'040 or '060 ?

[boinger]

i'm upgrading my a3000d. i use it for 3d animation using imagine 3.0. it currently has a '030 25 mhz which is pretty pokey for this application. my animations are fairly simple so will an a3640 give me an appreciable increase in speed over the '030 or should i go for an '060? a ppc is pretty well out of the question.

i plan on getting a usb 2.0 board and running all my programs from a 16 gb data key so i don't think i need scsi ii. as for extra memory above my 18 meg i guess if i figure i need it i can always get one of those z iii memory boards. any how your thoughts and opinions are appreciated. larger animations i figure i can run from the data vault thru the usb 2.0 card using something like biganim which would probably give pretty good playback.

oh yeah is there a site for uploading amiga animations ?

thanx.

[Amiduffer]

Imagine3D

That's the central repository for any Imagine stuff besides 'ol Aminet of course.

A 68040 will most certainly give you a speed boost. A 68060 is even better.

I'm mixed on using Imagine for Amiga and Imagine for Windows. The two are practically alike, but Amiga is sadly lacking when it comes to render speed. Even the 68060 looks slow compared to even a Pentium 3 (which I use) when it comes to rendering. I find myself getting frustrated with the slowness when I have a fast PC that can give you instantaneous results. I have limited time and can't wait the hours it takes to do renders.

[stefcep2]

If you want the authentic retro feel then stay with what you have.  No matter even if you get the A3640 you'll still be waiting a long time and then you'll start thinking about the 060.  An 060 is much better than A3640, but geeez its a lot of more money to pay. If you want speed then run Imagine in Winuae or better still run the PC native version of Imagine.  TBH the best place to run cpu-intensive Amiga software is Winuae its much faster than any real amiga.  But hey its your money, just wanted to say i've been down that path, might save you some time and money..

[darksun9210]

hmmm, with regard to memory, you may find that some form of accelerator, be it a cyberstorm2/3/warp engine or whatever, maybe be an easier route to expand that memory than finding a DKB128 or fastlane card.
not saying they aren't out there, but i usually see accelerators more than DKB's or fastlanes
:-)

(and 060 it if you can, but an 040 is good too :-D)

[dannyp1]

If you get the Cyberstorm MKII 060 it will speed things up greatly and it will hold 128 megs of Ram.  The price will end up being about the same as you would pay for an A3640 and the forementioned Ram cards.  If you find a MKII and it doesn't have the 128 Megs of Ram it is no problem.  You can buy the Ram on EBay for $10 to $15.

Dan

[a1200]

An 060 runs cooler which is cool!

[pubzombie]

looking at the blizzard 060 being offered by Kasito on our forum. looks like a good price and wont need cooling?

[Damion]

No additional cooling needed, but it's a good idea to leave the trapdoor cover and lift the back of the computer a little (temps over 50C common).

I say go for it, the Blizzard 1260 is awesome. :pint:

[ChaosLord]

L1 Caches:
68030: 256 bytes data cache, 256 bytes instruction cache
68040: 4096 bytes data cache, 4096 bytes instruction cache
68060: 8192 bytes data cache, 8192 bytes instruction cache

The cache of a 68030 is so puny that it can't even hold 1 frame of 1 animation of 1 little monster in Total Chaos AGA. 1 frame = 1024 bytes. So it is almost like not having any cache at all  :boohoo:
Cache is very important for cpu speed.

Instruction speed:
68030:
add.l 2 cycles

68040
add.l 1 cycle

68060
add.l 0.5 cycle

So as you can see a 50 Mhz 68060 is always going to be quadruple the speed of a 50 Mhz 68030.

But wait, there's more!
A 68060 can execute up to 3 instructions simultaneously.
68030 and 68040 can only execute 1 instruction at a time.

So in practice a 50 Mhz 68060 is around 6x the speed of a 50 Mhz 68030.

Instruction speed Multiply:
68030:
muls.l 44 cycles

68040
muls.l 20 cycles

68060
muls.l 2 cycles

So as you can see a 68060 is just plain 22x faster than a 68030 at multiplication.  :-o

[pubzombie]

will an 060 cause any issues with older games i am playing from floppy, such as paradroid90, will old games run too fast? if so can the 060 be turned off from boot options where I can turn off cache etc , cheers for your patients as i a nooberloid as you prob have guesed!!!!

[X-ray]

If he has an A3000, he is not looking for any kind of Blizzard.

The way to go (if he doesn't want to use a PC) is an 060 board with ram on it.

If it was me, I would get a £300 brand new PC from the computer fair and use Imagine on that.

[Damion]

pubzombie wrote:
will an 060 cause any issues with older games i am playing from floppy, such as paradroid90, will old games run too fast? if so can the 060 be turned off from boot options where I can turn off cache etc , cheers for your patients as i a nooberloid as you prob have guesed!!!!

It's no problem with the Blizz 1260 - just hold down the "2" key at startup, and the accelerator is disabled. However, WHDLoad will enable most of your floppy games to work with your 060, launch from and quit back to the desktop even.  

 

[boinger]

are u running that oxyron patch that's supposed to speed up '040's and '060's using old software like imagine ?

[stefcep2]

Yes this is good software as are HSMathlibs.  Your 68060 will then be only oh about 10-20 times slower than the aforementioned PC