08/1997
Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: cld@wucs1.wustl.edu (Christopher L. Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Fusion Forty accelerator for Amiga 2000
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 27 Apr 1993 02:18:03 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Reply-To: cld@wucs1.wustl.edu (Christopher L. Davis)
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Keywords: hardware, A2000, accelerator, 68040, commercial
PRODUCT NAME
Fusion Forty accelerator
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
The Fusion Forty (abbreviated as "F40" in this review) is a 68040
accelerator card for the Amiga 2000. It connects via the processor slot and
may be populated with 4, 8, 16, 20, or 32 MB of 80ns (or faster) 32-bit
RAM. My board has "Plug and Go" ROMs version 2.1.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: RCS Management
Address: 120 McGill Street
Montreal, Quebec
H2Y 2E5 Canada
Telephone: (514) 871-4924
FAX: (514) 871-4926
BBS: (514) 871-9881
LIST PRICE
$1170 (US) with no 32-bit RAM, when purchased directly from RCS.
Street price: unknown. I got mine during a special for Amiga User Groups
and paid $995 for the board and $175 for 4 MB RAM. At the time, other 68040
boards were selling for $2000 or more.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
An Amiga 2000. I recommend a hard drive.
SOFTWARE
Works under AmigaDOS 1.3 and higher. If you have AmigaDOS
2.1, all you need is the CPU command in the C: directory and
LIBS:68040.library. For lower AmigaDOS versions, additional
software is provided on the F40 install disk (SetPatch,
SetFF, FFCache). I did not try the board under AmigaDOS
1.3, but the board does support it.
COPY PROTECTION
None.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
Amiga 2000 (ECS -- see below)
IVS Trumpcard Pro SCSI Disk controller
Supra 2000 Memory Card with 4 MB 16 bit Fast Ram
DKB MegaChip 2000 (2 Meg Chip Ram) and Super Denise
AmigaDOS 2.04
Fusion Forty Accelerator with 4 MB of 32-bit Fast RAM
REVIEW
The F40 is a 28 MHz 68040 accelerator board for the Amiga 2000.
(The manual says 25MHz, but all my system measurement software says the
processor is overclocked to 28 MHz.) It has a built in math coprocessor
(FPU) and Memory Management Unit (MMU). And in case you want to go back to
your 68000, there is a hardware switch on the back plate to disable the
040. This change should NEVER be made while the machine is running.
The F40 is cleanly designed, with no traces or pins wired together.
There are a couple of surface-mounted chips, but the rest are socketed. The
board is 6-layer with separate ground and power planes. There are 3
expansion connectors on the board for future use.
Before I got the F40, I hadn't really had much experience with
hardware installation, but the board was quick and easy to install. Software
installation was handled via Commodore's Installer program... very nice and
easy to work with.
The first thing I noticed was that everything was so quick. Things
just jumped out onto the screen. Next, I set all the caches for maximum
performance. I wanted to get the most out of the hardware. Some software
broke because of this; I cover this topic in more depth in the BUGS section,
below.
Of course, one of the biggest benefits of the processor upgrade was
in multitasking. I would experience pauses with my old 68000 while doing the
most mundane things. With the F40, I have no such problems. I have a
number of tasks running simultaneously with no discernible pauses and no
noticeable slowdown. I have downloaded files at high speeds while compiling,
working with a Digi-Paint picture, or processing JPEG graphics with
HamLabPlus (a great program -- shameless plug for Ed Hamway).
Just how fast is the board? I did some benchmarking with a
pre-release version of AIBB 6.0 and with SysInfo. I chose AIBB because I
believe the suite of tests is a pretty good cross-section of the computing we
all do. It is composed of integer and floating point math, and some
graphics tests, including a piece of a rudimentary raytracing algorithm.
During the tests, I chose the A4000/040 as my base machine. All caches were
active, and advanced code generation options were activated where
applicable. Also, FPUs were utilized where they existed. The following
table shows the results in the form of percentages faster or slower than the
A4000/040. For example, a rating of 1.26 means "26% faster than an
A4000/040," and a rating of 0.63 means "37% slower than an A4000/040."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tests | A4000-40 | A2000-F40 | A600 | A1200 | A3000-25 |
| BASE | | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EmuTest | 1.00 | 1.26 | 0.06 | 0.12 | 0.31 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
InstTest | 1.00 | 1.59 | 0.10 | 0.17 | 0.54 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EllipseTest| 1.00 | 0.61 | 0.18 | 0.44 | 0.43 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
WritePixel | 1.00 | 0.43 | 0.07 | 0.19 | 0.23 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
LineTest | 1.00 | 0.62 | 0.53 | 0.92 | 0.58 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Matrix | 1.00 | 1.47 | 0.06 | 0.23 | 0.63 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sieve | 1.00 | 1.74 | 0.09 | 0.37 | 0.79 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
IMath | 1.00 | 1.13 | 0.02 | 0.21 | 0.43 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dhrystone | 1.00 | 1.13 | 0.05 | 0.11 | 0.29 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
MemTest | 1.00 | 2.43 | 0.29 | 0.79 | 1.88 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | 1.00 | 1.20 | 0.05 | 0.14 | 0.36 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
TGTTest | 1.00 | 0.72 | 0.26 | 0.56 | 0.51 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Savage | 1.00 | 1.16 | <0.01 | 0.01 | 1.25 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Flops | 1.00 | 1.13 | <0.01 | <0.01 | 0.17 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FMath | 1.00 | 1.12 | <0.01 | <0.01 | 0.11 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
TranTest | 1.00 | 1.53 | <0.01 | 0.02 | 0.95 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FMatrix | 1.00 | 1.73 | 0.05 | 0.12 | 0.37 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FTrace | 1.00 | 1.21 | <0.01 | 0.02 | 0.98 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BeachBall | 1.00 | 0.95 | <0.01 | 0.02 | 0.32 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CplxTest | 1.00 | 1.18 | 0.04 | 0.07 | 0.25 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Descriptions of the tests can be found by downloading AIBB version
6.00 when it is available. The descriptions and pseudo-code examples of the
test can be found in the Documentation directory of the AIBB 6.0 archive.
The F40 shows admirable benchmarks in all categories except the
graphically oriented ones. I attribute this to the higher bandwidth and
advanced capabilities of the AGA chipset. I can not figure out why the
3000-25 outscored both the 4000-40 and the F40 in the savage test: perhaps
some advantage to the 030-882 combination?
From the data collected above, the F40 equipped A2000 seems to
exceed the performance of the A4000-40 in non-graphics tests by 12 to 143
percent.
The fact that the F40 and the A3000 scored better on the memory test
is not a surprise, considering that I have heard of some type of problem in
the 4000 memory system. I don't know the exact nature of the problem, but
it was discussed here on the net a while back if I remember correctly.
Nic Wilson's SysInfo 3.11 agrees with the Dhrystone measurement
above, with a 11% faster F40 compared to AIBB's 12%. It also rates it at
approximately 21+ MIPS and 5+ MFLOPS. Take that rating (MIPS/MFLOPS) for
what it is worth. ;)
To test C compilation speed, I wanted results that could be utilized
by the largest group of possible people interested. I decided to compile
something that came on the SAS C 6.2 distribution (6.0 with 6.2 patch
applied). I chose the "cback" example. I tested the compile by double
clicking the Build icon for cback and stop-watching the compile. It
actually creates two files, cback and schelp. I tested with my 68000, my
F40 with caches and copyback off, and with caches and copyback on. Here are
the results.
68000, plain: 137 seconds
68040, caches off: 26 seconds
68040, caches on: 18 seconds
I enjoy video and have done some playing around with 3D Rendering,
so I wanted to do a rendering benchmark. Again, like compiling, I wanted to
do something that others could reproduce. I have Caligari 2 and chose to
load an object that came with the package. I chose gobot.obj. Once the
object is loaded, I clicked the render button. I ran it with the data cache
and copyback, and then without any caches. I don't even think Caligari 2
supports just using the 68000; and in any case, I don't believe I have the
patience to wait as long as I think it would take. Here are the results:
without copyback and data cache: 87 seconds
with copyback and data cache: 43 seconds
This is by no means conclusive but provides you with some solid numbers that
you can compare to your own system.
For you Video Toaster users, the F40 is fully compatible, and I hear
they are in regular use at NewTek (this was unconfirmed by NewTek -- have you
tried reaching them for the last week or so?). According to Micro Times,
the F40 was the accelerator used in the Amiga 2000's that produced the
effects for Babylon 5. Their setup consisted of a dozen 2000's (8 of which
did rendering) with F40s and 32 Meg of RAM. They were networked by a Novell
network and used Oxxi's netware package for the Amiga.
DOCUMENTATION
A small 30 page manual is provided covering the F40 and its
installation (hardware, software, and new RAM). It also covers enabling and
disabling the 040 and how to use the cache controlling software. There are
sections in the manual that deal with hardware and software considerations,
how the F40 works, a Question/Answer section (short), and technical
specifications.
LIKES:
Speed!!! What a screamer.
Vendor -- See vendor section.
Reliability -- Rock SOLID for over a year.
DISLIKES
One only really that I just discovered. I put in the new Plug and
Go ROMS recently. They fixed a minor annoyance that called for a double
boot at power up time. When I went to pry the ROMs out of the sockets, I
found out that the sockets did not have the usual hard plastic bottoms.
There was a mylar-like film running between the pin sockets (see diagram
below):
____________<-Mylar ooooooooooooooo
Side | |<-Pin Mylar here Top View
View | | Sockets--->ooooooooooooooo
Forget using the old screw driver pry up for this task. I had a chip puller
handy for Fat Agnus chips, and it happened to fit just fine... big sigh of
relief. Putting the new chips in was challenging, but this fumble-fingered
hardware numbskull managed, so it wasn't too bad.
Suggestions for the board: on-board SCSI (preferably SCSI-II) would
be a welcome addition. See the section at the end of the review about other
coming attractions.
COMPARISON WITH OTHER PRODUCTS
I have used no other 040 accelerators, but I would heartily
recommend this product, without a shade of hesitancy, based on the
reliability of my current card and the vendor's excellent attitude toward
customer satisfaction (see vendor).
BUGS
I experienced a few bugs on my older ROM version. It had the
annoying property of having to be double booted at power-up time (now fixed
with Plug and Go). Quarterback 5.0 would hang if copyback was on. Talking
to CCS/New Horizons provided a fix, and the bug became less frequent, but
Plug and Go has corrected the problem totally. My SAS 6.2 upgrade version of
CPR caused a similar type of problem that Quarterback did, and the Plug and
Go ROMS fixed that problem, too. There may be some few bugs left (I have
read articles on the net about problems with Emplant), but RCS works quite
hard to maintain maximum compatibility. They just recently set up an upgrade
BBS (see the phone number in the AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION section, above),
so we can download new software as it becomes available.
VENDOR SUPPORT
Superlative. This is one area you can't fault RCS on. At least I
can't. I have called and talked with Sales and Technical Support ("TS") a
number of times. I have talked to the same people for the last year or
longer. TS is always helpful, and actively asks what types of things I am
doing. Serge (TS) is knowledgable and quite forthcoming with information,
so much so that it is hard to get all my questions in sometimes. Rischi
(Sales) is quite helpful and is free with information and careful not to
bad-mouth his competition.
RCS seems very driven to satisfy the customer, and I am quite
satisfied with their product and their support.
WARRANTY
One year, parts and labor.
CONCLUSION
The F40 is an excellent product. The quality of the board and the
responsiveness of RCS combine into a winning solution. Two thumbs up here.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
I have specs on their new 33 MHz version board. The two things that
have changed radically are:
1.) 2.0 AmigaDOS or Higher is required (no more 1.3).
2.) 256 Meg of RAM on the board. Another model may only support
up to 128 Meg on the board.
There was word of a Chip RAM accelerator, but nothing has come of it
yet. It has apparently been shelved for now, but it is not dead. The new
version of the board is being given top priority. They also have a
networking card that currently works with the existing F40.
They also promise some new and exciting stuff (that I wish I knew
more about) soon, like an extremely cost-effective 24-bit graphics card that
plugs into the F40.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
This article is in the Public Domain.
---
Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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