Possibly dumb question. 030 vs 040

[runequester]

Looking at the mess of various accelerator cards that were made for amigas. I see some 040's clocked at lower speeds than some 030 cards. Would there be any gain to an 040 in that case, or is it better to just go for the higher mhz ?

edit, wrong forum. Can someone close/delete?

[runequester]

Looking at the mess of various accelerator cards that were made for amigas. I see some 040's clocked at lower speeds than some 030 cards. Would there be any gain to an 040 in that case, or is it better to just go for the higher mhz ?

[countzero]

040 and 030 quite different beasts internally. 040 has a highly optimised pipeline and cache, and it can execute much more instructions than 030 in a given period.

Usually it is said that a 25 MHz 040 performs two times better than a 030 running at 050 MHz, though it depends on the software you're running.

[KThunder]

Any accelerator you get should have fast ram, the a3640 is an '040 with no fast ram and I had an '030 50mhz that could beat it.  From what I've seen an '040 25mhz with most software is roughly the same as '030 50mhz.

With a 3000 or similar small case '040s can be very hot. '030s are cooler, my '030 50 never had a heat sink or stability problems. On board scsi is a good thing too.

There are some differences in compatibility with the '040 too but I don't think it's much of an issue nowadays.

Personally I would consider case/heat, features, and compatibility over raw speed. Unless you are trying to get amiga quake to run, then you want the fastest '040 or '060 and lots of fast ram.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Also the math co-processor (in built on the 040) is a lot faster. 5+ times faster on the 040.
I found the 030 was perfect for flight sims were as they would be too quick on the 040.

[runequester]

Not too fussed about running quake or something, but good to know

[whiteb]

Looking at the mess of various accelerator cards that were made for amigas. I see some 040's clocked at lower speeds than some 030 cards. Would there be any gain to an 040 in that case, or is it better to just go for the higher mhz ?

040 is a totally different beast.

The 68030 is merely a higher clocked 68020 with a bit of extra cache, the 68040 has newer instructions, more cache, has Pipelines etc.

68060, is a totally different beast, being Motorola's attempt in to the Pentium world but lacked the pipeline of the pentium, and then they went to PPC.

SO to cut a long story short, even though its lower clock, 68040 will run faster than a higher clocked 68030 because the 040 is more highly optimized.

68000 (68010 - Revised 68000)
68020 (68030 - Revised 68020)
68040 (68050 - Cancelled)
68060..... (68070, made by Philips, not a Motorola CPU).

68080 not even put to design board, but would have been a P6 architecture (Pentium Pro, which was used as a foundation for Pentium M).

[tone007]

From what I've seen an '040 25mhz with most software is roughly the same as '030 50mhz.

WAY off here.

Any '040 is lots faster than any '030.

[KThunder]

WAY off here.

Any '040 is lots faster than any '030.

Of course it is way faster, the '040 kicks close to 1 instruction per clock cycle average, but you don't see it with the vast majority of amiga software. An '030 needs no libs for compatibility, produces much less heat, and uses less power especially if you don't need the fpu. Which again most amiga software doesn't.

This guy is asking for basic advice which I gave. We could get into Mips and stuff or we could give him some simple suggestions on picking an accelerator. With most amiga software imho an '030 is actually better for many people especially beginners.

btw I have had amigas with 68000, 68020, 68030 25mhz and 50mhz, and 68040

[Amiga_Nut]

Which is why I always said Commodore were crazy not to clock quadruple the 020 in the A1200 to offer an A1200+

28mhz 020  would be pretty much the same speed as an 030 @ 28mhz for polygon games and would have been cheaper than an 030.

040 is quite a bit better than the 030 as TPAM states so if you can get an 040 even @ 25mhz get that instead. Amiga demo's where a 25mhz 040 is recommended will not work as well on a 50mhz 030 from experience.

Not sure about Pentium M being a reworked Pentium Pro if you mean the original Pentium Pro which was a precursor for Pentium II destined for servers. Pentium M/Centrino is a clock doubled CPU, ie it executes one instruction on both the rise and fall of the clock pulse. Ingenious actually making a DDR type CPU, much superior to Atom despite being half a decade older.

[runequester]

Compatibility is a big deal, as I want things to work as simply as possible. So I gather the 030 is going to be the more compatible here? (as its seemingly just an overgrown 020, which the 1200 has a version of anyways)

[koshman]

I'm with KThunder here - 040 may be significantly faster, but without fast ram on the turbo board it never reaches its potential. Subjectively with A1200 Blizzard 1230 MKIV felt faster than A4000 with A3640. Especially in demos.

[Daedalus]

Yes, the 030 is like a souped-up 020 which the A1200 has already, so it's probably a good bet for compatibility purposes, and heat in a standard A1200 case will be an issue with an 040. However, an 030 is just as lame as an 040 if you don't have any fast RAM to go with it. Good news is that, while the 3000 and 4000 have some accelerators available without RAM sockets, I think every accelerator for the A1200 had either fast RAM sockets or at least some permanently fixed fast RAM, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Bear in mind as well though, that the FPU is external to the 030, like the 020, and some accelerators don't have one as standard. Probably not a big deal, but software that needs an FPU will crash if one isn't included.

[Karlos]

Thread moved.

The 68040 is significantly faster than the 68030. A 25MHz 68040 has a typical integer performance of twice that of an 030 at 50MHz.

Floating point performance is much higher than the 68882 for non-transcendent functions, the latter the 040 has to emulate in software.

[Karlos]

Duplicate thread merged. Didn't notice it before