A1200NG NOW with CPU Boost upgrade Kit running WB & Games

[iowtheme]

     https://youtu.be/l7aOZiwVjIg       

[RobertB]

Very interesting!

          Truly!
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
          Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan
          June 21-22 Pacific Commodore Expo NW 2025 - http://www.portcommodore.com/pacommex

[ernsteiswuerfel]

Thanks for the video!

It unfortunately confirms my suspicion that the CPU boost is not enough to make struggling chipset-heavy games like Jim Power run 100% original speed. At least I do know now for sure that this upgrade would not be worthwile for me.  I know your statement in the video is that the performance improved much, but I would say it only improved slightly.  Other games to look out for would be Invyya, ReshootR or Reshoot Proxima 3 (1st level is ok on the A600GS too, but the other ones run too slow).

Seems I'll have to wait for a more powerful "SBC upgrade" for the A1200NG to show up. Until then I'll stick to my A600GS.

[amigakit]

@einsteiswuefel

For Jim Power the FPS goes from 31 FPS to 45 FPS with the CPU Boost enabled.  That is quite a big increase.  We are looking at further software optimisations to take it to the full 50 FPS.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

@amigakit

Thanks for the numbers! I stand corrected.  Still, for the spoiled 50 fps Amiga gamer, the performance gap is noticeable nevertheless.

I wonder how much can still be gained via software optimizations - without diverting from upstream Amiberry source too much?

For such chipset heavy games as Jim Power some performance metrics would be interesting in what parts of the emulation most time is spent. Ideally a specific bottleneck can be detected and ideally it can be treated with not too invasive methods. E.g. some packages performance is suspectible to the CFLAGS they are built with, like mesa or libsdl2, e.g. '-O3' vs. '-O2 -flto'. In case of Jim Power this could be enough to close the gap from 45 to 50 fps and visually make a noticeable difference. 

IMHO CPU-only performance is great on the A600GS and A1200NG, it's the chipset stuff which really hogs the machine.