68060 Accelerators

[stefcep2]

TBH a 68060 is just icing on the cake these days.  Most Amiga owners I knew back in the day had '030's or slower A1200's.  And on that hardware-and anything else without a graphics card-the bottleneck is the native chipset graphics speed.

If you want to run Amiga productivity software quickly, then that software usually needs an RTG card to do it justice eg rendering, image processing, DTP.  Believe me, I know, I spent a small fortune upgrading my A1200 with an Apollo 68060, only to realise that AGA was still as slow as ever in 256 colors dblscan, which is what ImageFX, Photogenics, Cinema 4D and Pagestream need as  a minimum to be used comfortably

In short, the sensible thing would be to get an 030 ( 50 mhz if you can).  And if you need to run any of the above-mentioned apps, then do it in Winuae: its cheaper, faster, morecompatible and easier to set up than a big box amiga with an 68060 and a RTG card.

Ofcourse a true Amigan will ignore this sensible advice and buy an A4000, get that 68060, plus the picasso 4/cv64 with scan doubler/indivision.  I did.

[stefcep2]

@Chaoslord: the hardware FF/SD was next on the list,  but after buying the Apollo 68060, NEC 3D monitor, 32 MB RAM, 4 way ide splitter, external minitower, 3.5" HD CD burner, I said "enough!"....Also a guy offered me an A4000, with CS II 68060, 128 MB RAM, cyberscsi, 4gig scsi HD, CV64 (no need for SD/FF with the NEC 3D monitor for AGA) for $800 Aus ($450 US at the time).  ImageFX, Photogenics, C4D, Art Effect in 16 bit 1024x768, plus Mac emulation (photoshop, MS Office, Netscape) and I had the perfect computer, and the A1200 sat in the corner.

Funny thing is, its the other way around today..

[stefcep2]

Disagree with you totally here on my Blizz060/PPC under both OS3.1 & OS 3.5 PageStream, ImageFX, FinalWriter, and lots more besides run perfectly well WITHOUT AN RTG BOARD...

But on RTG board they really *shine*.  Seriuosly that software list loves a high-res high color screens.

From a few threads that's running here tonight it looks like a lot of folk using 060 boards don't have them set up to take full advantage and squeeze every bit of speed out of their set ups...

oh I did every speed hack I knew about:ftext, fblit, map kickstart into RAM, fastexec etc, 256 color AGA 640x480 ran like a dog

Of course it could be because your using an Apollo and not a Blizzard as the Blizzard boards are way better than the Apollo ones...

I've read that before and I would agree in terms of build quality P5 boards were better, the biggest issue is the stupid idea not to solder the timing crystal on the Apollo, so it would work its way loose when powered up, and damage the 68060.  But in terms of performance AIBB benchmarks I did, the Apollo outperformed the P5 boards in a lot of tests, ram speed being one big difference.

[stefcep2]

I do agree that an RTG board would make things even better but how many folk actually own one



Well I did say somewhere else I'd post some SysSpeed benchmarks for various setups and let folk judge for themselves, as I've never had a slow problem like you describe, I'll do it tomorrow though it's 4:35am here just now and It's time for me 3 hourly sleep...



I've only ever owned an Apollo040 board but I've downloaded some Apollo060 SysSpeed test result from the net and comparing both the Blizzard and the Apollo there were no significant differences.

Find it rather odd that you manged to get AIBB running on an 060 board as AIBB is not compatible with an 060 board, just launched it right now to check and am sitting here staring at the old bright orange software failure message ERROR 8000 000B... :confused:

Do you have a special version of AIBB

1. syspeed AFAIR isn't as good as AIBB.  Can't remember why.

2. To run AIBB on a 68060, you use the 68000 cpu, and a 68882 fpu option, just click the cycle gadget.  AIBB then works.  It probably underestimates how quick the 68060 is to relative to 68040 and lower cpu (still outperforms them on AIBB benchmarks), but for (at least) the purpose of comparing 68060 boards from differing manufacturers its useful.

eg http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/AIBB_1260, http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/Module68060, http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/p4_A4060

[stefcep2]

Lulz. Owned.

See above

Also, aga in 8bit will always be slow, knock it down to 64 and it'll purr along nicely, even with an 040.

 
Sure if all you want to run is workbench,  register paint program, or a WP or text editor.

For software like ImageFX, Photogenics, Arte Effect, any 24 bit renderer, you can't compare AGA with a 24 bit board.

[stefcep2]

1: they both have their differences but both perform the said task in slighlty  different manor...

i seem to recall that AIBB was a better way to benchmark.  Not sure why.

2: You can't run AIBB on an 060 and you don't even get to the option screen it crashes as soon as the checking system text appears, look it's just did it again, you must be using a hacked version

Just the 6.5 version that comes with classic workbench.

Check the aminet links of other people doing AIBB benchmarks with an '060.

[stefcep2]

Just gave it a go... non luck I'm afraid...

same result as before = Software Failure 8000 000B

Anyway not much point as it doesn't contain any code to specifically test an 060 for benchmark results... reckon I'll just stick to SysSpeed...

i used to get that error when using earlier version 68060 libraries, or using a non-commodore 68040.library ( the commodore 68040.library should be 43888 bytes).

on CS II A4000 68060 my libs are set up using these instructions

To get a layout which works for every processor use this:     *
*                                                                 *
*    37.30 CBM 68040.library -> libs:68040old.library             *
*    Phase5 68040.library -> libs:68040new.library                *
*    Phase5 68060.library -> libs:68060.library                   *
*    Phase5 68040dummy.library -> libs:68040.library

http://phase5.a1k.org/index.php?driverslibraries