Possibly dumb question. 030 vs 040

[Crumb]

Of course it is way faster, the '040 kicks close to 1 instruction per clock cycle average, but you don't see it with the vast majority of amiga software. An '030 needs no libs for compatibility, produces much less heat, and uses less power especially if you don't need the fpu. Which again most amiga software doesn't.

A 040 runs rings around a 030. Just try to load some images and 030 will choke compared to 040. This is very easy to notice. Emulators also run faster on 040 thanks to bigger caches and demos run faster too. Video playing is also a good test.

I never had problems with power or heat with a 040, these "heat" problems sound like urban legends to me. They work fine with a heatsink and if you use it inside a desktop A1200 you may need a very small fan but that's all. 040s do not emit so much heat. Phase5 sold Blizzard040/40 and Cyberstorm040/40 without any fan.

Power requirements are not much higher than 030+fpu.

I jumped from a 68000/7Mhz to an A1200 with Falcon040/25 and I used a BlizzardIV 030/50 the weekends at our local club and I always noticed it way slower. Of course you may find a few applications that perform in a similar way on a 030 but 040 usually crushes 030s. 040 has 4KB+4KB of cache and 030 just 256bytes... even if BlizzardIV memory interface is well designed it can't fight against cache L1. I have/had Amigas with 68000/7, 68020/14, 68030/16, 68030/25, 68030/50, 68040/25, 68040/28, 68040/30, 68040/40, 68060/50, 68060/60, 040/25+PPC, 060/50+PPC... I never had heat problems on my A1200 despiting it carried a 040 and I never had to add stuff to raise it or improve airflow.

Even the slowest 040 I ever touched, a cbm 3640 felt faster in normal use than a BlizzardIV 030/50.

68040.library is included as standard with AmigaOS so he doesn't have to install extra libraries. If he wants to play games WHDLoad is the best piece of software he could use.

This guy is asking for basic advice which I gave. We could get into Mips and stuff or we could give him some simple suggestions on picking an accelerator. With most amiga software imho an '030 is actually better for many people especially beginners.

btw I have had amigas with 68000, 68020, 68030 25mhz and 50mhz, and 68040

If he just wants to play games then he doesn't need much cpu anyway. Just some fastram and whdload. If he's interested on 3D games a 040/28 or faster would be needed.

For demoscene a 060 is almost mandatory for watching last 12 years productions, for apps I would get at least 040/40 and a graphic card.

[Crumb]

I'm with KThunder here - 040 may be significantly faster, but without fast ram on the turbo board it never reaches its potential. Subjectively with A1200 Blizzard 1230 MKIV felt faster than A4000 with A3640. Especially in demos.

This is ridiculous. Who installs a cpu card without fast ram??? I don't know anyone who uses a 040 without fastram. Do you use your 030s without fastram?

I never felt BlizzardIV 030/50 faster than A3640 in demos... in fact many won't work on a 030.


@runequester

If you don't even have fastram then a 030 is better than nothing. For Gloom/AB3D you can always reduce screen size and use 2x2 pixels if you want. If you want to use your miggy for something else than games get a 040.

[Crumb]

@rvo_nl

I've had quite the opposite experience. Many demos were made to work on a blizzard 1230IV, simply because it was one of the most popular accelerators around. 040's were a bit more rare in the demoscene, while 060 were a bit more common.

I guess you mean '90 demos because most >2000 demos were designed for 040/060. In fact the c2p designed for 040+ will perform badly on 030 and if your software needs fpu you'll raise the cost of the 030 so much that you'll be able to buy a 040/40 for almost the same price. For 030 demos it's a good idea to run cyberpatcher/oxypatcher to improve compatibility a little.

@koshman

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm talking about the RAM that's on the turboboard itself. Of course, I have the usual 16MB A4000 mobo RAM, but with A3640 it still feels subjectively slower than 1230 MKIV. I don't have any benchies, I simply remember quite a few demos that were slow, but still enjoyable on 030/50 that are nothing more than a slideshow on A3640. I'm not saying the A3640 is slower across the board - it might well be faster in WB and serious apps, but that's more difficult to judge.

Demos running faster on BlizzardIV 030 than on A3640 is definitely not normal. In the worst case they'll run the same but 040 is usually smoother even running at 25Mhz. Enable MAPROM if you don't have it enabled and relocate your kickstart to fastram. Even if your 040 has fpu it doesn't mean using fpu versions will always be faster. Do you have the caches enabled? Are your simms ok? Do you have 68040.library correctly installed? Check your motherboard jumpers.

If you fit a gfx card you'll notice even more how slow 030s really are compared to 040 (even A3640/25).

In the worst case and if you dare you can try to overclock your board to 28Mhz (30Mhz too, I think 33Mhz may require small changes) and the system may feel slightly smoother.

Anyway, on an A1200 a 040 beats a 030 easily and allows you to run 3D games and demos much better.

@Thorham

I try to stay away from 030 as IMHO they feel slow (much more than half the speed). Using CED obviously doesn't need much cpu power but if you built moderately large programs you would notice the benefit of a 040 or 060. 030s and 040s are is quite different from a programming point of view (faster FPU available in 99% of situations, bigger caches, longer pipeline that allows more instructions per cycle...). Of course you could argue that since you are coding in ASM a 030 is enough but you could argue the same about a 020 :-) And you could argue that you like coding entire modular OSes is fine with a 68000... but WB programs would still feel slow on it. Try IBrowse with some page with images and you'll notice the difference.