The Fastest Apple Mac is an Amiga - Fact or Fiction?

[Octopus66]

Interesting video
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[trixster]

I don't think there was a 68k Mac released with an 060, I think the Quadra 950 had a 33mhz 040. So if you count the Escom A4000T with factory fitted 060 then i guess the fastest stock machine able to run MacOS 7/8 (albeit through Shapeshifter/Fusion) is an Amiga.

[zipper]

Of course, a 060 Amiga runs rings around any Classic Mac; 2 - 3x on benchmarks. I did test it on Speedometer.

[trixster]

Yeah, I was thinking about 'stock' machines, but if you count upgrades then of course any 060 amiga would be much quicker than a mac. I don't believe an 060 upgrade board was ever produced for the mac as everyone was going ppc back then.

A guy on the 68k mac forum more recently thought about using one of 'our' 040-060 adapters to get an 060 into a classic mac but the thread's not been updated for a year, so there's no way to know if he was successful.

https://mac68k.info/forums/thread.js...art=0&tstart=1

[knightbeat]

I wish I'd tried Shapeshifter in the mid 90s. My A1200 was installed with an Apollo 040 and 1GB hard disk, so it would have worked well. An early article in one of the Amiga mags claimed it needed a graphics card to work in colour and I didn't bother to test it further.

[MigaTech]

Technically, neither Amiga, Atari or Apple used the 68060, it was only when Escom had a try, did the Amiga see this incredible CPU!

Most purist don't accept the Escom's as true Amiga units. Only aftermaths!

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

Technically, neither Amiga, Atari or Apple used the 68060, it was only when Escom had a try, did the Amiga see this incredible CPU!

You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence. Besides Phase 5 were the first on the Amiga with the 060 in 1995 I believe.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

You just contradicted yourself in the same sentence. Besides Phase 5 were the first on the Amiga with the 060 in 1995 I believe.

Not if you take into consideration what the second sentence stated. Also phase 5 products cannot be counted, as they are not part of the official Amiga architecture. In other words not factory issued.

This thread is concentrating on a factory spec machine, not aftermarket upgrades.

[Retro1234]

Where does it say Factory? at the end he says Blizzard card.
An upgraded Amiga 060 with Graphics card can beat fastest 68k Mac, with out Graphics card I don't know but very close - doesn't matter if it's Commodore or Escom.

Jim Drew would know?

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

Not if you take into consideration what the second sentence stated. Also phase 5 products cannot be counted, as they are not part of the official Amiga architecture. In other words not factory issued.

This thread is concentrating on a factory spec machine, not aftermarket upgrades.

That's like saying hard drives aren't part of the official architecture and would have to be removed as well (no Amiga manufacturer ever made them). It's irrelevant who owned the Amiga at the time, any machines released were still Amigas and the Amiga range had factory 060 machines released.

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Where does it say Factory? at the end he says Blizzard card.
An upgraded Amiga 060 with Graphics card can beat fastest 68k Mac, with out Graphics card I don't know but very close - doesn't matter if it's Commodore or Escom.

Originally Posted by -Acid-

That's like saying hard drives aren't part of the official architecture and would have to be removed as well (no Amiga manufacturer ever made them). It's irrelevant who owned the Amiga at the time, any machines released were still Amigas and the Amiga range had factory 060 machines released.

OK, fair enough lets just say we take all this into consideration. Then the only Amiga that can be a potential contender is the Escom A4000T.

I believe that stating the Amiga 060 aftermarket is an unfair advantage against the Apple computers. They are running factory specs, so comparing an 020 Amiga upgraded to an 060, isn't technically fair.

This battle can only consist of 2 machines:

Macintosh Quadra 840AV = 68040 @ 40MHz Released 1993 (Faster than the CBM, slower than the Escom.)

Commodore Amiga 4000T = 68040 @ 25MHz Release 1994 (Slowest of the listed machines)

Escom Amiga 4000T = 68060 @ Released 1995 (Fastest of them all but made after the original manufacturer went out of business.)

If we are to be fair the Quadra 840AV is the overall winner, on account that the CBM Amiga 4000T was slower. By the time the Escom was released Apple had launched the Power Macintosh 7100, which was PPC based and much faster than the Escom 4000T.

If you compare just 68K tech then the Escom 4000T wins but I think it is still a shady comparison, considering Apple had discontinued its line of 68K machines, 1 year earlier.

I am still unsure why Apple never used the 68060, some believe they were too expensive to produce in large numbers at that time. Meaning that the system sale prices would of been astronomical. By the time Escom acquired the 060, computers had already moved on. PPC, Pentium etc. <(So 68060 CPU prices dropped enough for Escom to utilize.

Personally, there would of been a time when I would of took a different view on all this. It was EAB who made me realise, that Amiga did have competition and wasn't always the superior machine.

[grelbfarlk]

Here we go again. Later 68k macs had a big advantage that they had much faster access to graphics RAM than Amigas had via AGA or Zorro. Only when you consider BVisionPPC or CVPPC were the Amigas near competitive in that regard. But still to this day I don't think anyone has successfully upgraded a Mac with an 060. The argument is pointless as the PPC Macs ran 68k software with their built in 68k emulator faster than an 060.

I did install an 040-060 adapter in a Quadra and it did not boot, tried LC and full 060 versions. Best guess is that there's something in the Mac ROM that's crashing on boot.

So the answer is no or yes depending on how narrow you want to define the question.

Since some Amiga 4000Ts were sold as stock with a Quikpak 060 then those count (to somebody) since they are classic Amigas. Unless there are a lot of A1200 owners whom are about to be disappointed since they no longer own Amigas since they were sold by Escom or Amiga Tech.

Also the reason for the lack of 060s on Macs was widely reported as forbidden by Apple since they made the 601 PPCs look bad in comparison (which they did). I don't know the truth of the matter that's just what people said.

PPC 601s were terrible processors but architectural upgrades made the system as a whole look a lot better. An 060 beats a PowerMac 7100 on a lot of benchmarks, someone can dig them up if you're curious.

Also if you're going by the Quadra 840: Original Price (US): US$4100, US$5100 (lol?)

[JimDrew]

The Amiga 4000 w/Xcalibur was used by several Hollywood production studios to run the Avid Video Suite. This setup was faster than any model Mac made, including the Quadra 840AV for rendering and such.

I have an A3000 with the PP&S 040/33MHz and it also shows benchmarks way faster than the 840AV. The 060 was basically crippled to run on the Mac OS, so it was typically slower than a 33MHz 040 in many tests. I hated the 060 for the Mac OS.

[sokolovic]

Well the comparison is a bit mind blowing for me.
I grew up with a journalist father that had an LC2 at home, I bet he would'nt ever imagine that the poor childish Amiga 1200 that was in my teenage room could have been much faster than is professional serious business machine with some hardware improvement (but still, with cheaper investment).

And I have a question. I've a saw a video of Indy4 Atlantis MacOS running on an A600 accelerated with an ACA630 using Shapeshifter
How does the A600 manage to run a games that was supposedly in 256 colors ? Does it use an EHB conversion on the fly like ScummVM ECS does for VGA games ?

[Hedeon]

I was once told that Apple put something in their ROM to prevent 060s being used as the 060 Amiga with a Mac Emulator would out-perform the 68K Mac for a lot less money.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

I was once told that Apple put something in their ROM to prevent 060s being used as the 060 Amiga with a Mac Emulator would out-perform the 68K Mac for a lot less money.

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by Octopus66

Interesting video
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Fact!
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[JimDrew]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

I was once told that Apple put something in their ROM to prevent 060s being used as the 060 Amiga with a Mac Emulator would out-perform the 68K Mac for a lot less money.

That's not true. Any 030 or 040 Amiga running EMPLANT's Mac emulation or FUSION was faster than the equiv. 030/040 Mac. This was long before the 060 was ever available. I had to patch the crap out of the Mac OS to even get it to run because of the downfalls of the 060. Unless you write code specifically for the 060, it's not very compatible when it comes to self modifying code, cache handling, etc. due to super-scalar architecture.

[jizmo]

Since Amibian is so highly optimised on Raspberry, I wonder if Shapeshifter/Fusion through Amiga emulation will actually outperform the RPi native mac emulators, like Basilisk II.

[nogginthenog]

Basilisk II uses the same UAE 68k core so probably not much difference. Unless there is an Arm JIT?