Nova's Blizzard 1260

[NovaCoder]

Yep finally managed to bag the ultimate 68k card, this is what I call hardware p0rn.


It started life as a humble 1240 but after a trip to Poland (you know of whom I speak), it's now a little more interesting. I haven't even tried it out yet but it should be very nice (>80Mhz and 128 MB RAM).

Only sad thing is that I'll have to say goodbye to my lovely 80Mhz Apollo 1260.

I've just done some benchmarks with my Apollo, I'll update this thread with the results from the Blizzard.

[roy bates]

very nice nova.

[NovaCoder]

Thanks, will it topple the mighty Apollo though?

There's so much conflicting information about this on the forums, I'll find out for myself soon though.

The theory is that the Apollo can write to chip ram faster but it writes to fast ram slower.

[roy bates]

i only go by brute force nova.

see how it performs,its all good to me mate.

(i am thinking about getting a blizzard myself)this is because of the max ram available within the system,no more no less mate.which is a good reason on its own.

i know it writes to fastram slower(in benchmarks,because the ram is async to the cpu.but in real world tests there about the same for me)

[fitzsteve]

Nice acquisition mate

Shame you didn't go for a BPPC, we might have seen some PPC ports

[NovaCoder]

I'm not really into PPC, I like to keep it old school

[AmigaFriend]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I'm not really into PPC, I like to keep it old school

That is a good proposition that I subscribe entirely!

All the best with your new Blizz.

[diablothe2nd]

Enjoy mate! I never regretted buying and owning my last B1260, and definitely don't regret part exchanging that for my BPPC, also upgraded in the same way as your man

[Retrofan]

Congrats mate. That's a great machine

I had one for two years till I sold it to buy a BPPC, but sometimes I miss it.

[NovaCoder]

Well the new Blizzard seems to work ok

[ Show youtube player ]

[NovaCoder]

Ok, I spent the day yesterday setting up my new Blizzard and can now do some speed comparisons between the two.

My Blizz is currently running at 75 MHz vs my Apollo that runs at 80 Mhz so keep that in mind.

I'll be uploading both SysSpeed modules to AmiNet soon for people to compare (I might whack the Blizzard up to 80 Mhz first though if my other 128Mb SIM fits in it ok).

With a standard BB2 3.9 system the fast-ram speed it is roughly 30% quicker than the Apollo, it surprising matches the chip-ram speed of the Apollo in most cases but for a couple of the test the Apollo beats the Blizz by about 20% (you need to download the modules to get the exact ratings).

The HD transfer rate was terrible with just BB2 (about 1 MB/s) but the excellent BlizKick got that up to a more respectable 3 MB/s (this is with an IdeFixExpress). My Apollo managed about 3.5 MB/s with the same setup so that's where it's faster chip-ram access is helping. I've got a brand-new FAST-ATA sitting in a box next to my 1200 which should help boost that speed a little

The MIPS are also interesting, the Blizz is running at 99.5 MIPS vs the 104.5 of the Apollo (remember that the Apollo is running 5 MHz faster).

As for real world game testing: BOOM 060 runs 'Return to Saturn' much better than on the Apollo, it's now as smooth as butter and can even run full-screen without any slow-down. AmiQuake AGA is a bit strange, the FPS in the time-demo has gone up from 12.9 to 13.4 but it doesn't actually feel quite as fast to play (maybe this is just in my head).

I'm not sure if it's the hardware that is really making the difference, I think a large part of it may be down to the superior 060 library and the excellent BlizKick utility.

[klx300r]

@ NovaCoder

congrats on the sweet Blizz keep us posted on all the testing you do

[NovaCoder]

Cool thanks,

Next up will be to install my registered HSMATHLIBS, some people seem to think it's a bad idea with Blizzards (something about a conflict with the 68060.lib) but maybe I'll give it a go and see if it effects the speed of my 060 builds of DOOM/Quake. I could of course install Cyberpatcher but I'm not really sure if it's worth it, maybe one day I could give it a try I guess. BOOM runs so well now that I can't believe there will be much of a speed boost, maybe I can speed up Quake a little though.

I've also got to see if my other 128MB SIM wants to play at 80 Mhz (my current SIM packs up at 75 Mhz but the card itself has been tested at 80 Mhz).

After that I'll install my new FAST-ATA and maybe install a new SATA SSD HD if I can find some room in my desktop case.

[Bamiga2002]

Could CyberPatcher conflict with HSMathLibs in any way?
Gongrats for the Blizz 060, I had that card years ago and loved it. Then I swapped it for a BPPC + cash. Still I sometimes miss the damn card

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

After that I'll install my new FAST-ATA and maybe install a new SATA SSD HD if I can find some room in my desktop case.

What do you say? I thought you were the "FastATA Pain in the Ass" man

I haven't made that but you should buy a cable to connect it to the Sata HD.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

What do you say? I thought you were the "FastATA Pain in the Ass" man

I haven't made that but you should buy a cable to connect it to the Sata HD.

Yes they are a pain but I need the speed and think I'll grow old waiting for Jens.

[NovaCoder]

Installed HSMathsLibs, didn't improve the frame rate but it did seem improve the response time back to Apollo standards

Also 'seemed' to make the same improvements to Quake 2

My theory is that HSMathLibs have much faster cos/sin functions than the standard ones, that would explain why they improve the player's turn-rate so much but don't have any effect on the frame-rate.

[Bamiga2002]

Okey, found some info about HSMathLibs and x-Patcher here.
The question that boggles my mind is that for 68060 which option is better:
HSMathLibs 68040/68060 or 68881/68882 libraries?

[NovaCoder]

It sounds like it depends on the game you are trying to run, some games can benefit for 060 HSMathLibs and some benefit from CyberPatcher/OxyPatcher but you'd never benefit from both at the same time. Of course if a game is written properly and contains only 060 code then it wouldn't benefit from either.

This is the only thing that worries me a little about using HSMathLibs (from the link above):

There is a note in the Phase5 060 notes that suggests that the HSMathLibs might not be compatible with the 68060.library. It states as follows: "You need the original Commodore math libraries and not some custom libs found on aminet! The reason is that I have to patch the library base and don't wanna check out every math library incarnation if it supports the math precision hook."

Anyway I'm going to uninstall HSMathLib on my machine and confirm that they really do make AmiQuake more responsive to play, if HSMathLibs really do make it more responsive then I'll know that there is no point installing CyberPatcher for any of my ports (which are all based on gcc).

I also found this -> thread

Update: Rolled back to the standard math libs then back to HsMathLibs and I can confirm that HSMathLibs do increase the speed of AmiQuake (and therefore all of my ports) by a small amount, it does also make it 'feel' much quicker to play

If I'm feeling brave enough tonight, I'll attempt to install my new FAST-ATA!

[NovaCoder]

Ok attempted the FAST-ATA install last night, first problem was that it wouldn't fit without removing my Indy Mrk2 (case wouldn't close). So I took the Mrk2 out and stuck it on and got it working.

HD transfer rate went up from about 3.5 MB/s to about 6.5 MB/s (Mode 4). This increase was nice (games loaded faster) but didn't actually make much of a difference to the speed of the games themselves.

For now I've decided to stick with the good old IdeFixExpress as I cannot go back to a wavy VGA display after using the Mrk 2. I'll have to decide what I'm going to do with this FAST-ATA now, either sell it or wait to see if this ScanJuggler is any good.