Need advice on crt emulation and video cards

[Hadouken]

Hi guys. I'm new the crt emulation world. I was about to buy an Ati video card to use it with the crt emudrivers, and I was wondering if I can make my nvidia 1060 card be the main video card to process games and use the Ati only to output the image to my crt tv? I want for example to play Dreamcast or ps2 and I don't know if an old Ati can handle these.
I guess this was discussed before here but I could find it in the forums.

Thanks!

[Calamity]

Hi guys. I'm new the crt emulation world. I was about to buy an Ati video card to use it with the crt emudrivers, and I was wondering if I can make my nvidia 1060 card be the main video card to process games and use the Ati only to output the image to my crt tv? I want for example to play Dreamcast or ps2 and I don't know if an old Ati can handle these.
I guess this was discussed before here but I could find it in the forums.

Thanks!

While that's possible, I wouldn't recommend it. RA allows it as far as I know, some people tested it successfully.

Instead of the typical mantra of "get an older ATI card", I'd go for one of the not-so-old AMD cards that are supported, preferably the ones that still had native analogue connectors. Those should handle DC just fine on their own.

[buttersoft]

A card in the AMD Radeon R7 2xx/3xx area should do perfectly. Or even an R5 card, maybe.

While that's possible, I wouldn't recommend it. RA allows it as far as I know, some people tested it successfully.

Hmmm, i've never really dived into that. You're saying it won't work for GroovyMAME, Calamity? As in, you can't do the processing on one card and output from the other? Given GM is more CPU-bound then GPU-bound, would it hurt to do that - to simply add say an R5 250 to your main, Nvidia-powered desktop rig and have it output at 15kHz? Would it even work?

[Calamity]

A card in the AMD Radeon R7 2xx/3xx area should do perfectly. Or even an R5 card, maybe.

While that's possible, I wouldn't recommend it. RA allows it as far as I know, some people tested it successfully.

Hmmm, i've never really dived into that. You're saying it won't work for GroovyMAME, Calamity? As in, you can't do the processing on one card and output from the other? Given GM is more CPU-bound then GPU-bound, would it hurt to do that - to simply add say an R5 250 to your main, Nvidia-powered desktop rig and have it output at 15kHz? Would it even work?

It won't work with GM. It works with RA because they've added support for this feature. My understanding is it's the same feature behind technologies like Nvidia Optimus.

I haven't dived into this either, mainly because I had bet on the opposite direction: the progressive adoption of modern and powerful AMD cards that made Nvidia trapware unnecessary.

As usual with my other industrial and political predictions this was wishful thinking.

[mtarcade]

I'm just going down the rabbit hole after struggling for years with Ultimarcs ArcadeVGA cards.  I had a 3000 and the fan went, and decided to upgrade to an ArcadeVGA5000.  Took me years to get that thing to work somewhat ok.  And, I decided to take a look and see what was out there.  Pleasantly surprised to see Calamity's solution here and how far along its come.   
Question for Calamity or anyone else available to answer.  I noticed on the compatibility website that up to R9 cards are supported with drivers.  I'm looking to use a JPAC and go to a 15hz 25" arcade monitor.  I'm planning on using Hyperspin as a front end, and looking to run MAME but, would also like to play with some modern Arcade stuff like TeknoParrot (RingeEdge) and other Emulators.  Would an MSI Radeon R9 280x 3GB work?  Or, better yet the Twin Frozr IV 6GB version?  I figure, hey.....i'll upgrade bigtime and future proof the video card side of things and push that as much as i can. I'm running a good board/cpu/8gb ram right now. Any feedback would be much appreciated.  I just don't want to go too big on the video card side and have issues going to 15hz low res.  Thanks Calamity for all you do!

[Rion]

The last card to support analog out is the R9 380/380x.
I'm using a R9 380 4gb from MSI and can run almost all modern retro games. Both in Windows and Linux via Wine.

[buttersoft]

The last card to support analog out is the R9 380/380x.
I'm using a R9 380 4gb from MSI and can run almost all modern retro games. Both in Windows and Linux via Wine.

Seconded. I think mine is a gigabyte 4GB gaming 380. It doesn't play nice with Atom15, but it runs anything in TP like a dream. And also handles Tekken7 at 60fps without drops. Still some load times, but it is in an older PC.

That R9 280x won't be far behind, if at all. More VRAM is always nice, if it doesn't cost you much more. You might look to see if anyone is having problems with Atom15 and either of those cards, but that's not always a deal breaker.

[mtarcade]

Thanks for the input Rion & buttersoft! Much appreciated. I'm gonna pull the trigger and order in a R9 380 and do some testing with a Groovy Mame build and crt emudriver with my ol' arcade CRT.  Time to dump the Arcade VGA that's never worked quite right and finally give the old arcade an update and get my CRT up and running pretty.  Thanks again for the advice!

[mtarcade]

Hey buttersoft......when it comes to Atom15.  That's to protect the CRT when windows 7/10 is booting up in BIOS screen?  Is it necessary when you have a J-PAC between the CRT and the PC?  I'm also running a second display (stretched lcd) for hyper Marquee/dynamic marquee.  So, figured BIOS splash screen/boot would get tossed up to the 2nd display (lcd)?  Currently on J-PAC with Arcade VGA5000 and switchrez and that's the current boot process.  Bios splashes on 2nd display (lcd) and then windows boots up, it displays on the CRT, then autoboot into Hyperspin.  I appreciate the helpful advice.  Been a long while since I've played with my CRT and video card/settings.   

[buttersoft]

Hey buttersoft......when it comes to Atom15.  That's to protect the CRT when windows 7/10 is booting up in BIOS screen?  Is it necessary when you have a J-PAC between the CRT and the PC?  I'm also running a second display (stretched lcd) for hyper Marquee/dynamic marquee.  So, figured BIOS splash screen/boot would get tossed up to the 2nd display (lcd)?  Currently on J-PAC with Arcade VGA5000 and switchrez and that's the current boot process.  Bios splashes on 2nd display (lcd) and then windows boots up, it displays on the CRT, then autoboot into Hyperspin.  I appreciate the helpful advice.  Been a long while since I've played with my CRT and video card/settings.

When your PC loads, if the motherboard finds a video card, it hands over display control to that card, which looks at its BIOS to provide video modes. The card then hands over control to the Windows drivers once windows loads. Atom15 is used to flash the video card BIOS to contain only modes your CRT can handle, so as the PC boots it finds only 15kHz modes (if you set it to 15kHz).

A Jpac has a protection circuit that blocks all modes that are not 15kHz (again, assuming you set it to 15kHz). So yes, it does about the same thing in terms of protection. Gambaman made a nice (DIY) VGA-to-SCART adapter and sync combiner that also does this - http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,160869.0.html (although it's not a video amp or USB joystick interface like the Jpac is as well).

Lastly, i think you can set the (original) BIOS on an AVGA card to only use 15kHz modes during boot. But not if you modifed it for crt_emudriver?