Is an RTG A2000 same as an RTG A4000?

[Damion]

It really depends on a lot of factors. In general, the difference will be noticeable only under certain conditions. A Quake benchmark on a low-res screenmode will be identical on both systems. Scroll through a large picture that exceeds the amount of VRAM on your gfx board (=swapping data over the zorro bus) and the 4000 will perform a little better.

What about A3000?

Identical to the 4000.

[Damion]

Yeah, it's definitely not cheaper, and potentially much more fussy when it comes time to upgrade. Your friend should stick with finding a 4000/4000T, or upgrade the 2000 if AGA isn't a concern.

[Damion]

One real world scenario where the A2000 really fails at in RTG use is flipping high res / bit depth screens. Once you have more of those screens open than will fit in the RTG board's RAM, you will be waiting seconds for the machine to move the new screen into the RTG board.

I happened to have a beefy A2000 and I endured this for a while, but quite soon I became so annoyed with it that I dismantled my 060 + RTG A2000 and sold the pieces, went back to using Zorro 3 Amigas. Haven't had an RTG equipped Zorro 2 machine since.

Very true. This is especially bad with the CV64/3D, which I discovered does at best only ~2 MB/s over Z2 (bustest). The Picasso IV handles Z2 much better (full 3.5 MB/s), really the only way to go if you must have a loaded 2000.

[Damion]

Very true. This is especially bad with the CV64/3D, which I discovered does at best only ~2 MB/s over Z2 (bustest). The Picasso IV handles Z2 much better (full 3.5 MB/s), really the only way to go if you must have a loaded 2000.

One last thing - PIV and an '060 on the 2000 will only save your behind up to a resolution of 1024x768x16-bit. Push it any further, and Z2 rears its head bigtime...

[Damion]

We are all forgetting one thing.......A2000 is really an A500 in a desktop case.......with zorro slot so ummm the mere fact it can go this far....is a feat, yeah?

Don't get me wrong, a maxed 2000 ('060 + SCSI2, PIV, etc) is not by any means a letdown, still a very fast and fun system in classic terms. I had mine setup on the same desk next to a similarly equipped 4000 for a while, and couldn't tell the difference 90% of the time.

It's just that with the 4000 you get Z3 and AGA, so might as well do that if you can. But there's no shame in upgrading the 2000, if you go that route.

And actually you can't do _much_ better resolutions with Zorro III either. They are pretty limited in today's standards. But if you have PCI gfx card, then you can really go further. I for example have no problems using 1600x1200x16bit screen with my A1200 with Mediator and Voodoo3.

Exactly, once you push Z2 to the point of obvious slowdown, all other things being equal, the 3000/4000 will only be less slow. PCI is definitely another thing to consider, ofc it's not possible at all on the 2000. I've been tempted over the years, but never took the plunge. Voodoo on the Amiga must be a blast.