Trident Blade 3D 9880 vs Blade T64 9970?

[MonitorGuru]

Done a ton of research, big question is this:

Which card is better -- The 9970 T64 or the original 9880?  I saw a couple people post to usenet that they have the same advmame capabilities and the only difference is the drivers needed to run in windows.

I can find tons of 9880's really cheap (like 3 for $10) where the 9970's are about $40 shipped.

Anyone running either? Anyone compared them?

[wakerlet]

Monitorguru,

I've got a VIDEO-117PCI-32 (T64 9970) card by Jaton that I've had little luck configuring.  To be honest, I just don't seem to have the patience to wade through the advcfg stuff. 

I would be willing to let you borrow it to see how you like it.  The only thing I ask is that you send me your advancemame settings back with it if you do end up getting it working okay.

Let me know what you think.

-Todd

[wakerlet]

Oh I've been deep into advcfg, or more specifically advv.

[Silver]

Could you mention some of these cards you've had success with using in advancemame?

and in particular what  environment? Dos/windows/linux. I'm struggling with windows....

[Silver]

Aha thanks - maybe that will let me get advcfg to even run if I can avoid the svgaline in windows.....

With the other settings, will it still autogenerate the right resolutions or do you need clever registry entries from powerstrip?

[rockmes]

Go to this website for it talks about how to setup windows98 with 15khz monitor with the tsr drivers for the trident t64 card.

http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/

[Silver]

Hi,

Thanks - I've got no problems running windows at 15khz - my current card can do it natively with powerstrip, no tsr required.

regarding advancemame, how do you set a modeline for a particular game? I thought you could just specify the various video capabilities of your card and it would choose the best one. Or do you just specify a certain res when you run the game?

[Silver]

Magic - thanks!

[wakerlet]

Aha thanks - maybe that will let me get advcfg to even run if I can avoid the svgaline in windows.....

With the other settings, will it still autogenerate the right resolutions or do you need clever registry entries from powerstrip?

So far, with vbeline vbe vga line, it works with most games, including interlace ones like Satan's Hollow and Tempest really well, without creating any modelines.

All my tests are in dos with dos advancemame.

[Silver]

The one thing I did find interesting: S3 Savage4 boards kinda suck...

Could have told you that for free..... never found anything they were good at....

What I'm *NOT* going to attempt to address is the remapping of a vertical game to play on a horizontal layout, or a horizontal to play on a vertical.

Good plan - not just because it saves you work. The whole point of this program is perfect resolutions to perfectly match the original. If you choose to run a vertical game on a horizontal screen then your already not getting the benefit of using the program....

I think your plan is brilliant - its one of the real tortuous parts of Amame for people new to it (like me!)

[Silver]

Hey interesting. I was initially surprised how few cards made the cut....

...but will be very interested to see how the ATI cards fare - they have a good reputation for this, but it seems svgalib has undergone changes in recent times....

Good work!

[Silver]

Mmmm interesting. Has the svgalib changed a lot recently (well not that recently - been a while since I played with advancemame)?

I'm quite surprised by the newer Ati results (the 9600XT) as I've had all kinds of 15KHz modes from my 9500 radeon with superb results - although that's mainly from within windows. No idea if svgalib is at all different between dos/windows, or if having the ati drivers going at the same time makes a difference. Personally I'd like to see you give it a quick test in windows to see if it exhibits the same behaviour as you found in dos, although I realise that's probably out of your remit/sanity levels.

I was wondering if svgalib changes had changed how the ati card performed. For example on the Easymamecab site they reported a while back that a radeon7500 was "perfect" using device_video auto with advance 0.62 in Dos.

They also reported that a TNT2 was perfect with device_video_auto using dos/advancemame 0.86.

However I suspect the testing was not as extensive as yours.

http://easymamecab.mameworld.net/html/hardware.htm

I don't have a dos setup at the moment, but if i get some time next week I might thorugh advancemame onto usb boot drive and see if I get any thing going on my 9500 ati card.

[Silver]

well don't worry about any windows testing.

This is making things (slowly) clearer to me, as I have found advancemame a bit of a black box before.

Would be interested if you did try an older version of Amame, just for interest. I have a feeling that a lot of reports on what cards are good have been based on what does a few of the common resolutions well and thats that.

ATI - you are probably right. I notice they had good results with a Rage128. The Rage Pro is even older and quite a different architechture I think. I'll try my radeon on some of the different settings.

re scitechdisplaydoctor. I used this *years* ago for non-mame stuff, and it was great (basically added loads and loads of resolutions that you could set up and tweak, and make them available as though they were in the bios of your card. No idea if it would help, although I seem to remember it being based on the VESA standards so it may effect the vbe setting....

RE: radeon - yes I notice that is someone else going for the svgalib driver. I've been reading round and lots of people are having that issue with svgalib. You appear to have hit an issue with the other modes too, so not sure what is best.

EDIT: Just read a post on the Advance mame forums saying that 9x00 radeons do not work with svgalib - and to use the "sdl" library instead:
-------------------------------
Radeons 9x00 and above doesn't work with svgalib. Use sdl instead.
 
device_video sdl
device_video_output fullscreen
---------------------------------------

sdl is windows/linux/macOSX only by the looks of it - no idea what resolutions it supports. Not that hopefull - will test next week.

[wakerlet]

MonitorGuru,

That's a fantastic amount of work.  Thanks for confirming that I made the right choice with my 9970 T64 based card.  So what more are you planning on doing, the bios dump?

At this point I'd be most interested in a tutorial on using advv so I can set up my card.  Last time I tried I gave up because I had no idea what I was doing.  Short of that, the .rc file for the T64 card will work.  I just hate asking for handouts for something I should be smart enough to do on my own.  Stupid Windows is making me an idiot when it comes to DOS.  There was a time when I knew all of the tricks, now I can barely remember how to copy files 

Thanks,
Todd

[Silver]

Well after spending far too long reminding myself why I moved on from DOS, I have to concur - modern radeons appear to a complete non-starter with Advance mame in Dos or Windows.
   I did not try linux (I believe it works quite well - I've got a linux box running but I've already made the very concrete decision not to build my cab based on linux. This just down to software I want to use which is windows only - sucks I know...)

Apparantly you can have better joy with modern Geforce cards (as perhaps you showed above with a GeforceGTS). The only way to run a radeon is to use in the inbuilt sdl library (ie skip straigh*t past advv/advcfg, run amame and it will use directx via sdl I *think* - I was getting a lot of er0rors regarding sdl video drivers in the logging, but the games ran ok.)

This appears to be ruling out advancemame for me, short of buying a trident blade PCI and running dual gfx cards - quite up for trying it, although a search of ebay UK revealed not a sausage...

I experimented with powerstrip a lot too (peice of advice if you are running dual monitors and powerstrip - make the one you want to test the only display) - mainly to try and see what my monitor can do. Seems happy enough in 15-16kHz interlaced (windows looks *horrendous* but amazingly looks really quite good in games I tried. To test I was creating the resolution in powerstrip, than ran normal mame forcing the resolution I'd messed with. If anyone has good info on powerstrip settings I'd love to see some as its quite fiddly..

Lot more experimenting to do though.

quick (dumb) question: games with: X:256 / Y: 224

that seems far less horziontal lines than you would get on a arcade monitor/tv (500-600 lines?) Are they doubled by interlacing/scanlines? 

EDIT: Hmmm I was just about to purchase a 9880 PCI card, when I suddenly realised that I'm planning to use windows (doh) and your success was with the vbeline driver in DOS (vbeline and vgaline do not function in windows).  I'm beginning to get the feeling I'm fighting a losing a battle (and I know someone's about to suggest the ArcadeVGA to me....)

[Silver]

Hey thanks again for all the effort you've spent here - amazing.

Any chance you could attach the spreadsheet - that table does not appear to be formatted at all and hence is really hard to read....

[wakerlet]

I will attach a sheet tonight after work. It's weird that its not formatting right for you.

[wakerlet]

The problem is I dont think an ALL-IN-ONE encompassing .rc is possible, you just can't make both a 240x192 screen fill the same as a 320x240. (e.g. getting Mr.Do and MsPacman to fill the screen equally at exact vertical refresh with any video card going to the same monitor--without adjusting the VSize control to compensate.)

Isn't this the same with the ArcadeVGA card too?

I have a couple Nintendo cocktails I need to fix up and get rid of ... anyone want them??

[Silver]

How good is mame at selecting the best available resolution?

For example, If i make a resolution exactly 2x the original resolution (hopefully allowing a perfect x2 image with no stretching) will mame use this? Or do I need to config it manually?

I know Minwah made the Mame resolution tool to auto update game inis to use set resolutions - but I thinkn this was aimed at ArcadeVGA owners where perhaps the correct resolution is not as obvious....