Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

SJBUK

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AmiBayer
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Mar 6, 2009
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Uk
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Hertfordshire
I'd like to give my soon to be received A1200T (Micronik InfinitiV with Z3i) a boost but I'm not sure which way to go; A1200 trapdoor type accelerator or CPU fast slot jobbie.

Is there much in the way of a performance difference? I know sticking an A3000/4000 accelerator would enable me to use Zorro III boards, which might be a plus for that particular route.

Ideally I'd like an 040 or 060 but finances may dictate an 030.

Cheers,
Steve
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

From my experiences, an A4K is faster than an A1200 providing the A4KD has Ram on the CPU card. Dunno how these cards would perform on the A1200 in that busboard though!
It might be a case of suck it and see but A4KD boards are getting rare thesedays, meaning you probably have better chance of acquiring an A1200 board. Go for the 060 if you can! :wink:

Kin
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

Steve

I would recomend an Apollo 1240 which can be upgraded to an 060 if needed.
The memory access and performance is faster than the Blizzard version, the only limit is that the Towered version with both Simm's fitted can only take a max of 64MB of RAM. 32MB in the desktop case.

I use an apollo 1240 in one of my A1200's with 32MB of RAM and she is rock steady, I have tested it successfully with REV 1B, 1D2 (Yes they do exist) & 1D4 A1200 boards, but you may need to carry out some simple timing mods to the Motherboard of some Rev1D4 & 2B, These timing mods do affect the Blizzards too...(040/060 boards)
The A1200 that my Apollo lives in is a 1D4 btw and no timing mods were necessary.

Regarding an 030 board........Perfect for WHDLoad Gaming and No Mobo compatibility issues.

TC :mrgreen:
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

in my own experience, the Apollo 060 was a nightmare to get steady, liked some memory, hated others, hated 2 different motherboards, one with timing mods one without (just ask Zetr0 how much of a pain my A1200 was) but having said that, it's been fantastic since i swapped to my 3rd mobo which strangely is a 2b board with no timing mods (go figure). but as TC said the 030 is rock steady and WHDLoad friendly, to be honest my 060 is a bit of a waste as i only ever play games on it (lord knows why i got a mediator, voodoo3, ethernet, soundblaster and a Fast ATA) lol lots of money spent and i don't even use 'em, ah well :D

Cheers, JuvUK
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

Tufty

As you say my friend I've probably been lucky with the Mobo's I've got but I've also taken a lot of precautionary steps regarding PSU voltage levels, Cooling, Mobo contacts & even RAM Contacts.
Every bit of RAM I've stuffed in there has worked fine.
And believe me she is rock stable @33MHz, and I got her for a great price too. :mrgreen:

Bottom line though regarding 060 / 040 you are dead right, If you want some serious WHDLoad gaming action without the hassle go for an 030 @40 or 50MHz. It also runs OS3.9 perfectly fine too.

However if you want to run serious software, graphics and / or raytracing... got to be 040 / 060

TC :mrgreen:
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

@ TC

Just wanted to say there is some sound advice there m8! - Nice one. :wink:

Kin
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

@all
Wow, some quick replies there, thanks :)

I doubt I'll ever be using the A1200 for anything 'serious' but I did fancy trying to get online with it, just so's I could download stuff directly rather than through the PC. I've read that this requires some serious 060 level grunt. Plus I generally like to have the fastest thing I can afford!

In this case, however, it might make more sense to stick with the fastest 030 I can find, save some money, enjoy all the old games and generally have a play with the OS. I'm curious about OS4.0 et al but for me I don't think it's worth spending out the equivalent of a decent PC upgrade for.

As far as Apollo vs Blizzard I'm guessing my best bet will be to go for the fastest (clockspeed) I can afford. Am tempted to make an offer for the Blizzard for sale here but might hang on for a 50Mhz version.

Cheers,
Steve
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

@SJBUK

With the Z3i you can use A3000 / A4000 CPU upgrades, I would say that the standard Commodore 3640 just doesn't work though!

On mine, just red red and more red no matter how I tried. I think this is down to it requiring fast ram.

From this I do believe that you need an A3000 / A4000 accelerator with memory onboard for it to work in the first place, you wont have DMA accross the ports either wich is a shame, so you wont get the memory from a Z3 Fast lane etc, the bus speed in Zorro 3 mode is only 80% of of the original Z3, still a sight load faster than Z2 I will say!

I must try this with my Cyberstorm 060Mk2 but time is always fleeting. its a shame the Z3i is a great looking board with lots of posibilites with SBC's (both ISA and PCI) etc. Z2/3 graphics cards (like the retina Z3) and sound cards like the delphina and or clock port prelude :)

the decision is yours really, if your into making mods/music/graphics then a fast 060 is really for you, for gaming an 060 is a little over kill (unless you want ubersmooth doom2 and an attempt at quake or two lol :))

I love my 060's there awesome, yeah... overkill for 90% of what I do with it BUT.... its got the power there for some really cool stuff!!
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

JuvUK said:
to be honest my 060 is a bit of a waste as i only ever play games on it (lord knows why i got a mediator, voodoo3, ethernet, soundblaster and a Fast ATA) lol lots of money spent and i don't even use 'em, ah well :D

I think that about sums up most of us here. We build the best Amiga we can afford to, but generally don't fully use, or need, the power they deliver. That is why for my main A1200 I've stuck to a Blizzard 1230 MKIV with 32MB of ram. As everyone else has said, it works perfectly with WHDLoad and Workbench up to 3.9 without any issues, and is fast enough to make a huge difference using the system compared to a standard A1200. My A4000 is faster with its 040, but I have to admit I hardly ever switch it on as the A1200 is setup to do everything I normally need to do.
 
Re: Best accelerator for 1200 Tower

Well, I will 'settle' for a 50Mhz 030 if I can find one for a good price. As you say it's way too easy to spend a lot of money on something that you're just not going to use to it's full ability. If I'd learned that lesson 20 years ago I'd have a lot more money in the bank now!

I've ordered a CYP CM-345S to prevent me spending out on scan doublers for all my newly aquired miggys (was sooo tempted) and when that arrives I'll have everything hooked up to the PC monitors and can just get on with enjoying the Amiga again :)

Steve
 
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