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Author Topic: eBay: A2000 with 060 accelerator, ethernet  (Read 4673 times)

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Offline Damion

Re: eBay: A2000 with 060 accelerator, ethernet
« on: January 07, 2009, 07:25:50 PM »
The Wildfire is the only Amiga accelerator with DMA ethernet... :-o The TekMagic wins in a few benchmarks, but overall the Wildfire is a bit faster than the other 060 cards (particularly the Blizzard), even faster than cards for ZIII machines. (Granted, not by much. But still. ;-))

With the average cost of an A2K 060 card around $400-500, figure another couple hundred for the ethernet and "l33t" factor, plus the computer (a Rev 6 which looks to be in nice condition), and the BIN price is entirely realistic IMO.

Though I am perfectly happy with the TekMagic, had I known red would be getting a Wildfire I would have held out a while and spent the extra couple hundred bucks... Wildfire + PIV and deneb would make a seriously badass A2000.

 

Offline Damion

Re: eBay: A2000 with 060 accelerator, ethernet
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2009, 12:43:24 AM »
The Inferno is essentially unobtanium, I can't even find a decent picture of one. :-( According to rumors it does exist, and there are CGX drivers for it. The only practical advantages I can think of over the Phase5/GVP cards are DMA ethernet (no MNI driver AFAIK) and an overall slight performance boost at the same clock.

In regard to the Z2 bus - yes, this can be a bummer when the Z2 bandwidth is exceeded, but this isn't always the case. 1024x768x16 is plenty fast here, even with AfA eycandy on. (GFX benchmarks like P96Speed won't show a difference beween Z2 and Z3 at lower resolutions, either.) RTG scenedemos are nice and smooth, PIP stuff is fast (and resizing said window is fast), webpages that work well with IBrowse load quickly, scrolling through them is also fairly snappy (much faster than AGA). Ethernet is no problem with a fast CPU, the Z2 bus is still enough to handle most internet connections with room to spare.

Not to say Z3 isn't superior, quite obviously it is, and in some circumstances Z2 will limit performance. (If you're going to pick one machine to expand, the A3000/A4000 is a better choice.) However, for most basic use I've noticed little difference. As far as classic hardware goes, DMA ethernet (Wildfire is fastest ethernet on classic miggy), SCSI, and a good gfx card would still perform well overall, even with Z2.
 

Offline Damion

Re: eBay: A2000 with 060 accelerator, ethernet
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2009, 07:45:03 PM »
@LoadWB

I agree, DENEB would be put to better use in a Z3 machine. Already having a NIC in the 2000, I thought I'd hold off on one until I'm ready to start building the A3K.

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Me, personally, I have a Blizzard 060. I'd happily sell that if I could get a Wildfire.


The Blizz 2060 is an *awesome* card though... easily overclocked, and doesn't have a bugged SCSI device like the TekMagic. (No PFS3 on my boot partition :boohoo:)