A4000 RAM speeds
 

Hi,

does someone have or can point me to a (rough but comprehensive) A4000 FastRAM speed comparison of

Mainboard memory
vs.
Zorro III memory (e.g. DKB 3128)
vs.
CPU card memory (e.g. Cyberstorm)
vs.
"emulated" Zorro III memory (i.e. Radeon memory from a Mediator)

Thank you,
Torsten

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Ok lets start here:
A4000 Motherboard Memory w/A3640@25MHz = 100%. <-Reference point
A4000 Z3 DKB 3128 = 80%
A4000 Z3 Fastlane with fastest 60ns mode = 90%
A4000 with newer Z3 Memory board like ZorRAM or BigRAMplus = 95%
Mediator System Memory = 50%
A4000 Motherboad Memory w/A3640@25MHz with Speedgeek's 030 machine = 115%
A4000 Accelerator with onboard RAM = 150%-400% (There is a wide disparity in RAM speed between accelerators)

Thank you! Exactly what I've been looking for. So, I'll stay away from Mediator RAM at all cost and probably try the 112 MB motherboard hack first...

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grelbfalk - very nice summary. thanks!

Btw: whats the source - youf findings?

Sure, I mean anyone can do testing themselves or consult AIBB results or a couple dozen threads. That's why I said "Ok lets start here." I have to an extent tested most of this myself but I may have done some things wrong like maybe used wrong/bad 68060.libraries, or forgot X hack to speed something up. Though I'm pretty sure this is accurate but not precise.

There should be lots of asterisks to say like:
* 3128 when promoted to higher priority than A4000 Motherboard memory will significantly increase A4091 HDD speeds. Same for Fastlane w/Fastlane memory
** <Insert hierarchy of A4000 Accelerators> Maybe something like fastest to slowest: Quikpak 060-XP, CSMK3, CSPPC, Warpengine, Trexx-II, Apollo 060, Trexx-I, A3640 w/Xcalibur, A3660 w/Chucky's Ram Expansion, CSMK1, CSMK2, A3640 w/Speedgeeks 030 State Machine, A3640, A3660...
*** A4000 motherboard with C= A3430 has faster access than A3640. (Maybe does it, I don't remember? Never had an 030 accelerator for A4000)
**** Mediator system memory yeah it's slow-really slow for the 060, but... PCI to PCI is really fast, for instance Sonnet to PCI GFX Card memory
***** A4000 w/a3640@33MHz or A3660@66MHz is X fast, as overclocking those boards also increases RAM access.
****** A4000 w/a3640 w/Speedgeeks 030 State Machine also improves Chip Memory access and Zorro access
******* A4000 Chip Memory=40%
******** On and on in different usage scenarios.

... and that's been exactly what I meant by "rough but comprehensive". You produced a great overall look on this subject.

Oops, did I miss something? I thought, Chucky had plans for this, but didn't get around to it yet...


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Right, you are correct, but I think it will be true someday.

@grelbfarlk - have you measured A1200 and A3000 as well?

No not really. A1200 doesn't have onboard RAM obviously, so I guess you could compare PCMCIA to various RAM+FPU only accelerators to 040/060s Accelerators. No Zorro but there are various busboards, which are mostly Z2, but Z3 are available but slower than in the A4000. Don't know if they work with the couple Z3 DMA boards either.

A3000 is mostly the same however we're always assuming an 030 is the base, but Static Column ZIPs are available on the motherboard, not sure what the numbers for those are. But otherwise the accelerators should perform basically the same. Due to this, we're not assuming the default A3640 in the A4000 so RAM is a little bit faster.

Oh there's also SpeedRamsey for A3000/A4000 that is worth another good 10% or so but to my knowledge is not compatible with the 64MB/112MB mods. Similarly I've not been able to run an A3640/60 at 33/66MHz with the 64MB mod, stably at least.

According to what I've read, the 112MB mod when used in the stripped down variant with only one 64MB SIMM and the appropriate GAL content, will work with Speedramsey. However, I don't know whether there will be stability issues when overclocking the bus.

The problem with all the >16MB mods for the A4000 is that they aren't easily reverted, even if you isolate traces instead of cutting them, etc. So, I'm still a bit undecided. If the BigRAM plus or Zorram weren't as scarcely available, I'd go down that route. The fact that their owners don't easily part with them seems to be proof that these boards are probably not too bad in real life usage scenarios.

There seems to be another similar project, Z3SDRAM, but since I'm away from any PC at the moment, I can't open the PCB file to check what (possibly rare) parts would be needed to build one...

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That could be, I'm just going by my experiences with SpeedRamsey and the old 64MB mod, maybe it works now. The other thing to consider is why you're doing it. If you just want more speed, an accelerator is the way to go.

With any of the Z3 expansions the speed decrease might not be noticeable compared to motherboard RAM, since most of the libraries are going to be loaded into A4000 motherboard RAM already until it is exhausted. I've heard many people say "Hey the Mediator system memory isn't slow because I have a CSPPC w/128MB and after I added it nothing started moving any slower!" true, since you never put the system in a position where it only had Mediator memory left.

For instance if you're trying to play a large animation out of RAM, you can be right at the border of having fast enough RAM to play it smoothly without dropping a frame. If you're trying to stream an animation from the HDD, then none of it matters since the HDD is going to be the bottleneck, any expansion should work as well as any other (assuming you're not using some DMA HDD controller).

Using bustest:

A4000 CSMk2 66mhz 060

64MB mobo fast ram = 11.5MB/s read, 6.1MB/s write
128MB CSMK2 ram = 43MB/s read, 30MB/s write
PCI PPC ram = 5.6MB/s read, 9.1MB/s write
PCI Voodoo ram = 2.3MB/s read, 3.1MB/s write

A3000 WarpEngine 50mhz 060

64MB WE ram = 27.7MB/s read, 17.8MB/s write
256MB ZorRam Zorro3 ram = 6.8MB/s read, 4.0MB/s write

A4000 WarpEngine 96mhz 060

64MB WE ram = 54.3MB/s readm, 34.3MB/s writem

The WE runs it's ram at half the 060's clock speed, so in this case it's 48Mhz - so compare those results to the 66mhz ram on the CSMk2 to see how much quicker the WE's ram controller is.

Blizzard 1260 80mhz 060

57.6MB/s read, 38.5MB/s write

Here's some sysspeed modules, the last one on the right is the built-in one I believe a CSMK-1 or CSMK-2 at 50MHz.
https://i.imgur.com/dzvJfcZ.png

Blizzard 1260 80mhz 060

57.6MB/s read, 38.5MB/s write

Yeah, this card is just fabulous. I've got one myself. However, in my experience, most other upgrades to the 1200 tend to be fiddly, especially in certain combinations. It's so much easier to just plug a board in a Zorro slot than all this tempering with upside down PLCC sockets, dealing with power issues and so on.

On the other hand, upgrading the 1200 can also be an interesting challenge and rewarding experience...