#Titel Tests / Hardware / Cybervision64 #Logo gadget20:pinsel/AG.Tests #Font Losse 16 #C31 Test : CyberVision64 #Font topaz 8 #C10 PRODUCT NAME #C21 CyberVision64 64 bit graphic card #C10 BRIEF DESCRIPTION #C21 It's the new graphic card from phase5 Digital Products which is said to be very fast. I will tell you if it is. #C10 AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION #C21 Name: phase5 Digital Products Address: Homburger Landstrasse 412 60433 Frankfurt/Main ; GERMANY Telephone: +49-(0)69-5488130 FAX: +49-(0)69-5481845 They speak English, but they prefer German. I have not tested their French knowledge. I bought this piece at: PROMIGOS Bern Herrengasse 6 3000 Bern SWITZERLAND Telephone: +41-(0)31-3123775 Adrian Etter speaks German, French and English. #Seitenende #C10 LIST PRICE #C21 The list price is 898 DEM. I paid 898 CHF. This is for the 4 MB version that I highly recommend. The 2 MB version costs 698 DEM and respectively 698 CHF at Promigos. #C10 SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE #C21 A Zorro III Amiga is required. This card has no Zorro II mode. That is, you need an Amiga 3000, 3000T, 4000 or 4000T. phase5 says that 2 MB RAM are enough, but remember that more is better. They recommend 4 MB, and I do recommend at least 8 MB if you want to do some serious multitasking. A buster rev 11 is "recommended" for optimum performance. #Seitenende #C10 SOFTWARE #C21 I suspect you need at least AmigaDOS 2.04 to run the Cybergraphics system. I only tested it with AmigaDOS 3.1. I also suspect you need at least AmigaDOS 3.0 to get advantage of 256 colors. #C10 COPY PROTECTION #C21 Terrible. :) You can't put your card into a photocopier and make a copy - actually, it some sort of a hardware dongle. I haven't managed to copy it. :) The Cybergraphics disk is not protected. #Seitenende #C10 MACHINE USED FOR TESTING #C21 Amiga 3000/25, 0 MB Fast RAM onboard, 2 MB Chip RAM. Motherboard rev 9.3, Buster rev. 11, DMAC rev 02, Ramsey rev 04. CyberStorm 040 40 MHz with 16 MB FAST RAM on RAM module of Cyberstorm accelerator. 1 internal 1660K floppy. Quantum Empire 1080 MB hard drive. Archive Viper 525 MB tape drive. Toshiba XM-3601 CD-ROM drive. No-name monitor 17". AmigaDOS 3.1, Kickstart 40.68 and WB 40.42. Cybervision 64 with 4 MB RAM. All the above is in a tower casing from CompZ. All SCSI devices are attached to the A3000's internal SCSI. #Seitenende #C10 INSTALLATION #C21 Installation of the card is a breeze. I had to remove the tape drive in the lowermost 5.25" slot to be able to insert the Cybervision64 card into the ZorroIII slot. Then I had to connect the pass-through cable and to connect my monitor to the Cybervision64 card. The software installation was very easy too, and in less than 10 minutes, I was running my Amiga on Cybergraphics. #C10 WHY THE HECK ANOTHER GRAPHICS CARD? #C21 Well, when I installed my Cyberstorm 040 last Friday, I noticed to my outmost disdain that my Retina Z3 wouldn't work. Of course, my dealer knew the solution: Buy a Cybervision64. Until I had installed my Cyberstorm accelerator, I was very happy with my RetinaZ3, but when I decided to go for speed, my RetinaZ3 refused. Not willing to buy a crappy EGS card (Piccolo SD64, EGS Spectrum) and then to pay another 50 DEM to register Cybergraphics, I decided to go for the latest hardware on the Amiga and went to my dealer and asked him if I could get the card and pay him the first half today and the other at the end of the month. He agreed and gave me the card while I have him 500 CHF for the time being, intending to pay him in full when my employer decides to transfer me my salary. #C10 THE QUANTUM LEAP #C21 No, not the hard disk. But I used lousy graphic systems like EGS (some software simply decides not to run on EGS and it eats some memory and does not work for the software you need it). Definitely not the thing I can use. That's also the reason I never bought EGS for my RetinaZ3 (another reason was that it never supported the blitter mode of the RetinaZ3). With Cybergfx, everything changed. For the first time in my miserable life, I was able to open a 16-bit Intuition screens, although Intuition is not yet aware of the real screen depth. Only programs that are written for Cybergraphics will take advantage of deeper screens. Cyberview, Cyberwindow, the saver module for PhotoGenics and AdPro and later on (when do I get the full version? :( ) PhotoGenics 1.2 will support Cybergfx. I'm already looking for Version 1.2 of PhotoGenics. #C10 THE INCLUDED SOFTWARE #C21 As everyone who once had or still has a graphic card will know for sure, is that the software included with the graphic card is almost more important than the graphic card itself and the hardware performance. That's why the IMHO crappy Piccolo and GVP EGS Spectrum were so preferred over Retinas. With Cybergraphics, this era is stone-age now. For the above-mentioned cards (and some more) and the CyberVision64, a Cybergfx monitor file exists. I made the RetinaZ3 work on my Retina before I bought my Cyberstorm accelerator, but the Cyberstorm accelerator cut short the idea of registering cybergfx. And them, why send some money to Frank Mariak (author of Cybergfx) when he already gets paid by phase5? The software includes the Cybergfx software with all libraries and the CyberVision monitorfile. As add-on, CyberView (a graphics viewer), Cyberwindow (displays graphics on a intuition screen with at least 16 bits depth in a window), CVMode (a program which lets you design own monitor definitions so you can use a 82 or even 86 KHz monitor on the CyberVision64), NewMode (a screen promoter program which is IMHO very usable, but you could just use any promoter program on Aminet which suits your preferences) as well as drivers for PhotoGenics, ADPro, Maxon Cinema4D, ImageFX PhotoGenics (only saver), PhotoWorx display driver and Real3D. This is by no means complete, but the cybergfx authors count on the shareware and freeware authors as well as commercial developers to write additional software. There is already a software for the VLab digitizer board and PhotoGenics 1.2 which runs completely (no wimpy PhotoGenics saver) on Cybergfx. If anybody knows of other software, it would be very kind to tell me (email addresses below) if other software is coming or has already been released. #Seitenende #C10 EVERYDAY USAGE #C21 The card performs better than any AGA AMIGA - see my AIBB at the end of the review section. It feels like an AGA machine if it comes to behaviour - I have not yet found any productivity software which did not run on Cybergfx except if it was written for an non-Cybergraphics graphic card like the Retina or any EGS program. The promoter is a nice piece which not only gives you the choice to choose the screen mode you want to promote a program to, but you can also select the 16 bit and 24 bit modes if you do not want to filter them out. NewMode also allows you to filter the EHB and HAM modes if you wish so. I did not. Of course, you can save which screens NewMode should promote and which not. A good candidate not to promote is the Trapdoor screen because it does neither need terrific speed nor many colors. I'm impressed with the speed. That beast is really faster in almost all disciplines than the Retina Z3. At the end, there will be the uuencoded AIBB module for those people, who absolutely must compare their system to mine. But my score is hard to beat. :) My Amiga's UI has become very snappy - at least now PC folks can go home if they see how fast my system is compared even to a Pentium. I know it because my father has one 15 meters away and I had to use it many times - and the user interface is slower despite the Diamond Stealth64 graphics card. But this is also because of my cyberstorm accelerator that the system feels so snappy. One of the programs that does not work directly on a cybergfx screen is AIBB. The workaround is not to promote the screen and then to select the screen mode in which comparisons are made in AIBB - the tests are then done on the cybergfx screen. Also, NewMode is IMHO one of the best promoters around - I never loved the EGS and the Picasso promoters much, but NewMode is freely distributable and can be used with them if you like. IMHO the best solution. The picture viewers that come with the cybervision (and you can download updates from the Aminet) are very nice if it comes to compatibility - but they don't have a very smart user interface - one point where RetinaDisplay is much better - you can drop picture files on the RetinaDisplay and it displays them. Also, RetinaDisplay's JPEG routine is much faster when I compare it to CyberView. The very same picture took only 1.5 times longer to decode on an A3000/25 than on my cyberstorm equipped A3000 now. This is not very good as my Amiga with 040/40 MHz is six times faster than the A3000/25 when it comes to CPU speed. On the other hand, they're very handy if you want to do a slide show with them. #C10 EXPANDABILITY #C21 The Cybervision64 card can be expanded with a video add-on module and some other type of module, maybe a digitizer or a connection to the planned 2GO! board which includes a DSP and some other goodies to raise the speed when rendering pictures with programs that support the 2GO! board. #C10 DOCUMENTATION #C21 The docs that comes with the cybervision are not that good. Although reviews in the German Amiga magazine state that there is an online documentation, I could find none on my disk. But it seems this is pretty identical with the AmigaGuide documentation from the cybergfx40_47.lha archive. The printed manual which shows you how to install the card into your Amiga and is very good - there are no badly dithered pictures like in the cyberstorm manual, but clear drawings. #C10 AIBB MODULE #C21 Here is a uuencoded AIBB module for the Cyberstorm. To decode it, use the "uudecode" command available on Aminet in util/arc. #Seitenende #C10 begin 644 Cybervision.AIBB MH;M@4%-N;V]P`&%C:&EN90``````!P`#``<``F5X<&%N:'Y\;#G`0%!.HS>``````$!% M02Z$@``````!`4%)\)\``````0%`,>P\/#P\/`$!0+$]#)J@79(!`4#@0`!+K MNP*S`0%!0"R?@`````$!0.=YH'\^>KD!`4$[*1X``````0%!),"```````$!> M0354#7X`````$!0429;P`````!`4$RZ[\`X M`````0%!=W^?X`````$!/\:?PKVQKY@!`4%_E>_@`````0%!<30]<`````$!2 M03;C7@`````!`4%#UA\``````0%!"MKP``````$!025