A3640 Accelerator - Questions

[dougal]

Hi,

I am bidding on an A3640 CPU/Accelerator card for my A4000/030.

The A4000 currently has a 68030 with a Phase5 50Mhz accelerator card.

The A3640 is 25Mhz.

Would the 25Mhz A3630 make my A4000 (which is 50Mhz 030 currently) much faster ?

Would it be faster than my A1200 with Blizzard 1230 50Mhz?

Also i heard that there is some board called "X-Calibur" which will allow me to add additional ram to the board... Does anyone know anything about it ?

Thanks

[MozzerFan]

The A3640 will make your A4000 faster, but without it's own fastram IMO speedup won't be that big.
 
Adding an Xcalibur would be speeding it up a lot more, but they are really a rare find and you would have to be prepared to pay big bucks.
See here for more info on the XCalibur. http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=45&id=2094&artlang=en
 
IMHO it would be better to save your money for a Cyberstorm 040 or 060. (edit: or any other accelerator which also adds fastram).

[matthey]

In most cases, the 68040 at 25MHz would be a little faster than the 68030@50MHz. The 68040 has much larger caches that greatly help performance with the 3640 but adds some incompatibility with older software, especially with games. The 3640 has no memory and accessing the motherboard memory is slow so the caches are very important to the 3640's performance. The "X-Calibur" is rare and would be too expensive to consider. The 68040 built in fpu is much faster at floating point than 68881/68882. If you have fast accelerator memory with the 68030@50MHz then I would stay with it for now. If you like the classic then wait for the Natami for an upgrade.

[stefcep2]

Stay with what you have.  Your existing accelerator has a much faster memory bus, can take more ram and has a scsi option I believe.  Unless you do a lot of fpu-related stuff eg rendering, image processing, the its quite possible the A3640 will in fact feel slower in day to day operations.

If you want a 64040 upgrade then look for a warp engine, or a phase 5 68040 card or a GVP board.  Better still consider a 68060 board.

[countzero]

Stay with what you have.  Your existing accelerator has a much faster memory bus, can take more ram and has a scsi option I believe.
 

erm, no, blizzard 4030 don't have fast ram or scsi.
 
 

Also i heard that there is some board called "X-Calibur" which will allow me to add additional ram to the board... Does anyone know anything about it ?
 

I've been watching ebay for amiga items for 5 years, I've seen an X-Calibur only once, and then it sold for nearly as much as a 060 accelerator.

so, don't count on it.

[alexh]

You'll never ever ever see an X-Calibur unless someone else starts making them again which is never going to happen.

[dougal]

Damn... 3hours left and im still winning the bid

[countzero]

don't worry, somebody will snipe it unless your max bid is ridiculously high of course ...

[alexh]

Without RAM it will still feel 20-50% faster. All depends on how much you buy it for. I bought two over the last 10 years, both times I paid €32

[T3000]

I've been watching ebay for amiga items for 5 years, I've seen an X-Calibur only once, and then it sold for nearly as much as a 060 accelerator.

Really? How much did the '060 go for? I pick one up on ebay a year or so ago. Thought I'd be in a bidding war, got it at the starting bid of $75.00 US. Would gladly trade it for an '060. Was going to install it in my A3000T. That is untill the A3000T green screened and has been setting in pieces on the work bench. The instructions for installation of the X-Calibur are a bit extensive and requires some cutting an soldering. Be careful when buying 3640s. They will need repair.