New A4000, some questions...

[Imerion]

Hello again all! I just bought an A4000 with loads of goodies. It has a 040/40 Mhz processor and 12 mb ram.
The problem is this : When running in Workbench everything goes extremely fast. Feels like three times the speed of my old A1200 030/50 Mhz. However, when running games, my new machine feels slower. Not by much, but still, I expected twice the speed. Anyone who knows why this is? I have some programs running in the background like MCP and a couple of others. But I had some of them on my old machine to. Anyone who knows what might be the cause of this.
Thanks for any help!

[Lando]

Which games specifically?  99% of games are tied to the custom chips and will run the same speed on everything from a 68000 to a 68060.  Can't imagine why they would run slower.

[QuikSanz]

@ Imerion,

Oxypatcher?

Chris

[Imerion]

I mean games like Gloom, Breathless and Alien Breed 3D 2. Those should shureley run faster on a faster processor.
I am running DirOpus 5 in the background as well. Might be it...

[Holley]

All of those games run through AGA.  They should pick up the '040 though - do you have the correct '040 libs?

The more free ram the better - WHDLoad should archive your chip mem into fast while the game is running, but all those 3 will use the fast mem too.  More is better, and on the accellerator too if possible (not sure if some things don't pick up the MB ram first, which will be slower than your extra A1200 memory).

EDIT: Try booting into breathless from floppy, under UAE from floppy it runs at max detail for me, but under UAE with WHDLoad it needs 2x2 pixels to be fast in 320x200!

[Imerion]

Oxypatcher? Hmm, haven't heard of it. Might be installed though. What is it?

[Holley]

Check here :-)

It's commercial software BTW.  Oh, and ADoom doesn't use a FPU so it might be worth trying that for speed (it's on Back2Roots under the HD section).

[Imerion]

These mathlib seem good. Ill try them. Also, I tried a demo called "Impossible" by the group "loonies". It ran quite slow from Wb 3, so I tried to boot with an old Wb 1.3 disk, but then It couldn't find my FPU at all. Perhaps that is the problem. Wb 3 won't simply find my 040 processor and instead uses the standard 020 one. I do not know if the 040 is standard in this model of the A4000 or if it is on a turbocard. If it is, I might need turbocard-drivers...

Imerion wrote:

Wb 3 won't simply find my 040 processor and instead uses the standard 020 one. I do not know if the 040 is standard in this model of the A4000 or if it is on a turbocard. If it is, I might need turbocard-drivers...

The 68040 CPU is fitted on the A3640 processor-card,
wich is standard in the A4000(T). There's no standard
020 in the A4000(T). However, some A4000's where equiped
with 030 CPU's.  
You also don't need "turbocard-drivers", only the 68040.library in LIBS:
(That is if you use an A3640 card, don't know about other
040 accelerators).
 :-D

[Argus]

Sounds like you have either a WarpEngine or a GVP GForce card.  Make sure you use the installation software for each one, as each should come with it's own special 68040 libraries.  Some accelerator cards also use software patches to bypass problems in the Amiga motherboard design.  This is especially true in the A4000, which has a slow mb memory design.  Without the proper libraries and patches for fast memory for instance, the 68040 will run not appreciably faster than a fast 68030 and maybe even slower if it uses the mb memory at normal speed.

[Imerion]

I am shure there is no graphics card in it. And I have the 040-library in the libs dir. What memory patches? Can they be found on aminet?

[rayt]

The 68040 CPU is fitted on the A3640 processor-card,
wich is standard in the A4000(T). There's no standard
020 in the A4000(T). However, some A4000's where equiped
with 030 CPU's.

According to the bboah Commodore released a few 020 equipped A4000s.. and theres even a "020" jumper on the A4000 mainboard..

[Holley]

Time to pop the case open and take an inventory before going any further I'd say :-)

If you're not too hot on ID'ing bits just take photos of the inside and I'm sure some of us annoraks will be able to help.

Also, once you know whats needed I'm sure someone can help you with the right system disks if you're missing them.  If you got any with the machine let us know what they are, it might help (inheriting someone elses baby is always tough - sometimes it's easier to just start again in the long term!).

rayt wrote:

According to the bboah Commodore released a few 020 equipped A4000s..

I never heard of A4000's equipped with 020's, and I'll
bet nobody's actually using one.
I think that's really sick... A4000 running on an 68020!
 :lol:  :pint:

[Imerion]

Ok, I ran a benchmark program to check stuff out. It is a 040 processor, however, it is running in 25 Mhz and not 40 as I previously thought. What do you think, is a 040/25 Mhz faster or slower than a 030/50 Mhz? If it aint, there is probably nothing wrong at all. The strange thing in that case is that Workbench works like 10 times faster. That might have to do with faster busboard, hd, mem and so on though...