Accelerator or Ram card?

Hi all,

As I said in my intro I have recently bought an A1200 with a HDD and WHDlead in stalled with some games on it. Now I have noticed that the stock A1200 struggles with some games that load form the HDD. I have read that an accelerator card can help.

So my question is: Do I need an accelerator card, if so what type should I get, or will a Ram expansion be enough?

I don't want to play an 3D games like Gloom? just all the old classics like Zool, SWOS, Speedball, James Pond etc.

Thanks for reading.

[fitzsteve]

Hi!

For what you want to do a 4 or 8mb Trapdoor Ram Upgrade will be perfect

Just don't pay the inflated £60-70 ebay prices, keep an eye on Amibay and our marketplace here or make a wanted ad.

For £85 you can get one of Individual Computers brand new ACA1230 Accelerators

All the best,

Steve.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Aberuns

Do I need an accelerator card, if so what type should I get, or will a Ram expansion be enough?

For what you are saying you want, you don't need an accelerator card.

For an Amiga 1200 to be a good WHDLoad machine, all you need is some fast RAM, 4M should be plenty..

I had (have, but not installed) an 8M Fast RAM card that I had jumpered to 4M (I could use a software program to enable the other 4M if needed) and that was plenty. I never needed to even add the other 4M for WHDLoad games. They just worked and worked nicely..

Now, I said "have, but not installed".. Why? I got an accelerator with RAM.

For not much more money than I paid for my RAM card, I got the accelerator.

If you can get a really good deal on the RAM card, you'll be happy with it. But for not much more you can usually find an Accelerator/RAM card...

Either way, you score...
In the words of a great American, "Duh, Winner!!"

desiv

Thanks for the responses, I will keep an eye out on here and Amibay. Glad you told me that £60 - £70 is inflated as I was the other day about to pay £60 for a 4Mb ram card.

I was thinking of a budget of about £60 so I may hold out and see if I can get an accelerator then. If I do go down this route is there a card you would suggest (speed etc)

[cpiac64]

past 15 april i was sold my 1230 with 32 for 60€, i suppose plus 10€ from italy to uk

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Aberuns

Thanks for the responses, I will keep an eye out on here and Amibay. Glad you told me that £60 - £70 is inflated as I was the other day about to pay £60 for a 4Mb ram card.

I was thinking of a budget of about £60 so I may hold out and see if I can get an accelerator then. If I do go down this route is there a card you would suggest (speed etc)

For £60 you should be able to get a Blizzard 1220/4, Apollo 1220 or even an M-Tec/Viper 1230 Accelerator which as well as adding 4/8mb ram will give your workbench a nice little boost, about 2-3x as fast as a standard A1200 with Ram Upgrade.

Workbench will be a lot more responsive and you could dabble in the odd emulator/3D game if you wanted to. Although they wont really benefit unless you spend out on a faster card like a Blizzard 1230 MkIV.

Somewhere in the middle you have the new ACA cards, these are brand new released in 2010 and you can find them at Amigakit.

You should be able to fine a 4/8mb upgrade would be about £40

Steve.

[khph_re]

A plain RAM card will still double the speed of your machine, but i'd avoid them unless you find one much cheaper than an ACA accelerator. ACA has a ton of RAM onboard as well.

Quite a few games will benefit from an accelerator, not just workbench.


3D simulators, doom clones, emulators:Mac, MSX, gameboy, master system and c64 will all be worthwhile with an accelerator.

[AndyLandy]

Like others have said, the ACA1230/28 is a CPU accelerator (68030@28MHz) with 64MB FastRAM on it. They're retailing for ~£85, which is a fantastic price. If your budget will stretch to that, I'd go for it.

If you want to go for something less, pay less for it! Roughly don't pay more than:
£70 for an '030 that's limited to 4/8 MB FastRAM
£55 for an '020 that's limited to 4/8 MB FastRAM
£40 for a plain 4/8 MB FastRAM card

Don't buy a PCMCIA SRAM card, it'll be slow as hell and probably quite pricey too.

I bought a 4MB card on Amibay a few months ago (before the ACAs were announced) and paid about £50, including shipping and some other bits and pieces. I'm very happy with it in my A1200.