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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: moominpapa on April 13, 2006, 05:18:13 PM

Title: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: moominpapa on April 13, 2006, 05:18:13 PM: I have seen a 4meg ram upgrade for an a1200 on ebay. My ultimate aim is to play wing commander 'smoothly' on the a1200, like i do on my a3000, as it is easier for me to setup my a1200 to play.

Assuming that this upgrade brings me up to a total of 6mb, does anyone have any opinions on whether this will be enough to speed up and smooth out the game? Or is a cpu upgrade absolutely necessary?
Thanks
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: AmiKit on April 13, 2006, 05:22:54 PM: well, fast ram surely speeds the things up on a plain A1200. However this is not enough for more complex games. But in my opinion, Wing Commander is quite an old game so fast ram is enough to speed it up.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: TjLaZer on April 13, 2006, 05:41:22 PM: Your A3000 has a 030 minumun so if you want your A1200 to play games like your A3000 does, I would get a 030 card with some kind of Fast RAM capability. Get one with a 72-pin SIMM slot so you can throw in a 16 or 32MB SIMM and you will be all set.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: moominpapa on April 13, 2006, 05:43:44 PM: I thought that would be the best route but until i can get a decent accelerator, would 4mb of extra ram make a big difference?
Also bear in mind that i dont want to spend alot of money at first.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on April 13, 2006, 05:48:41 PM: Fast RAM will double the speed of a stock A1200 since the code cache of the 68ec020 on the motherboard is so small.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: TjLaZer on April 13, 2006, 05:50:02 PM: Yes the 4MB will be of great help. If you can get it cheap go for it. Keep in mind that you won't be able to use that if you get a accelerator card later on as you can only add 1 item in the expansion slot.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Morax on April 13, 2006, 07:03:49 PM: Well I can say from my own experience that the CD32 version of Wing Commander runs quite smooth on a A1200 with a Blizzard A1220 4MB accelerator (which has a 25MHz 68EC020 by the way).

And since you're probably referring to the "normal" OCS diskette-version that would probably even run faster (because of the "lack" of colors)
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: amiga1260 on April 13, 2006, 07:17:36 PM: A month ago I bought a GVP A1208 Memory and SCSI card. It has 4 MB of RAM.

I can play most of the games. Only I had a few WHDLOAD games that doesn't work.

This is my third A1200 setup.

Fast memory does speed your A1200 about 2 times.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Angus on April 13, 2006, 08:23:49 PM: >> would 4mb of extra ram make a big difference?

If you possibly can I would try and get a 1230, ideally a Blizzard with a few megs of ram with it. It turns the 1200 into a really handy machine and with WHDLoad is pretty much the optimal setup for running classic games.

Also for Wing Commander I strongly advise you to get the CD32 version and run it with the excellent WCPatch from Aminet, it speeds things up a lot as well as correcting some bugs. There's a couple of reviews documenting the differences on the Amiga Games Database.

Also, if you like this kind of game my personal favourite is Star Crusader (also reviewed) well worth a look.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: moominpapa on April 13, 2006, 11:53:18 PM: Quote

Angus wrote:
Also for Wing Commander I strongly advise you to get the CD32 version and run it with the excellent WCPatch from Aminet, it speeds things up a lot as well as correcting some bugs. There's a couple of reviews documenting the differences on the Amiga Games Database.

Not actually owning an amiga cd rom, where can i get the game file from? Cheers
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: foleyjo on April 14, 2006, 12:46:01 AM: theres a whdload installed copy of the cd32 version out there on the internet somewhere. Not sure if its legal to download it or not so you should but a copy of the game too.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: moominpapa on April 14, 2006, 12:49:35 AM: I dont think that would make it legal either, but it would be morally the right thing to do. Thanks for the advice.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Angus on April 14, 2006, 07:26:40 PM: >>but it would be morally the right thing to do. Thanks for >>the advice.

And it ought to be fairly easy to pick up too because at one point it given away with the CD32 making it pretty common.
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Seiya on April 18, 2006, 05:52:35 PM: WingCommander is a 3D games and fast ram only is not enough!
It is true that could be quiet smooth, but to play well to this game is better to have 030/50 :)
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Angus on April 18, 2006, 07:03:22 PM: >WingCommander is a 3D games and fast ram only is not enough!
>It is true that could be quiet smooth, but to play well to this game is better to have 030/50 :)

Its 3D, but aren't all the craft sprite based and therefore not quite as cpu demanding as polygons - at least in theory?
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: moominpapa on April 18, 2006, 07:30:18 PM
Title: Re: 6mb enough for games?
Post by: Seiya on April 22, 2006, 03:09:53 PM: yes, but the engine is 3D and with only fastram isn't very playable..
However is enough smooth on Blizzard 1220 020/28 Mhz and 4 MB di Fast built in.