GFX cards

[xeron]

The best possible card you can put in an A3000 is a Voodoo (3, 4 or 5) using a Mediator 3000 board (see www.elbox.com).

For zorro, its a toss up between the Cybervision 64/3D or the Picasso IV. Both are very good Zorro III boards.

[xeron]

Somehow, I'd tend to think that a 680x0 might not give the Mediator/Voodoo combo much of an edge, either...)

You are so totally wrong. I've used both a CV64/3D and a Voodoo 3 3000/Mediator 4000 combo in this very Amiga 4000. The voodoo is much faster in general use (noticeably so!), and the fact that it has 4 times the video RAM also makes a huge difference.

3D performance is, of course, in a whole other league. I can run Quake 2 on this even with only a 50Mhz 68060. The CV64/3D was just about OK for DescentW3D ;-)

[xeron]

Really? I never ran into problems with the 4meg limit on the CV. What do you use the extra RAM for?

Well, i found that with the CV64/3D screens needed to be swapped out to/from fast ram when you go over 2 1024x768 screens. The voodoo usually has 2 or 3 1280x960 screens open here, and occasionally a couple more smaller ones, and rarely needs to swap screens out.

(I imagine the much faster RAMDAC and such is huge, though, and I really hadn't thought about that...)

Yeah. Don't forget that both cards have a 2d blitter to accelerate copies and scrolls, and the voodoo one is much faster. This makes intuition really, REALLY fly.

[xeron]

The problem with the Retina Z2 is that it won't provide screens are large as the CV64/3D, or the PIV. Its also Zorro II, and therefore much slower than those two cards.

As the guy was asking for the "best" cards, I'd certainly recommend a CV64 or PIV over a retina.