Difference '030@50MHZ and '040@50MHZ

[shoggoth]

Effy wrote:
The reason for using an 68060/75 without fpu is not to use 68060 software but 68020 optimized ... does that make sense  :-?

Nah, you'll just miss the whole point and want to upgrade to a "full" CPU later on. Take my word for it - I did just like you said (albeit at another platform - Atari).

[Effy]

Okay then, but who here can upgrade a Blizzard 1240 to 1260 ? I have got already an 68060 for it ...

[unite]

:banana: 68020 rulez :banana:

[stefcep2]

I have had all of these cpu's at some time.

Speed often comes at the cost of compatibility: an 030 will run pretty much anything you want at good speed with an fpu, the 040 will run less stuff, and the 060 less still.  TBH the sort of stuff 040 and 060 was made for you can do better and faster on cheap PC running winuae, unless you HAVE to have an Amiga to do it, its your money.

Getting to bench marks: if you run software optimized for it the 060 can be 4 times faster than 40 mhz 040, which is 4-8 times faster than 50 mhz 030.

If you do CPU intensive stuff that uses floating point arithmetic, then you need to have the correct libraries, the correct cpu command and a patch: cyberpatcher for 68004/60 made by phase5, 680040/60.library for GVP and oxypatcher for everyone else.  There's also hsmathlibs which speed things up even more for stuff that the other patches don't patch.  These patches make a HUGE difference to rendering and image processing.  Some phase5 boards actuall speed up chip ram speed as well.

Memory speed does vary and can make a difference:  I benchmarked my memory speed of an Apollo 1240@40 mhz in AIBB and it was faster then a published memory speed benchmark for a PPC/68040 board.  And i noticed it too: booting was very fast as was copying to ram: disk, faster than my Cyberstorm 2 68060 on my A4000.

My advice: stick with an 030.

[stefcep2]

cantido wrote:
Raytracing etc isn't going to benchmark the CPU. Instead you'll be benchmarking CPU + Amiga hardware + OS + Misc software. To benchmark the CPU opposed to "the system" you'd need to write a benchmark that takes over the CPU and runs from memory that doesn't need any waitstates.

True and this can be done and is often quoted, and you get pretty meaningless results. IMHO its "benchmarking CPU + Amiga hardware + OS + Misc software" that matters to the end user

[stefcep2]

cantido wrote:

Crumb wrote:
@bloodline

MIPS = Meaningless Information Processor Speed.

I don't see why it's "meaning less". It shows how many instructions can be executed per second. If those instructions are of equal value the processor with the highest value will be "faster". It'd be silly to compare two totally different processors of course.

At what point do they become "two totally different processors"?  Is an 030 "totally different" to 68060?  Well other than running nearly the same 68k code as opposed to x86 code or alpha code, they share nothing else in common in terms of transistor number, pipelines, cache, fpu instruction set, design, number of executed instructions per cycle. Turn the caches off on an 040 or 060 and they execute the same instructions slower than 50 mhz 030.  Turn the caches on and they may not execute at all!! AIBB is good (but not for 060) because it does things like rendering a beachball and timing it and yeah mips gives very misleading results.

[stefcep2]

Crumb wrote:
@Kin-Hell

overclock your MKII 060 to something higher than 56Mhz (e.g. 60Mhz) and you will notice it a lot faster (I've heard it's due to the fact that the turbocard will synchronize better the motherboard)

Yea and you then will get unreliable scsi if you have it.

[shoggoth]

stefcep2 wrote:
At what point do they become "two totally different processors"?  Is an 030 "totally different" to 68060?  Well other than running nearly the same 68k code as opposed to x86 code or alpha code, they share nothing else in common in terms of transistor number, pipelines, cache, fpu instruction set, design, number of executed instructions per cycle. Turn the caches off on an 040 or 060 and they execute the same instructions slower than 50 mhz 030.  Turn the caches on and they may not execute at all!! AIBB is good (but not for 060) because it does things like rendering a beachball and timing it and yeah mips gives very misleading results.

I think we need to make a distinction between CPU(+memory) benchmarks and system benchmarks. The former is of interest to those using CPU intensive stuff like rendering, while the latter takes system bottle necks into the equation.

Personally, the mips figure makes sense to me since I get a rough idea of what kind of performance my code can get when only accessing RAM.

[Crumb]

@stefcep2

It shouldn't cause problems at 60Mhz.

[stefcep2]

Crumb wrote:
@stefcep2

It shouldn't cause problems at 60Mhz.

i read somewhere that anything above 50 mhz is a problem.  Its years though, but i remember thinking about doing it, and was advised against it for this reason

[stefcep2]

shoggoth wrote:

stefcep2 wrote:
At what point do they become "two totally different processors"?  Is an 030 "totally different" to 68060?  Well other than running nearly the same 68k code as opposed to x86 code or alpha code, they share nothing else in common in terms of transistor number, pipelines, cache, fpu instruction set, design, number of executed instructions per cycle. Turn the caches off on an 040 or 060 and they execute the same instructions slower than 50 mhz 030.  Turn the caches on and they may not execute at all!! AIBB is good (but not for 060) because it does things like rendering a beachball and timing it and yeah mips gives very misleading results.

I think we need to make a distinction between CPU(+memory) benchmarks and system benchmarks. The former is of interest to those using CPU intensive stuff like rendering, while the latter takes system bottle necks into the equation.

Personally, the mips figure makes sense to me since I get a rough idea of what kind of performance my code can get when only accessing RAM.

Not a coder but i get your meaning.

[Effy]

Had a Blizzard 1260 at 66 Mhz, speed by made by DCE, no scsi problems ...

[stefcep2]

That might be true for the DCE A1200 boards.  My experienmce was with the cyberstorm 2 for A4000 with cyberscsi module.  i am pretty sure that with the cyberstorm boards overclocking caused problems with the the scsi board.

[zipper]

They mostly work with 60 MHz, but may fail if clocked higher.

[Kin-Hell]

stefcep2 wrote:

Crumb wrote:
@Kin-Hell

overclock your MKII 060 to something higher than 56Mhz (e.g. 60Mhz) and you will notice it a lot faster (I've heard it's due to the fact that the turbocard will synchronize better the motherboard)

Yea and you then will get unreliable scsi if you have it.

No, you wont if you overclock your CS PPC correcty.
These card shipped with only 2 of the 3 Oscilator Sockets populated. By changing a tiny resistor pack from pin 1-2 to 2-3, (under & to the right of Simm 2) it forces the 060 or the 040 on the CSPPC to use the Third Oscilator socket. This in turn leaves the SCSI & the Memory running on Oscilator #2 which is 50Mhz. The 1st Oscilator (most right) is the PPC Crystal.

Incidently, I have replaced the 50Mhz SCSI & Ram Oscilator with a 64Mhz Crystal on mine. This takes these buses from 25Mhz to 32Mhz. What a nice speed boost that was & with the 060/50A @ 80Mhz, she flys......

Plenty of Air required though & a good hefty PSU.  ;-)

[Kin-Hell]

Just to add to the Original question, the real difference between a  030 @ 50Mhz & an 040 @ 50Mhz = Some Years of Progress from Motorola.

Any CPU without an FPU (Floating Point Unit) is gunno take far far longer to calculate Floating Point Instructions. These are used by Programs such as CAD Packages, DTP where Image manipulation is required & more specifically, 3D Modelling.

So taking the more common Motorola CPU's used by CBM for their range of Amiga puters, here they are in rough running order of speed.

68000, 68020 & 68030. I pause here because all these CPU's never came with onboard FPU's, but you could either fit a PLCC or a PGA Socket to take the required kind of FPU to be fitted.

Then we have the 680040 & the 68060. These came in a variety of speeds & also a variety of flavours. Speeds on the 040 were usually 25Mhz, 33Mhz & 40Mhz. 68040's were rare at 50Mhz due to Heat constraints within the silicon for using 5v on that Die size. When the 060 was released with a new Die Size, the Voltage was also dropped to 3.3v, meaning a 50Mhz 060 is actually a much much cooler CPU than a 40Mhz 040 & absolutely spanks the 040 @ 40Mhz when it comes to CPU & FPU calculations.
Going back to the Varieties, these were annotations used for what I class as "Deprived" CPU's, as they had either no FPU & worse still an MMU (Memory Management Unit)
Back in the traditional Days of Amiga, SCSI was always favoured because of the way SCSI Works. It off-loads all the CPU Transfer calls required by the hard drives to the hard drive controller itself. IDE does NOT do this on an Amiga. An MMU was required by "Unix" on the Amiga & the only after-market program I know of that required an MMU was "Giga-Mem". This was a Virtual-Memory program for the Amiga, where it used Hard Drive space as "Virtual-Ram". Try using that program on IDE drives instead of SCSI; - er...."Hello clockwork computer" when the Virtual Ram was being used! :roll:

EC & LC annotations in the CPU part number mean it`s a CPU that probably failed all full Tests when Soak Tested after the Silicon Wafers had been processed into their relevant Part. For Example, if a batch of 50Mhz 060`s were made, they would all be tested for CPU, FPU & MMU calculations. If the MMU failed, they went out as an LC marked CPU - (Low Cost). If the  FPU failed, they were shipped as EC CPU`s or as in the case of the A4000, the 030's were always Badged EC030 anyways & the 030 never had an Internal FPU. CBM were numbering But there was provision for either a PLCC or PGA Socket to attatch an FPU.
Whilst Soak testing the CPU's, they were also checked for operating speed. Purer slices of Silicon would run faster & hence the variety of speeds. The faster & more feature rich ones being more expensive of course.

On top of this, the market also has demands for supply. On some occasions, you might be lucky to have an EC060/75 that will Under-clock to say 60Mhz & the FPU works. That makes it a faster CPU than an 060 @ 50Mhz.

Hope this all helps & makes sense as to which type of CPU is better to have.   :-)