Skip to content
togflops edited this page May 8, 2019 · 15 revisions

Compatible and recommended video cards for the Sonnetlib

This page is a work in progress and has not been fully fact checked yet

The Sonnetlib in combination with any MPC107 PCI Bridge requires PCIDMA space on a Mediator Video card.
Cards which require PCIDMA space

  • Sonnet Crescendo G3/G3
  • Rapture G4

Cards which do not necessarily require PCIDMA space

  • KillerNIC K1/M1 (Littleweenie)
  • Apocalypse
  • Ragnarok

Which is the best Video card for the Sonnetlib?

Voodoo 3 PCI 2000/3000

Particular considerations for Video card choices

Voodoo 3 2000/3000 SDRAM/SGRAM

  • Supports LE and BE modes
  • Uses the least amount of address space for a Warp3D supported card. Up to 384 MB of PPC RAM is available.
  • Warp3D Support
  • The Voodoo 3-2000 runs at 143MHz and the Voodoo 3-3000 runs at 167MHz. The Voodoo 3-2000 can be overclocked to 3000 speed, but extra caution will need to be exercised as the Voodoo 3 2000 has a smaller heatsink.
  • SGRAM version of Voodoo 3-2000 usually can overclock to 3000 speed without any risk as long as the GPU heatsink is sized appropriately
  • 5V Native card, will work on 5V or 3.3V enabled slots
  • 16MB of Video RAM is standard

Voodoo 4-4500

  • Supports only LE modes. Applications which require BE support will have the wrong colors such as Amigenerator.
  • Warp3D Support
  • Supports 15-bit PC
  • The Voodoo 4 uses 128MB of address space which allows 128MB of PPC Memory.
  • The clock speed is equivalent to a Voodoo 3-3000
  • 5V Native card, will work on 5V or 3.3V enabled slots
  • 32MB of Video RAM is standard
  • Some users in the PC realm have upgraded their Voodoo 4 to 64MB of Video RAM. As the extra space is already allocated this might not change anything. (this needs verification)

Voodoo 5-5500

  • Supports only LE modes. Applications which require BE support will have the wrong colors such as Amigenerator.
  • Warp3D Support
  • Only one of the two GPUs is active on the driver, so the second GPU does nothing other than generate heat
  • 5V Native card, will work on 5V or 3.3V enabled slots
  • 64MB of Video RAM is standard, extra 64MB of Video RAM on second GPU is not supported or available.
  • Limits amount of RAM on supported PCI PPC cards to 128MB. Only 128MB of PPC RAM is available.

Radeon 9200 series

  • Supports only LE modes. Applications which require BE support will have the wrong colors such as Amigenerator.
  • NO Warp3D Support
  • Supports 15-bit PC mode
  • Does not use much power
  • DVI Support
  • Can drive the highest bit depth and resolution modes
  • 5V/3.3V concerns: Some Radeon 9200 cards operate on 5V-only Mediators. Some Radeon 9200 cards are 3.3V-only and will either require a "Black" Mediator edition with support for 3.3V PCI cards or require modification.
  • Either 64, 128 or 256MB of Video RAM is available depending on card
  • Limits amount of RAM on supported PCI PPC cards to 128MB on MPC107 cards such as Sonnet and Rapture. Harrier based cards such as Apocalypse and Rapture can support up to 256MB of PPC RAM.

S3 Virge/Trio (Not tested)

  • 4MB Max VRAM

Zorro RTG Cards (Not tested since 2017)

  • No PCI direct access to PCI-PPC memory, so GFX data will have to traverse the 68k bus which is much slower than a PCI card
  • Does not satisfy the requirement of PCI DMA GFX memory for the cards which require it such as Sonnet and Rapture

Cybervision PPC/Blizzardvision PPC (Not Tested)

  • Unknown whether this works
  • No PCI direct access to PCI-PPC memory, so GFX data will have to traverse the 68k bus which is much slower than a PCI card.