The best 68060 accelerator for A4000?

[Clark Kent]

What is the best 68060 accelerator for the Amiga 4000 out there?

I guess two clear candidates are the Apollo 4060 and the CyberStorm:
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/apollo4060
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm3

Now, I understand that the CyberStorm has a better SCSI compared to the Apollo, as it does SCSI with DMA. But that isn't too important for me as SCSI is expensive and not very much used today anyway. On the other hand I think I've read somewhere that the Apollo does RAM faster than CyberStorm, is this true?

To make it even more complex, the CyberStorm has 3 revisions:
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm1
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm2
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm3

I've heard that there are some differences between these revisions when it comes to overclocking, and that Mk-III isn't necessary the best one?

What do you think is the best board, especially if you keep SCSI out of the picture?

[tokyoracer]

Best, no question is the Cyberstorm 060 Mk.3

[mousehouse]

You could add the GVP A4060DT card to the list. Don't know how it compares speed-wise. I've heard the SCSI is not that good and tricky about non-FFS partitions/disks but some cards are available...

If all accelerators are clocked at the same speed I guess the main speed difference will come from the speed difference of the memory interface and introduced latency differences when accessing the main system. I've heard that of the Cyberstorms, the mk3 is the fastest, trailed by a very small percentage by the mk1. The mk2 being the slowest of the three.

I have not seen an Apollo 4060 for sale in quite some time.

[zipper]

The fastest is Quikpak 060 as it's the only one that benefits from EDO Ram. But just for tower models.

[Crumb]

@Clark Kent

Cyberstorm MKIII works very fast although 060 socket solder points are fragile and could produce bad contacts in the future. Anyway you can also add a CVPPC, a very fast graphic card. If you are lucky you could also find G-Rex, the fastest PCI bridge.

CyberstormMKII is very nice and quite fast, I was very happy with it when I had it.

Cyberstorm MKI can be picky with memory used and uses various modules that could cause contact problems if you are not careful. IIRC these are not easy to overclock but I may be mistaken.

IMHO SCSI is still important because there are cheap scsi-ide/scsi-sata controllers that allow you to have very fast HD access. Yamaha ones are quite cheap (although limited to 128GB) and ACard ones are faster and moreover: allow more than 128GB to be used.

There are also GVP accelerators that also have quite fast memory access (faster than MKIII IIRC) but I don't know many GVP users. I think these accelerators are built new again so if you don't mind paying more you may have new hardware for your classic :-)

[mousehouse]

Nice comparison of some cards (GVP A4060DT and Quickpak are missing)...

http://amiga.resource.cx/perf/sysspeed.pl

[alexh]

Without a doubt it is the Cyberstorm MKIII. It's memory architecture and Ultra Wide SCSI 3 make it the best.

Unfortunately they are sooo very fragile.

[HammerD]

The fastest is Quikpak 060 as it's the only one that benefits from EDO Ram. But just for tower models.

There is a desktop version of the Quikpak 060:

http://www.hd-zone.com/amiga/A4000T.html

[HammerD]

Nice comparison of some cards (GVP A4060DT and Quickpak are missing)...

http://amiga.resource.cx/perf/sysspeed.pl

I have some information here:

http://www.hd-zone.com/amiga/index.html

And benchmarks here and further information on the boards:

http://www.hd-zone.com/amiga/68060-chart.html

http://www.hd-zone.com/amiga/quickpak.html



For the Quikpak 68060 board:


BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv) Buffer: 262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768 (bustest fast rom)

Memtype Cycle Bandwidth
fast readw 44.8 ns 44.6 meg/sec
fast readl 71.1ns 56.6 meg/sec
fast readm 73.1ns 54.7 meg/sec
fast writew 44.8ns 44.7 meg/sec
fast writel 89.8ns 44.6 meg/sec
fast writem 89.0ns 45.0 meg/sec
rom readw 44.8ns 44.7 meg/sec
rom readl 69.9ns 57.2 meg/sec
rom readm 73.0ns 54.8 meg/sec


Memspeed Benchmarks (Memspeed Copyright 1996 Frank Wille)


Ram type: 60ns Fast Page Mode (FPM) vs. 60ns EDO Ram (EDO)

Type FPM Read EDO Read % Change
Chip Ram 4617 kB/s 4617 kB/s 0.0%
Fast Ram 46492 kB/s 54545 kB/s +17.3%
Rom 46586 kB/s 54545 kB/s +17.1%

Type FPM Write EDO Write % Change
Chip Ram 6969 kB/s 6968 kB/s -0.01%
Fast Ram 38927 kB/s 44055 kB/s +13.2%

Type FPM Copy EDO Copy % Change
Chip Ram 2777 kB/s 2777 kB/s 0.0%
Fast Ram 22470 kB/s 26716 kB/s +18.9%

As you can see from the table above, the EDO ram has a significant impact on both the read and write speeds of Fast ram, with an upto 18.9% performance boost over FPM (fast page mode) ram, with the Quikpak 060 board.