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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: nscaleworld on July 14, 2012, 01:16:13 PM
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I am thinking of buying one of these, but, I have questions.
- Are the mounting holes ATX spacing
- What kind of memory does it take
- What kinds of graphics boards can I use
- What kind of power supply does it need
- What kind of keyboard and mouse
This board appears to be made better then the newer 1 GHz boards. I prefer quality over features. Will this board last me 20 or 30 years?
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See ACube's website for more info:
http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=2
http://www.acube-systems.biz/download/flex_manual_0.2.pdf
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I am thinking of buying one of these, but, I have questions.
- Are the mounting holes ATX spacing
- What kind of memory does it take
- What kinds of graphics boards can I use
- What kind of power supply does it need
- What kind of keyboard and mouse
This board appears to be made better then the newer 1 GHz boards. I prefer quality over features. Will this board last me 20 or 30 years?
Since both products are from the same company, I'd go with the SAM460ex.
Not only does it have a faster processor, but it slightly more powerful and has a PCIe slot so it can support more modern video cards.
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What kind of DDR memory does this board use, 333 MHz or 400 MHz? Also, I noticed, looking at the picture, that there are 2 bumps in the DIMM slots instead of 1 bump. I can not find any information on what kind of memory this board takes, just states "DDR" memory. Well, there are all kinds of DDR memory out there.
Also, what kind of video card. Many of you should already have this board, because it is cheaper then buying a slower, over-priced, over-heating PPC board. So, what DDR memory and what graphics board do you have installed in your Amiga One computer? Also, are the mounting holes standard atx spacing? If so, then I could install this board into a really cool looking pc tower case.
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Since both products are from the same company, I'd go with the SAM460ex.
Not only does it have a faster processor, but it slightly more powerful and has a PCIe slot so it can support more modern video cards.
The newer, faster board appears to be lower quality then the older slower board. Also, the older board is layed out better and has 3 pci slots. So, I will buy one of the older boards.
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Why would you assume the newer board is lower quality? Especially when you were asking very basic questions about it (footprint, PSU and gfx card options) it's odd you would know/believe one is inferior to the other.
Honestly, unless price is a major concern - there's no reason to look at anything other than a 460 board if you are interested in the ACube products.
Do make sure it fits your needs. I've seen a lot of people buy the NG PPC boards to try and relive old times of days past on a legacy Amiga. If you're buying one to run old legacy games and apps, you will be quite disappointed. I have a 440ep and love it, but a replacement for a beefed up A4000 or A1200 it isn't if one is looking to run the old 68k software. A fair bit of that still needs emulation, and the cost of a PPC OS4 machine is pretty high just to have to run UAE on what is underpowered HW by today's standards if you're a gamer.
All the answers to your questions are on ACube's website, as is the product manual.
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Would UAE even run half decent on that processor?
I know OS4 has a low foot print but still..
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Why would you assume the newer board is lower quality? Especially when you were asking very basic questions about it (footprint, PSU and gfx card options) it's odd you would know/believe one is inferior to the other.
Honestly, unless price is a major concern - there's no reason to look at anything other than a 460 board if you are interested in the ACube products.
Do make sure it fits your needs. I've seen a lot of people buy the NG PPC boards to try and relive old times of days past on a legacy Amiga. If you're buying one to run old legacy games and apps, you will be quite disappointed. I have a 440ep and love it, but a replacement for a beefed up A4000 or A1200 it isn't if one is looking to run the old 68k software. A fair bit of that still needs emulation, and the cost of a PPC OS4 machine is pretty high just to have to run UAE on what is underpowered HW by today's standards if you're a gamer.
All the answers to your questions are on ACube's website, as is the product manual.
I want to try an Amiga One computer as an alternative to my Winblows XP Unprofessional computer. I am sick and tired of Microshaft and Winblows, and no, I will never buy an over-priced Mac.
The newer 1 GHz AmigaOne boards APPEAR to be of lower quality, so, I will buy one of the older boards.
As far as the Amiga, I have the following:
- Amiga 2000 (like new in original box)
- Amiga 2500 (like new in original box)
- Amiga 500 (like new in original box)
- Amiga 3000T-040 (like new, no box)
- Amiga 500T with built-in SuperGen (for games and mod music)
Also, I happen to have one of the largest and nicest Amiga software collections in the world. I have every piece of Amiga software, all like new in their original boxes. About 70% of my Amiga software are still shrink-wrapped.
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Would UAE even run half decent on that processor?
Not really, no. RunInUAE works well in OS4 in the latest update, which included ROM's and everything you need. It's workable, but I couldn't with good conscience recommend someone buy a PPC machine to use legacy 68k programs and games. It's a waste of money.
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See ACube's website for more info:
http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=2
http://www.acube-systems.biz/download/flex_manual_0.2.pdf
The website or the manual does NOT tell me what kind of DDR memory this board takes.
Also, can I use any 3.3 volt PCI graphics board or only specific ones. If so, which ones?
If ACube wants customers to buy these motherboards, then they need to provide better information, both on their website and in their manuals.
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If your needs are extremely simple, one of these machines may be OK for you.
Personally, as much as I like my SAM, the browsers simply are not good enough atm to even consider using it for anything other than a hobby.
But much of what I do is web and internet based, and the OS4 machine doesn't even come close to doing what I need a machine to do Internet wise.
I'm not talking rocket science - I'm talking GDocs and other similar services, cloud services, etc.
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Would UAE even run half decent on that processor?
I know OS4 has a low foot print but still..
on my old Samflex@800 I was running all my favourite OCS/ECS games with no problems at all :-) some AGA games like Super StarDust & Deluxe Galaga AGA ran fine with glUAE though I had to reduce the sound quality to avoid some sound distortion. I understand once JIT is completed our E-UAE will be much quicker so the lower end Sam's will greatly benefit from it.
I was running Lightwave natively (no uae) and let me tell you the difference in rendering speeds compared to my A1200 030@50 was incredible :knuddel:
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on my old Samflex@800 I was running all my favourite OCS/ECS games with no problems at all :-) some AGA games like Super StarDust & Deluxe Galaga AGA ran fine with glUAE though I had to reduce the sound quality to avoid some sound distortion. I understand once JIT is completed our E-UAE will be much quicker so the lower end Sam's will greatly benefit from it.
I was running Lightwave natively (no uae) and let me tell you the difference in rendering speeds compared to my A1200 030@50 was incredible :knuddel:
What does this have to do with my topic? Do you know what kind of DDR memory and PCI graphics boards these AmigaOne motherboards take?
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Is this the kind of DDR memory this Sam board takes:
PC2100 DDR266 200-pin (laptop memory)
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What if I do not want to use ATI graphics boards, can I get drivers for other 3.3 volt PCI graphics cards? I prefer Nvidia.
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What does this have to do with my topic? Do you know what kind of DDR memory (http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=2) and PCI graphics boards these AmigaOne motherboards take?
sorry i don't remember off hand but if the answers aren't in the manual on ACube's site then I'd email Amigakit and/or Acube as they would definitely know and are very good with support.
http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=2
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If I am not mistaken the bord is selling with 1gb pre installed, that is maximum what the sam440 can have, so you dont have to buy it separetly. For the graphics card I would recomend a radeon 9000, 9200 ore 9250 pci with 256mb graphics ram. You find them new cheep on ebay.
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Normal DDR PC-400 (up to 512 MB sticks, 2 slots on the flex) and PCI 9250 cards, afaik. May be drivers for other cards for all I know, but I used a 9250 in my ep with zero issues.
See the Acube store and browse through the offered add-ons, which gives you more detailed specs on additional things you can add to a bare mobo purchase. Make sure you get the right voltage PCI gfx card if you aren't buying it along with the motherboard from a vendor in a package deal.
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What if I do not want to use ATI graphics boards, can I get drivers for other 3.3 volt PCI graphics cards? I prefer Nvidia.
There are no drivers for Nvidia cards.
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There are no drivers for Nvidia cards.
So, they force you to use ATI video boards. They must be getting a % from ATI.
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ATI are much more open with their documentation. It's much harder to support nVidia, so ATI is supported instead.
There are no bespoke cases for modern AOS 4 machines, so they all use ATX holes.
I'm not sure why you think the 460 is worse made though... have you actually seen them in the flesh because it's impossible to see from photos.
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It seems to use 200-pin SODIMM UP TO 533MHz DDR2 ram
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on my old Samflex@800 I was running all my favourite OCS/ECS games with no problems at all :-) some AGA games like Super StarDust & Deluxe Galaga AGA ran fine with glUAE though I had to reduce the sound quality to avoid some sound distortion. I understand once JIT is completed our E-UAE will be much quicker so the lower end Sam's will greatly benefit from it.
I was running Lightwave natively (no uae) and let me tell you the difference in rendering speeds compared to my A1200 030@50 was incredible :knuddel:
Getting slightly off topic but to my understanding PPC JIT in E-UAE is activated only when emulating 68020 or better and many games wouldnt work with JIT anyway.
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Memory type is 100 pin, 400mhz ddr. Never heard that kind of memory before, how to find and do you know any product numbers etc, so that I could try to find them myself.
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Memory type is 100 pin, 400mhz ddr. Never heard that kind of memory before, how to find and do you know any product numbers etc, so that I could try to find them myself.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT12832P335
Sam440flex takes this memory
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It seems to use 200-pin SODIMM UP TO 533MHz DDR2 ram
No that's not for a sam440flex
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Will this board last me 20 or 30 years?
Eh, what? Nobody could answer that question. Consumer electronics are bound to break, and 30 years is a *very* long time. Nobody could guarantee a life span that long.
Or did you by "last me" mean "be useful to me"? Well, it's a *very* low performance board. It equals in performance to yesteryear smartphones, my $129 Efika MX beats it for example, and that's just the CPU, the Efika has many HW accelerators for media playback etc. It should be able to play back DVD resolution MPEG2 video (thanks to the Overlay support in these drivers), but anything more than that would be over the top I guess. It lacks completely L2 cache, as well as Altivec, and the clock frequency is low. So will it "last you 30 years"? Well, you tell me...
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Eh, what? Nobody could answer that question. Consumer electronics are bound to break, and 30 years is a *very* long time. Nobody could guarantee a life span that long.
Or did you by "last me" mean "be useful to me"? Well, it's a *very* low performance board. It equals in performance to yesteryear smartphones, my $129 Efika MX beats it for example, and that's just the CPU, the Efika has many HW accelerators for media playback etc. It should be able to play back DVD resolution MPEG2 video (thanks to the Overlay support in these drivers), but anything more than that would be over the top I guess. It lacks completely L2 cache, as well as Altivec, and the clock frequency is low. So will it "last you 30 years"? Well, you tell me...
*facepalm*
Not again....
I hope you have never worked in retail, those poor people being made to buy what you want instead of what they need.
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This is the RAM needed for a Sam440ep-flex board:
https://acube-systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/en/memory-modules/21-512-mb-ddr-memory-module.html
it's a 512 MB DDR-400 DIMM 100 pins module.
You can buy a complete bundle including 1 GB RAM (2x512 modules) and AmigaOS4.1:
https://acube-systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/en/sam-motherboards/78-sam440ep-flex-667-mhz.html
The recommended graphic card is the following:
https://acube-systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/en/graphic-cards/14-ati-radeon-9250.html
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@m3x.
Hey that's a cool avatar!
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Getting slightly off topic but to my understanding PPC JIT in E-UAE is activated only when emulating 68020 or better and many games wouldnt work with JIT anyway.
Best to ask the expert, Rachy over on his blog
http://euaejit.blogspot.ca/?m=1
Btw, looks like we will definitely be getting a nice speed boost for both AOS & MOS! Thanks for helping out 'Mr. Anonymous':D;)
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LOL @ the idea ACube or Hyperion is getting a kickback out of ATI.
The number of cards they would be selling is peanuts. Not even a blip on the radar.
The ATI 9250 is a card from 2002. While useful on the Amiga platform both for PPC/NG folks and expanded A4000/A1200 users alike, they are mostly being used as doorstops and paperweights by the rest of the world. Surplus DirectX 8.1 cards that no one else has a use for. $10 items off ebay.
The hardware will support whatever card you throw in there, it's just a PCI slot. For whatever reason, the OS supports only ATI cards. I'd have to think that the developers of the drivers chose this line of cards because they were cheap and plentiful, and writing drivers for them was possibly easier than it was for the nVidia line.
If you want better gfx options you'll have to look at the 460 or the X1000.
I had a 9250 in my ep and didn't notice it offering anything better/more than the onboard gfx chip did, so I removed it, but you don't have that option with the Flex boards.
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http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36053&forum=14
Radeon HD drivers works with Sam440
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*facepalm*
Not again....
I hope you have never worked in retail, those poor people being made to buy what you want instead of what they need.
*It is* a weak CPU; it operates on low frequencies and it lacks vital components that generally makes things faster. Complex web sites, modern media files, emulation, compiling, rendering etc — the poor performance *will* show, there is no way around it! If you are happy with this, then fine, but he asked "will it last me 30 years", and this surely puts things in a different perspective. It can hardly do what one would expect *today* when it comes to everyday media. Deluding people, fooling them to think they will get something more powerful than what it is, will get you nowhere. That kind of behavior will kick back sooner or later, honesty is better.
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http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36053&forum=14
Radeon HD drivers works with Sam440
...which is kind of useless at the moment, since they lack both any form of overlay as well as 3D. Especially the missing overlay would be very painful on a weak machine like this. He would be much better off with a 9250 card that has proper support for all this.