31 January 2013, 11:49 | #1 |
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Nova's Blizzard 1260
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. Last edited by NovaCoder; 14 December 2021 at 00:15. |
31 January 2013, 12:05 | #2 |
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very nice nova.
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31 January 2013, 12:18 | #3 |
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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. |
31 January 2013, 12:28 | #4 |
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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) |
31 January 2013, 12:36 | #5 |
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Nice acquisition mate
Shame you didn't go for a BPPC, we might have seen some PPC ports |
31 January 2013, 15:14 | #6 |
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I'm not really into PPC, I like to keep it old school
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31 January 2013, 15:32 | #7 |
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31 January 2013, 20:03 | #8 |
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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
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31 January 2013, 21:56 | #9 |
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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. |
01 February 2013, 12:19 | #10 |
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Well the new Blizzard seems to work ok
[ Show youtube player ] Last edited by NovaCoder; 03 February 2013 at 23:53. |
04 February 2013, 00:07 | #11 |
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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. |
04 February 2013, 03:39 | #12 |
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@ NovaCoder
congrats on the sweet Blizz keep us posted on all the testing you do |
04 February 2013, 05:03 | #13 |
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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. Last edited by NovaCoder; 04 February 2013 at 05:23. |
04 February 2013, 07:28 | #14 |
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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 |
04 February 2013, 09:27 | #15 | |
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Quote:
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. |
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04 February 2013, 09:33 | #16 |
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04 February 2013, 12:19 | #17 |
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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. Last edited by NovaCoder; 04 February 2013 at 23:51. |
04 February 2013, 23:38 | #19 | |
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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): Quote:
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! Last edited by NovaCoder; 05 February 2013 at 10:17. |
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08 February 2013, 00:56 | #20 |
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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. Last edited by NovaCoder; 08 February 2013 at 01:11. |
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