new arcadeVGA anytime soon?? Now with a POLL

[Fozzy The Bear]

hmm... reading comprehension......   

You insult me with:

Anyone who REALLY plays FPS games will tell you a joystick and buttons will not play the games well. 

AFTER I've said that I play FPS games on my cab... You pop up an claim I don't REALLY play fps games.... No reading comprehension problem at all there. 

Just for your information... My other half REALLY REALLY plays FPS Games on the cab. She was an Unreal Tournament National Championship runner up, a few years ago... She'll be more than happy to tell you that they play very nicely on an arcade cab. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to also meet you in an arena and kick your butt very soundly while playing from the cab .

And if you are using a monitor that accepts high res resolutions, you can easily set up the cab WITHOUT an AVGA.  But whatever....

As Krick has so kindly pointed out for you.... "The ArcadeVGA has special drivers for multi-sync monitors that allow it to run at 31KHz as well as 15Khz so you get the best of both worlds."

While no doubt you understand that the point of AVGA is to run arcade games at their native resolution and refresh.  On a Multisync that means that it's also possible to run High res PC games, and that BOTH can and do live quite hapilly on the same machine.

So as I said in the first place... For me an update of the AVGA card to something with a bit more horsepower than a 9200 would be an advantage.

What exactly is it that you can't manage to comprehend about that??

Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Fozzy The Bear]

I couldn't care less what you do, but you must admit, it's unusual (I nearly said 'wierd' until I remembered your short fuse  ) to want to do video editing on an arcade cabinet...certainly it's not the kind of application an ArcadeVGA-style card would be aimed at.

You can call me wierd if you want... LOL  You're allowed... You wrote the best front end on the planet, that makes life so much easier.

It IS an odd application for an arcade cab, I agree with you completely.... But take the following into account and it starts to look a lot less odd: When I or my other half are not playing games, it means the computer is churning away processing video and not tying up my other machine. It is a very slow process sometimes, even with a lot of horsepower. BUT, given that I shelled out money for the hardware in the cab, it might as well be doing something useful when I'm not playing games on it.

When I am playing games, I do like to have the choice between Arcade and high end PC games... and it means I'm again not tying up the machine connected to the internet, and which a lot of my work also sits on. Q.E.D.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[pointdablame]

What exactly is it that you can't manage to comprehend about that??

I understand your entire argument, but you have yet to see the point of my argument.  I am not saying NO ONE could use a better chipset on the AVGA.  My argument is it is NOT NECESSARY. Big difference.

You are in the minority... the very small minority IMHO.  Andy would have to either convert all AVGA cards to PCIe with a better chipset, OR handle 2 product lines of an extremely niche product.  Also, it would make no sense to jump from a 9200 to another mid range chipset in your argument, so he'd have to go to a much newer chipset, and thus as I already mentioned, probably at least double the cost of a card.

So in that situation you'd have either
- A cheaper AGP card and a much more expensive PCIe card - the problem with this is that people who want to use a PCIe card on a MAME cab probably doesn't want to spend $200+ on a video card when MOST people use it for arcade games.  (again, i say MOST)

-ONLY the expensive PCIe card... now you've alienated AGP folks AND folks who want a simple PCIe card, not a high end card

- Or maybe there should be THREE versions?  AGP, low-end PCIe, high-end PCIe... or throw in a PCI card for FOUR...


It's not financially viable and makes little to no business sense.  I'm not attacking you personally, which you can't seem to understand... it's just silly IMO to upgrade the the chipset at this point in time.

[squirrellydw]

So what is Andy doing, he has to be following this.  He said he is working on a PCIe card, does this include a new chipset or the same chipset just for PCIe?  From the little experience I have, I agree there is no reason to put an expensive chipset on it but I think it needs to go to PCIe or just PCI.

[Crony]

I have the D9200 and Andy's card and if you can afford it, IMO it is the best solution of all. It plays everything and seems to magically change the refresh rates and resolutions. This combo is expensive, but really rocks!!

[Bloinkxp]

Hi All,
I'd like to put my two cent/pence in.
Just given the evolution of the Video Card period I doubt that Andy would use a PCI device.  Quite simply it looks as though it has a definite end of life.  I have been with computers since the Mono/CGA days on the ISA bus...I can smell a dead graphics bus a mile away.  The PCI X1 quite simply can accomplish the bandwidth of a PCI device and is future proof...

Also, an AVGA is great device that was made for the Arcade group.  It really shines displaying arcade resolutions on an arcade monitor.  If I were a hard core gamer, why would I play Unreal Tournament 2k3 on that?  Why not install an big honkin XGA monitor in my cabinet and play it with the eye candy turned up?

.02 given,
-D

[pointdablame]

So what is Andy doing, he has to be following this.  He said he is working on a PCIe card, does this include a new chipset or the same chipset just for PCIe?  From the little experience I have, I agree there is no reason to put an expensive chipset on it but I think it needs to go to PCIe or just PCI.

It would have to be a different chipset as I'm fairly sure there is no PCIe variant of the 9200 chipset.  The real question is whether it would be based on a low to mid range chipset (like the current AGP ArcadeVGA is), or a high end chipset that some people in the thread said would benefit them.  Of course the other imporant thing to consider is WHEN to introduce it.  We all know that the current AVGA won't be around forever... but should the new version come out in a month? 3? 6? a year?

[Fozzy The Bear]

I understand your entire argument, but you have yet to see the point of my argument.  I am not saying NO ONE could use a better chipset on the AVGA.  My argument is it is NOT NECESSARY. Big difference.

I do absolutely understand your argument.... I don't actually agree with it.. There's a difference.

I'm not pushing for a PCI-E Card... in fact I haven't said that anywhere. I would however like to see it as an 8X AGP card.  I personally think, that has much more life span in it.  PCI-E is, as several people have pointed out, already being backtracked on, with manufacturers putting out new boards with high end AGP on them.

Granted that it's going to cost a little more for the new card. But, we're not exactly talking mega bucks here.

While I agree it'd have very little benefit in Mame (at the moment), it would have a huge benefit to any Direct-X Windows Game.  That way we get the best of both worlds.

IMHO It wouldn't hurt at all to be moving AVGA up to an  X800 on AGP 8X and that's actually a scaleable card that can be stuck on a PCI-E bus as well at next to no additional cost apart from a very basic PCB change.

I'm afraid that your argument that it doesn't necessarily need an upgrade (at the moment) is rather much a non starter...... I suspect that Andy has absolutely no choice about it. 9200 chipsets have not been manufactured for quite a while now...... He has to move onward and upward if he wants to carry on producing AVGA Cards. So really the only question is where to take it to.  X800 on AGP 8X ..IMHO makes the most sense (at the moment). Low cost, above mid range performance and maximum compatibility.

In actual fact it makes more sense for Andy to upgrade it (from a business model point of view) Because the more people that can find uses for it, no matter how diverse or nich market those uses are, the more people he can actually sell it to.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Fozzy The Bear]

an AVGA is great device that was made for the Arcade group.  It really shines displaying arcade resolutions on an arcade monitor.  If I were a hard core gamer, why would I play Unreal Tournament 2k3 on that?

That is exacxtly the point.... It needs to be able to do both! At the moment it can't hack it with the PC Games.  The 9200 was a pretty crap chipset even when it was newly released. Almost all of the 3D sites slated it.

There's no reason why it won't still shine at running arcade monitors after being upgraded, if that's what you want to do. But if it does both, then Andy hugely increases his pottential market.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[kujina]

I wanna ISA version of the AVGA cos I have a crusty 386 and I'm a cheap b@/*#

[Ahigh]

I don't claim to know, but I heard you don't really need special graphics cards if you know what you're doing.

--
- Ahigh

[pointdablame]

I don't claim to know, but I heard you don't really need special graphics cards if you know what you're doing.

--
- Ahigh

You dont.  But the AVGA makes it so insanely simple, that it's not worth the trouble to a lot of people to mess with other cards.