An A1200 accelerator to run Doom clones smoothly full screen.

[bhindi_bhaji]

Hi all,

Thanks to the good people on these forums I now know what accelerator is in my original A1200 (Apollo 1230 Mk-III with 16MB), however it seems it's not good enough to run games like Fear, Doom or Alien Breed 3D particularly well.

It even struggles with Frontier Elite II on high when in a planetary atmosphere near a city.

I've had a look on Ebay and there's not a great deal there, at least not at a reasonable price, theres an Apollo 1260 66Mhz for an insane price of £379.99 which I'm sure would be more than adequate, but I don't want to spend that much!!

I have a modded 300W ATX PSU so power isn't an issue.

If anyone has any suggestions and can point me in the direction of a good accelerator that will fulfill my needs that would be great.

I'm getting pretty bored of modern gaming (hence why I dug out the ol' 1200) and I'd like to get the best experience possible on my Amiga...for a reasonable price!!

Thanks people!

[LoadWB]

I'm guessing any of the 060 accelerators would do well if you can find one.  I have a Blizzard 060 with 192MB in my 1200 and it runs ADoom and Quake pretty well at full screen.

[Cosmos]

The demo Massive with my Apollo 060@105 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqefbQMRQx0&feature=plcp

[bhindi_bhaji]

^^^
Now that is awesome!! :cool:

I bet that card is worth a pretty penny!

[utri007]

68040 25mhz is minium to run doom smoothly, 030 50mhz makes them palayable with some tinkering.

68040 40 mhz makes Quake playable with fast quake patch.

[paul1981]

I'd say 68040 40 MHz to run Doom and Frontier, 68060 80 MHz to run Quake.

[XDelusion]

Contact Stachu, he might be able to sell you an 80Mhz Apollo 060 for the A1200.

That's what I got.

[motrucker]

You're going to need an '060. Even some 060 cards don't do DOOM or Quake really smooth....

[runequester]

My rule of thumb is a fast 030 is playable for most of those (Alien Breed 3D, Doom with certain ports, Fears, Genetic Species) but you definately want an 040 or 060.
 
It does depend on the game too though. Genetic Species runs smoother than Doom, even though it's graphically nicer to look at

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I've never had much luck with quake and/or doom even on a blizzppc060@50  (ppc 603e@240) in an A1200T (back in the day)  Perhaps the right vintage A4000 w/ cyberstorm060 etc.. would be OK.

1997-2000 -  was a point there when many amiga people had RTG cards (picIV, etc) and 2 monitors, but not much software was written to RTG - and also at the same time poor diluted ports to the AGA hardware.  These machines (060, 060+PPC) could have technically achieved better framerates/playability, but sadly there were so few people coding for the various (and small, population-wise) varieties of systems at the time.

Even with a fast 060 or 060 + PPC, better stick to 2d games and 2d gfx applications....

(That's essentially why I sold most of my high end Amiga HW.)

[Digiman]

The problem is surely more to do with the slothsome AGA 8 bitplane 256 colour mode no?

Has anyone tried a 68030 50mhz with a decent 24bit card? A 50mhz 386 is ample on the byte per pixel VGA 320x200 screen mode for full screen DOOM.

(yes I know there is no such thing as such for the A1200)

[bhindi_bhaji]

Thanks for all the suggestions, looks like I'm going to have to try to find myself an 060 accelerator.
 
I'm liking the sound of the Apollo 80Mhz 060 XDelusion mentioned. What would the cost of such a card be?
 
Ebay prices (if I would be lucky enough to find one) seem to be massively inflated, although that probably just reflects the rarity of the hardware.

[utri007]

Tehere is 060 kit for apollo accelerators on sale ebay now. You would just need apollo 040 with mach131 chip and 060 cpu

[_ThEcRoW]

I remember that there was a doom launcher for amiga that was pretty quick, even on a 030. I can't remember if it was doomattack, im not sure, but it ran smooth and was playable on my 1200 with apollo 030 50mhz. Of course, the higher cpu, the better response on amiga.

[rvo_nl]

Well.. if you are going to save up and get that expensive 060 board.. you might aswell get the ppc. thats an easy way to get RTG graphics later on. yes, I know they are even more expensive, rare, and prone to failure.. but I still wanted to point it out. Im a big fan of those. And ofcourse the ppc chip renders doom much faster than the 060 can, in higher resolutions, too. Just a thought.