CPU upgrades?

[Karlos]

Interesting. The 060 should be about around 1.5-1.7 faster per clock than the 040 for integer operations according to various motorola documentation from back in the day.

[fishy_fiz]

Some of these comparisons are probably a bit misleading vs. real world performance.

In the theory they might be true, but in practice the truth is probably something like a 20-40 percent performance advantage per clock for the '060.
An '040 does 1.1 instructions per clock whereas the '060 does 1.33. The 68060 also has some other acrhitectural advantages that cant really be measures in raw mips.

A 200% increase is possible on occasion, but its definately the exception rather than the rule.
Either way, even in a worst case scenario, @20% increase per mhz, plus the minimum available 20% clock increase its definately noticably faster.

[matthey]

I have read that whdload is more compatible with the 060 than 040...

I bet that is because of restarting code execution after an exception for some reason. That's a rather obscure compatibility problem.

you are wrong...from where you got that numbers?
the 060/50 is not twice faster than the 040/40....it's only about 25% faster
in fact both cpu are idem core and a 040/50 overclocked runs at idem speed on integer like a 060/50

sysinfo reports

040/40                      31 mips
040/50 overcloclked     38 mips
060/50                      38 mips

First off, SysInfo is a joke. My CSMK3 does pretty close to 100 MIPS at 75MHz which SysSpeed and Motorola come pretty close to agreeing. The 060 is about 2x as fast as the 040 at the same clock speed but more or less is possible depending on the code. Karlos gives a probable average improvement for code not optimized for the 060. Avoiding certain bottlenecks and choosing instructions that operate in both integer units can easily double the 060 performance.

Major 060 improvements...

2x the instruction and data cache of 040
2 integer units, 1 fpu unit and a branch unit that can operate in parallel
branch prediction cache (many times branches are free)
loops are nearly free (almost 0 cycles for the branch and optional decrement)
mul and div faster (multiply is 2 cycles instead of 040 10 cycles)
shift/rotate is much faster (060 can do 6 in the same time as 040 does 1)
most complex addressing modes are free
FPU cycles improved pretty much across the board
FPU fint and fintrz were added back (used often with fp)
runs much cooler

Advantages of the 040 over the 060...

fetches more instructions of code per cycle than the 060 (large instructions are no problem)
64 bit integer multiply and divide are built in (32*32=64 is common)
You don't need a heater in the winter

@tabbybasco
The fastest Amiga 060 accelerators would be...

1) Natami 060 (only available to developers for now)
2) FPGA Arcade 060 (available soon?)
3) CSMK3 (limited to about 75 MHz but also 30MB/s DMA SCSI, fragile)
4) QuikPac 060 (supports EDO ram so potentially faster memory than CSMK3)
5) Apollo 3060/4060 (overclocks better than CSMK3 but memory is slower, SCSI is poor)

[HotRod]

I've been looking at the accelerator boards available for the A3000 and A4000. I've pretty much ruled out a 603e based board as I just as well spend that kind of money on an Acube A500, but what is the difference between an 040@50MHz and an 060@50MHz performance wise? OS3.5 and 3.9 were never optimized to run on the 060. Would it be advantageous to create a hack to allow  3.9 to at least use some of the improvements of the 060 over the 040? I was looking over the data sheets for the 060 last night. It seems to me that in order for the 060 to be compatible with 3.5 and 3.9 it has to act like it's an 040 negating most of the advantages of the 060.

I agree that the PPC-boards just ain't worth it, a NG Amiga runs software faster and better than the old board (yes I got a CSPPC). It was cool back then but it just isn't worth the cost, the SAM 460 is way more fun IMHO.

The biggest advantage with the 060 isn't just the speed but as mentioned that it runs cooler, no need for a fan and I didn't have any cooler on it at all. Very nice that you don't have to clean it or replace the fan, it just runs. I had an Apollo 4060 and later the CSPPC and what I can say is that the Apollo is a piece of crap! First of all the SCSI-part I couldn't get to work with anything what so ever. I tried all kinds of units and they all locked up the my a4k. Not even the people at the store where I bought it could make it work. It also had some low-power version of the 060 and slower RAM than the CSPPC. When I bought the CSPPC I was going to move over the 060 CPU to save some money only to find out that it wasn't compatible, a different version.

The faster RAM of the CSPPC probably made the biggest difference but perhaps the CPU too, I don't know. Playing ClickBooms Quake was a lot faster on the CSPPC (just talking about the 68k version now, offcourse the PPC version ran a lot faster).

The best card to buy is probably the CyberStorm Mk III with a 060, don't know how expensive it is. The Apollo 4060 is probably ok too if you don't need the SCSI-part but it isn't as fast. Also the 060 can play MP3s at full quality if that is important, the 040 @ 40MHz can not.

Two things that makes all the difference to me is 1. No need for any cooling solutions and 2. it's the fastest CPU there is for classic Amigas if you want to run games etc. Works very well with whdload.

If you can find a board that's not too expensive and also a NG Amiga I would say that you would get the best from both worlds. Sounds like you also like the OS so in that regard an NG Amiga is good for more modern stuff. It also includes an option to run old games through ADF-images and whdload by just double-clicking the icons so it works more or less like a real Amiga, that's what I did on my a4k in AOS 3.9 and I do the same in 4.1 now. It's still emulation though and untill a JIT-version of E-UAE is available 3D-games for example won't run fast enough. Works well with 2D-games though. Just some extra info. I hope that you'll find a nice CPU-board, it's a shame that there are nothing new available :-( .

[tabbybasco]

SoftHut is listing new GVP-M 4060DT I guess I will have to contact them to see if they have them in stock. GVP-M has it listed as the 4000-060 on their webpage and the link to order on line sends you over to SoftHut.

But I guess I need to get everything up and running again. Versalia Online indicates they have the 2.5" internal diskette drive Maybe by next month I will be online with it; I've never been able to use the X-Surf II yet.