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I've been thinking of upgrading either my A1200 that currently has a Blizzard 1230 MkIV or my A4000 equipped with an A3640.
Now, upgading the A1200 would obviously give a more significant boost but the A4000 would of course be more hassle free to upgrade.
I'm just curious about the difference between availability and price between the accelerators for the two. Does either one have a model that would give a good bang for the buck?
All this really depends what you do with your Amiga's, surely?Quote:
Originally Posted by protek
Another factor is compatability. 060 CPU's are more backward compatible than an 040, so another point worth considering too.
If it was me, I'd probably leave the A1200 as it is with the 1230MkIV & look @ putting an 060 in the A4K. The A1200 is kitted out perfectly to use as a WHDLoad box & the 060 will breathe new life into the A4K with some on board fast ram. If you want some more speed from your 060'd A4K, trash the IDE drives & use SCSI 2 drives off the 060 card. (not all 060 cards have SCSI but most & those worth having, do..)
RE pricing & price differences, it's usual for 060 cards to command £100+ more than 040 counterparts. Having said that, I've seen 040 40Mhz WarpEngine cards go for as much as CSMK2 060 cards. Having owned & abused a WE myself, there is no faster 040 card ever made for the A3/4K machines. When using SCSI Drives off this card with 60ns ram, they are blisteringly fast around the desktop. In terms of MIPS though, an 060 still floors the WarpEngine. - Average prices for these cards vary depending where you find them & it's hard to even try and quantify any values as I write this. Anything is only really worth, what someone is willing to pay....
Availability is good if you know where to look or perhaps even ask. Surely you are web wise to this & didn't I see you over @ AmiBay some years ago before I left?
I would agree with Kin on this. Keep your 030 in the A1200 as it is the perfect gaming setup. It's exactly what I have. Then stick an 060 in the A4000.
Avoid the 040 if possible because of more heat generated then any other cpu, and some compatibility issues. The 060 is much faster, cooler and about equal in compatibility with the 030.
The 030 is also a good fit to keep the A1200 as is. The 060 can run in a desktop setup, but doesn't fit well in the trapdoor and sticks out a bit. An 040 doesn't really work in a desktop setup because of greater heat generated. A tower conversion if the realistic thing for this, or raising the system up on legs with a fan.
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Thanks for the insight, guys! I'll probably start accumulating cash for either an 060 or a Warp Engine for the A4000. I already got a 128 MB ZorRAM card in it so I can cope with the lack of Fast RAM in the A3640. At one point I considered selling my A1200 with the Blizzard and IndiAGA to get funds to buy a better accelerator for the A4000 but then again, it really does make a great WHDLoad machine. I probably shoud get the A1200 recapped, though. The A4000 and my A600 have already gone through that.
I've recently bought a Vampire 600 FPGA accelerator for my A600, which also has Indivision and extra 1 MB of Chip. The current core already gives a 25 MHz 030 a good challenge. If the core becomes fast and stable enough, I have to take a second thought about selling the A1200.
@Kin Hell: Yes I'm still a regular member of AmiBay. :)
@ protek
Definitely re-cap the A1200. These Amiga's are too old to be running original Caps now. Don't forget much greater heat with 040's. The W/E is fast but hot @ 40Mhz & hotter still if she breathes with 128Mb of 60ns RAM & the cards jumpers set to use it. On top of that as Harrison also endorses, the 060 is more friendly when trying to run early/older software & will fall back to 68000 mode more readily than the 040 ever did.
If you look @ your ZorRAM card in SysIfo 3.24, does it Reigster & say what Bits wide it is? - I'd be guessing 24Bit if it does. Put a CPU card with Fast Ram on it & you have full 32Bit addressing to RAM right next to the CPU. No Motherboard/ZORRO wait-states, & don't forget, that's twice over for every bit of data thrown to RAM. (CPU card to ZORRAM & then back to CPU card) - The point I am trying to make here is that 60ns RAM on any Accelerator card is much much faster access than ZorRAM (irrespective of DDR speed). The bottleneck is the A4K's mobo ZORROIII plane. Distance travelled on circuits in these days made a huge difference too. - Bag yourself a CSMKIII or a CSPPC card, these cards address their memory in 64Bits wide, effectively. In essence, they are using 32Bit modules, but access two channels of 32Bits @ the same time. Much like Dual Channel DDR ram these days. :)
Another thing worth considering is the era these Accelerator cards were made. Most employed BGA sockets & they too are starting to expire. Hot Amiga's will suffer more where the solder has broken down & frequent CPU swapping will also vex the coupling.
Try & buy wisely. Stachu iirc (Stan from Poland) would see you right with a straight CSPPC card if you ever wanted to splash that much cash, but tbh, PPC on Classic Amiga's is a waste of money in my book. - Heck, they sell more than half the price of X1000. :lol: