amiga into WB only to discover that 9MBs have gone! Later programs refuses to load and images fail to open because of "Out of Memory" errors and I tend run out of RAM quite a lot. Quite surprising for an 18MB Amiga. My current WB stands at 1152 x 900 in 16bit colour (had to modify and resize all WB icons to to suit the screen layout) but the main possible cause for memory usage is my WB backdrop being 1152 x 900 x 24 (jpg). I might need to get into the habit using Virtual Memory again.... There is also however, many configurable bit settings which alter the behaviour of how the board operates. Graphically I rate the board 10/10. Now even WEB browsers, AWEB3 gives me the full feel of owning a top end professional WEB browser that matches any other in terms of speed, presentation but most of all the graphics and colour capabilities! $fbeDue to time I could not continue this review. Maybe in the next issue. $fffAmida. $fffend