SAM 440 - What would owning one mean to you?

[zylesea]

Amithony wrote:
I thought id throw this out there.

It would mean just another ppc amiga at home, which wouldn't be bad thing, but I have two ppc Amigas already (Pegasos & Efika), that's enough for now. Next maschine is probably Mac Mini (MorphOS powered). The Sam is skipped by me - no benefit: too expensive, no advance over the Pegasos, prefer MorphOS over OS 4.x for many  reasons.

[zylesea]

hbarcellos wrote:
Hey, Can I run Amiga OS 4 on that U$ 99 Efika? Is it compatible with any AGP Video card, like a Radeon 9600?

Recommendation for the Efika is a Radeon 9250 128MB (you can use either AGP or PCI). Well supported and fast enough for that cpu.

This is the current gfx card support:

With 3d hardware acceleration:
ATI Radeon 7000VE (RV100)
ATI Radeon 7200 (R100)
ATI Radeon 7500 (RV200)
ATI Radeon 8500 LE (R200)
ATI Radeon 8500 (R200)
ATI Radeon 9000 (RV250)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (RV250)
ATI Radeon 9100 (R200)
ATI Radeon 9100 LE (R200)
ATI Radeon 9200 SE (RV280)
ATI Radeon 9200 (RV280)
ATI Radeon 9200 Pro (RV280)
ATI Radeon 9250 (RV280)   3DFX Voodoo3 2000 (Avenger)
3DFX Voodoo3 3000 (Avenger)
3DFX Voodoo3 3500 (Avenger)
3DFX Voodoo4 4500 (Napalm)
3DFX Voodoo5 5500 (Napalm) (recognized as a Voodoo4, only one GPU is being used)

Without 3d hardware acceleration:
3D Labs / Texas Instruments Permedia2
3D Labs / Texas Instruments Permedia2v
XGI Volari V3XT (VGA output only)   SIS 300
SIS 305
SIS 6326
Recently support for Radeon 9500 and Radeon 9700 was added, but not yet for 3D.

And no, OS4 does not run on it, you may ask Hyperion to do it (the license shouldn't be an issue any more(or has Acube one?)) or just use MorphOS.

[zylesea]

Amithony wrote:
 I think that the SAM is going to out perform my 68060 when I put it next to it.

A shame if it wouldn't. Even my current pocket calculator is faster than a 68060 ;-).

[zylesea]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

And more important than the GPU version (after all, no Sam/Efika is going to be used as a PS3 replacement any day soon anyway ;-)) is the amount of memory! At least in the case of MorphOS, thanks to its "Layers 3D" functionality, you know where the GUI is handled by the 3D GPU (somewhat like in MacOS X and Windows Vista). This consumes a lot of GFX card memory. I've heard that 64MB is a *bare minimum* (and *not* recommended), 128MB is better, and 256MB "let you use your machine without worrying about the mem consumed by l3d" (to quote jacadcaps).

With 64 MB L3D just does fine, I even used it on a 32MB card and it was surprisingly okay. For the OS4 composting engine it will be similar, I assume.
But still, 128 MB VRAM are indeed better and the limitation to 64 MB VRAM is as stupid as the 128MB RAM on Efika.
Rule of thumb for all computers: the least you should be stingy with is RAM, be it VRAM or "normal" RAM.
Violation of that rule of thumb leads to some unpleasant PITA.

[zylesea]

Amithony wrote:

Courses for horses. Id happily swap my calculators for your amigas if that's where you're going.

Nothing left to swap, sold my 68k maschines many, many moons ago (except one A600). Once used to the ppc speed suddenly I didn't felt comfortable on 68k anymore.
Or to put in a nutshell: You'll be amazed by the speed of a ppc Amiga.

[zylesea]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

But with "You'll be amazed by the speed of a PPC Amiga" maybe zylesea meant a G4 with Altivec?

No, I am still quite satisfied with my 'carppy' ;-)Pegasos 1 G3 600. That serves me now since more than 6 years (well, the Pegasos 1 April1 exchange board celebrates its6th birthday next days).
I also used a Blizzard 200Mhz PowerUp card - and even that blew away my 68k setup. But compared to the Pegasos it felt slow. The Pegasos 1 has a convenient speed. Also the Efika pleases me quite well (does its job very good).
But I am looking very forward to get a Mac Mini soon to get a new main maschine - that will be quite a step forward to the Pegasos1.