What is the real power of Akiko chip in cd32 ?

[stefcep2]

It makes a small difference, but nothing spectacular.

Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised 020 C2P) - 18971 realtics (3.9 fps)
Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised Akiko C2P) - 12872 realtics (5.8 fps)

5.8/3.9=149% sped boost in frame rate.  People spend big dollars on a 25% frame rate improvement on modern graphics cards.  You get 50% increase in frame rate for free with Akiko. whereas a 50 mhz '030 with 32 meg ram at the time could have cost about $1800, with the ram costing about half of that.  Sure prices came down, but that was years after the CD32 was released.

[stefcep2]

Most people that have graphics cards aren't using them on a 68020 so your comparison isn't valid. The speed up for my 040 on an RTG card over AGA was immediately obvious.

-edit-

Oh wait, you are referring to modern cards on other systems, not RTG versus AGA. Yeah, you have a point. I currently have a GTX260, hopefully I won't get any newer card that isn't at least 50% faster.

Yep I meant that akiko gave you a 50% increase in frame rate for essentially nothing.  And I have seen people spend hundreds of dollars on a PC graphics card to get less than 50% frame rate improvement.  And when you consider the price of fast ram, or worse still an '030 card AND fast ram at the time, you realise that akiko gave quite a bit of bang for your buck.  If Akiko was built into A1200's, it would have been used a lot more.

[stefcep2]

Those time tests tend to be better than what i'd expect from the previous discussion.  With fast ram as quick as an '040.  If that translates to real world use, akiko was a missed opportunity when the 3d graphics craze took off on the PC.

[stefcep2]

@ hattig. You can say that again.