Blizzard 1230 MKIV voting gone mad

[Harrison]

There is currently a Blizzard 1230 MKIV for sale on ebay here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=120313739853).

It still has 4 days to go on the auction but already 11 bids have been made and the price is up to £155. Is there something I don't know? I wonder what the final price is going to end up at? :huh:

[Buleste]

So much for the credit crunch. Then if you look here (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=200260486644) no one has made a bid for a Blizzard 1260. Mind you that's because the guy selling it has given it a crap title that no one knows what it is. A few do now though.

[Harrison]

This Blizzard 1230 MKIV is continuing to shoot up. It is now up to £180 with 12 bids and still just under 4 days to go. :o

Are we missing something these bidders know?

[Buleste]

I've just looked at the auction and he doesn't even know if it works or what size RAM comes with it. People are mad. I think the people who are bidding on it are going to end up doing a banker when the auction ends due to the price. (Doing a banker is my slang for throwing yourself off a great height which is what a lot of bankers have been doing recently;).)

[TiredOfLife]

That's off it's head. :o
I have kept hold of one just in case.
I can guarantee it works and have a 128meg simm with it.

Should auction if off for that type of cash.

[Buleste]

The final score for the two auctions.

Blizzard 1230IV unknown if working and how much RAM £180.00
Blizzard 1260 working with 32MB RAM £165.00

That shows what can be done if you list something properly and also that there are still bargains out there.

[Harrison]

It shows the final prices on ebay are still quite random and hard to predict. It's also quite illogical how much some people will pay for an item. The 1230 for example normally sells for around £110-130. However I've seen some where no one wanted to bid and it sold for £75.

Getting the listing right is important, but going by the lack of information in that 1230 auction it shows it isn't completely needed. Also the random bidding shows you have to be lucky and hope that the right people willing to pay more are currently looking.

[Zetr0]

that Blizzy 1230 bidding comes down to two or more people wanting it and not having the ability to say NO! enoughs enough... morons...

the 060 on the otherhand is about 35% short of its real value to be honest so a subtle bargin there me thinks...

I have just being doing business with a friend of mine from AmiBay, and he picked up an Apollo 060 for £147, now that is a serious bargin! again the listing was poor, advertising it as a Paragon + a serial number.... silly peoples...

still that blizzy 030.... stupid stupid money!!! should of gone to AmiBay!

[tabuhuso]

Magnum 1230 mk II, much faster than blizzard 1230. Why ?

[Buleste]

The clock speed of the Magnum is 40 Mhz whereas the clock speed for the Blizzard is 50Mhz. There will also be some differences due to the efficiency of the architecture of the board itself.

[Harrison]

Blizzard boards are generally regarded as the best accelerators you can buy, with Viper and Apollo cards being next in line.

[Zetr0]

its interesting how people flock to certain brands of accelerator card.

Although there is a small element of truth, there are a lot of misunderstoods in the realms of performance.


Lets see if i can impart some usefull information.

First LAW:-
Although Fast ram is crucial for performance, at the end of the day, that data WILL end up in chip memory for use with the custom chipsets

Acceess times:-
This is goverend by a few factors and they are

CLOCK SPEED
LATCHING Times

Reading Memories
Writing Memories
logic routing



Now you might think that the Clock Frequency goverens all, but it is infact limmited to Latching Times, and arguably because of the Frequnecy it Imposes on the circuit some latching times will differ.

Now... complicated stuff, its enough to give hardware engineers and designers nightmares to behonest however to know that these problems and facets exist its enough to move onto the Next stage


Because of Latching speeds some Frequencies are more effcient at catching access times, remember, every chip, integrated circuit has a propagation and process speed so this is where it can get REAL confusing.

so where does this leave the 3 most known Accelerator cards of the A1200 ?

well interestingly due to their differing design not really top or bottom, infact, like most things, depends on your needs.

so lets have a look

Starting with A for Apollo *ACT
Apollo 1230 Mk1 / Mk2 & Mk3 (manufactured A1200 030 cards since 1994)


The limmits of these cards is in maxium of memory the memory controller can handle, in the mk1 & 2 it is 32MB of RAM where as in the Mk3 64MB is the limmit (with the addition of an aftermarket 72pin SIMM port)


Remeber B is for Blizzard *phase 5*
(one the most prolific companies started making 030's since 1993)

The Blizzard line of accelerators is in an interesting one, with 4 versions of Blizzard 030

Limmitations
The Mk1 and Mk2 can have a maximum of 64MB of Ram where the Mk3 can only have 32MB of Ram. The latter revision MkIV can have upto 128MB of RAM,

All of these Cards share an Addon known as the Blizzard SCSI, this after market purchase has the option to increase the amount of memory a further 128MB on all cards

now V is for Viper

Wow, now the Viper name is a bit of a minoma, lots of companies made Viper's with 030's, from MTech, DKB and even ACT

Have a look here (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=Viper&company=&amiga=1200&intf=&mid=&base=dec&pid=) its perhaps just to various to list in truth LOL

----------

so with that whats the best, fastest ?!

Using a common Benchmark, AIBB for instance, some interesting things emerge,

The Apollo 030's infact have aproximately 10% faster Chip Ram Access compaired to thier Blizzard counterparts, personally I suspect thats newer range components with faster propagation times in truth.

The Blizzards have a slightly faster FAST RAM access, this I believe is down to better implementation of the memory controller thats used, however the exact speed difference is suseptable to data load.

The best thing to do is check on

amiga resource AIBB scorres (http://amiga.resource.cx/perf/aibb.pl?ref=apollo1220#apollo1220)

[Harrison]

From my point of view, most of the best known accelerators are pretty much on a par in terms of CPU performance. For me the differences that count are build quality and reliability. And the Blizzard cards are in my view the best made cards with what always looks like a lot of care and attention to detail in their design and build. Some of the other makes of card don't look like they have had quite the same level of expense given to them in the production phase.

Another make that did always impress me in terms of quality was GVP products. You always paid a bit more for GVP over some other lessor known makes, but you got what you paid for. Their A500 sidecar expansions were the best by far (I would still love to get hold of a GVP A530), and the Zorro cards I've owned from them have always worked really well (especially their SCSI cards).

We will definitely have to start writing an A1200 accelerator guide in the Wiki soon to help explain the differences between the makes and models. And I will definitely need your help Zetr0 for the more technical bits. ;)