@KimmoK
Efika needs a display card (PCI or AGP card on a riser) which power/performance ratio is hardly any better than ATI M9.
With an AGP slot you have the *option to choose* based on your own preferences regarding price/performance. Maybe you prefer low cost in favor of 3D performance for instance?
And more important than the GPU version (after all, no Sam/Efika is going to be used as a PS3 replacement any day soon anyway ;-)) is the amount of memory! At least in the case of MorphOS, thanks to its "Layers 3D" functionality, you know where the GUI is handled by the 3D GPU (somewhat like in MacOS X and Windows Vista). This consumes a lot of GFX card memory. I've heard that 64MB is a *bare minimum* (and *not* recommended), 128MB is better, and 256MB "let you use your machine without worrying about the mem consumed by l3d" (to quote jacadcaps).
Efika needs 2.5" hard drive (they are very slow on all laptops that I've used).
That's probably because you have only used slow laptops with low RAM and bulky OS's which makes heavy use of the HDD (for virtual memory and other stuff). As you know, this is not the case on any Amiga environment, where the system boots in an instant, programs are tiny and loads in a flash, etc. And on the Efika the HDD will not be the weakest link in the IDE chain anyway, so...
SAM has two times more RAM, 4*SATA IDE interface
Sure, the Sam has more desktop alike controllers, which undoubtedly is much appreciated by people wanting to use it as a desktop. At the penalty of an insane price, of course...
FREE PCI slot
...that shares the same PCI bus as all the other controllers (including the GPU).
a lot faster CPU
No, definitely not a lot. To be honest, I haven't seen any real life comparisons, but given the higher clock frequency I'd say it's probably a bit faster, although you can certainly *not* call the Sam CPU *fast* in any way, especially not for serious desktop usage. A lean OS like the "amigoid" OS's makes the experience pleasurable on low power CPU's as long as you're not doing anything particular with it, but as soon as you start doing *demanding stuff* you should know the difference. I'd say that both Sam's and the Efika's CPU can be categorized in the same class of "embedded" CPU's.
DVI out
DVI out has been on every graphics card for ages, haven't it?
So, IMHO SAM is worth the "extra" price.
That's great then! :-)
(I will order MOS board someday, I just desided to go one at a time.) :-)
Maybe the MacMini version of MorphOS is ready when you are ready for MorphOS? Then you could get the fastest Amiga ever (1.58GHz 7447A G4), at a really low cost! :-)
Sure, also I spotted the redtail board in bbrv's web blog. It looks interesting for a desktop/laptop/kiosk "Amiga". Perhaps MOS and/or AOS4 will be available for something like that someday,
The 8610 is the latest and definitely one of the fastest e600 based CPU's. Its integrated display controller and north bridge functionality makes it possible to build a system with a very good bang for the buck ratio.
now when they are not tied to any single HW manufacturer.
Well, that remains to be seen (in both cases!) ;-)
