| From: | Eyetech tech assistance |
| Date: | 2 Oct 2000 at 14:40:49 |
| Subject: | Re: PCI Board Furore |
Hi Nick
> I refer to the PowerUP versus WarpUP debate, that fractured a small
> community into two even smaller segments, the cold relationships between
> Haage and Partner with Phase5 did nothing to help the Amiga with their
> hostility.
I really don't think this is at all comparable with the WarpUp/PowerUp etc
disputes of the past.
The Mediator and Predator are completely different products. The Predator
only works on BlzzardPPC cards (A1200) or Cyberstorm Mk3/PPC cards A4000.
They have a 4GB linear address space as well as the AGP/G3/G4 options.
The Mediator works with any A1200 accelerator (we understand that the best
performance is obtained with Apollo accelerators) but uses paged memory
access (which does have some performance hits on anything other than
straight block transfers). As far as applications are concerned they will
not know the difference (other than in performance) - they will just write
to the drivers API (which in the case of graphics cards will be
CyberGraphics-based)
The Predator has been in development for some time and clearly is a couple
of months behind the Mediator. Our announcement about its availability and
specs is in fact likely to be closer to the Predators customer deliveries
than the annoucement date of the Mediator to its deliveries, but we did
think it was only fair to let potential purchasers of either board know of
the available alternatives before the Mediator actually started shipping. In
many cases of course (eg no BlizzardPPC/CyberstormPPC/mark3 acclerator) the
Mediator will be the best option. For others the Predator will be most
suitable. Thats why we intend to stock both boards, and hopefully Power
Computing will adopt the same stance.
> Each company having souring relations.
> Comments from both company's have became of an increasingly sour nature,
> rather than marketing, they are damaging confidence IMO.
As far as the 'souring' is concerned I really dont think that you can lay
that at our door. We have tried our best to give a factually accurate
description regarding the design philosopy and reasoning behind the Predator
design and how it differs from the superficially similar Mediator board so
that potential purchasers can make up their own minds. It seems to me that
Elbox's reaction to some broadly based competition - both from us and
Vesalia's G-REX - has been uncharacteristically vitriolic, but neither we,
nor to my knowledge Vesalia, have risen to the bait.
Hope this helps clarify the position
Alan
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