Games that required an accelerator (68030, 68040, 68060)

[Radertified]

I went through a bunch of "newer" games (generally those released in the Amiga CD-ROM era) and tested them on a 68020 Amiga 1200 config to see if they ran. I've posted the results in the original post.

The summary is: When a game says it requires 68030 or above, it's generally referring to speed rather than instructions. A regular Amiga 1200 with 68020 and some RAM can run every game that I tested, most of which are playable enough. Obviously an accelerator and more & faster RAM will improve performance significantly. There may be games that actually require a 68030 or above, but I didn't encounter any.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Radertified

I went through a bunch of "newer" games (generally those released in the Amiga CD-ROM era) and tested them on a 68020 Amiga 1200 config to see if they ran. I've posted the results in the original post.

The summary is: When a game says it requires 68030 or above, it's generally referring to speed rather than instructions. A regular Amiga 1200 with 68020 and some RAM can run every game that I tested, most of which are playable enough. Obviously an accelerator and more & faster RAM will improve performance significantly. There may be games that actually require a 68030 or above, but I didn't encounter any.

Even then, a 68030 isn't that much faster than a 68020, as the 68030 is basically just a 68020 with 256-byte data cache added on, along with burst mode support via that cache, plus an integrated MMU.

If you turn the data cache off the 030 will perform at pretty much exactly the same speed as a similarly-clocked 020. A 28Mhz-30Mhz 020 will be about on par with a 25Mhz 030 on most tasks if the 030 has data cache turned on.

[Radertified]

Very interesting. Although missing a data cache is a big deal, it does make 68020 accelerators a viable option for the budget conscious.

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by Radertified

Very interesting. Although missing a data cache is a big deal, it does make 68020 accelerators a viable option for the budget conscious.

The thing is the data cache was only 256 bytes, which meant it was only really helpful on repeated operations on the same set of data. It helps a lot on some very specific algorithms, but in general use it didn't help that much. The biggest benefit actually came from the burst mode transfers that let you load an entire 16-byte cache line with only one address request. (This is why you got a noticeable speed boost on the A3000 when you installed static column RAM, which was required to enable burst mode).

The instruction cache was the same on the 030 as on the 020, which was much more helpful than the data cache, as plenty of loops fit within 256 bytes, while working on far more than 256 bytes of data.

Data caches on the 040/060 were way more useful as they were much larger (4k/8k) and supported deferred writes of cache lines.

[Spriteer]

I could not finish Dune 2 on my unaccelerated A500 back then. Did it now much later on A3000. My next task is to play Wing Commander that also just was too slow on A500. That I will play on my "new" CD32 with TF330.

[Xebec]

Are there any games here where the experience would be noticeably better on a fast 68030 (40-50MHz) with fast RAM than say a 68020 @ 28 MHz with fast RAM?

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by Xebec

Are there any games here where the experience would be noticeably better on a fast 68030 (40-50MHz) with fast RAM than say a 68020 @ 28 MHz with fast RAM?

This might be better suited to a separate thread (maybe a thread for A1200 030 Turbocards seeing as a few have come out), but from memory:

Frontier Elite II on an 030/50 is mostly smooth.
Wing Commander on an 030/50 is very smooth.
FA-18 Interceptor, Robocop 3 etc is as smooth as a baby's bum.
AB3D is perfect.
AB3D II is playable at AB3D quality levels.
Doom ports are reasonable.

[CraigsBar]

Now I, Like many other people it seems, have an 060 rev6 equipped amiga 1200 (Thanks to a TF1260) I am realising how much of an upgrade this is from my 030 DKB Mongoose. I am looking forward to finally playing Gloom and all the other games listed in this thread... (excluding those with the PPC requirements obviously)