Nekochan Net

has anybody tried it?

with a agood FC array?

o2 flint effect has problem playing back sequences becos of the memory to graphics limitation, but CPU speed can make a difference more than a fast array, so i was wondering if anybody has tried it with a modded 600mhz CPU, i would love to hear any eperiences.

thanks
m

Actually, Flint's playback limitation is the O2's lack of hardware RGB to YUV colorspace conversion. That's why you can't play out footage for recording to tape direct from disk. You're limited to playback from RAM, with the length of playback being determined by how much RAM is in the O2.

There's a recent post on fxguide about this in the flame forum:

http://www.fxguide.com/postt2593.html

yes but apparently the r5k were more capable than r10k/r12, so therefore
a rm7k must make a difference

Can I ask how they are more capable? (It might be worth the mod) Are we talking pure CPU cycles making the difference?

Would not the 400mhz be a worth CPU. I thought that the 2Mb cache give better performance with rendering & handling action & general interactivity?

Timberoz>Craig

Not necessarily. You would need to know if Flint uses the CPU or the ICE chip to do its colorspace conversion. If it's the latter, then a clock speed increase of the CPU would make no difference.

The video out problem was only present in R10K/150 and R10K/175 O2 systems. All subsequent R10K/R12K revisions in the O2 were not affected. It's true that the O2 couldn't make full use of R10/R12K due to the memory system mismatch, but the higher latency wasn't a problem for standard-definition video tasks.

All tests I know of show the R10K/R12K to be much faster than any R5K at
the same clock speed, eg. R12K/300 is about 95% faster than an R5200/300.

However, the R7000C/600 is a much improved design. What few test results I
have show it to be typically 30% faster than the R12K/400, but how this relates
to Flint on O2 I cannot say.

As the other poster said, if O2 has to do YUV/RGB conversion in software,
then a better CPU would clearly help. But if it uses ICE, then a faster CPU
probably wouldn't make much difference, unless other factors were also
involved.

Are you already using such a system with a lower spec CPU? Or is this just
something being considered atm? Figure you could use osview, etc. to see
if ICE is being used.

Ian.

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I am curious, Does the o2 take a performance hit if you use the 1600sw adaptor with Effect? Or does it make no difference?

Timberoz>Craig

"The O2 has dedicated logic in the IOE for real-time color space conversion."
IOE: I/O engine
http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/o2/o2dm.pdf
wish I could find more info on that ioe

O2's general performance varies slightly depending on the display format used,
but not by much. This happens because as more bandwidth between main RAM
and MRE is used for the video display, less is available between main RAM and
everything else. In the extreme case, comparing VGA 16/16 60Hz to 1280x1024
32/32 72Hz, the drop in Stream performance is about 10% (I don't know whether
this is indicative of other tasks).

But going from 1280x1024 32/32 72Hz to 1600x1024 32/32 60Hz would probably
only decrease Stream performance by maybe 4%. You could easily counter any
perceived performance drop by enhancing some other aspect of the system, eg. use
a 15k rpm system disk (well worth it!) or install a better CPU (switch from R5K/200
to R10K/195, almost 100% speedup for many tasks).

One caveat btw: when using Effect/Flint/Flame/etc., isn't the display supposed to
run at the same Hz as the video being used? Ok for NTSC I suppose, the 1600SW
can run at 60Hz. But what about PAL? Can the 1600SW operate at 50Hz?

To be honest though, doing that kind of video with a Discreet app, I'd rather
just be using huge CRT or modern TFT. And there's always the custom O2 video
mode which is 1400x1024 or something.

Cheers!

Ian.

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Yep; it can indeed operate at 50Hz.

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Yes. It's even one of the standard listed configurations available from the toolchest. I always ran mine at that refresh rate, worked fine (and maybe helped to imperceptibly speed things up.)