Great video, really impressive and thanks for NOT destroying the A1200 case for the CDROM. You really got me first, showing the drive laying in the top of the case.
Excellent review of the vampire! It really does get some unfair criticism. I don't have one for my a1200, but I love my a500 vampire. It just breathes new life into that beautiful machine.
Don't worry, it's worth the wait, on the Apollo discord I read that Majstrowicz is already making January orders, so it's still waiting, I ordered my card in April and I'm still waiting 😀
Nice setup, its amazing how flexible computer Amiga is and how smart people are.. :) could you extend that video with more on that ethernet module, comparisin with PCMCIA network card. There are also some adapters that turns ethernet ports into wifi..
I have a A1200 with a ACA 1233n I put a 68882 in a socket on the card (Bad Me). If I need speed I got to my PI4 or my Mister. I would love to have a very fast A1200, but the cost for me is too much and I don`t use a Amiga all the time. It is nice to see new cards come out that use newer chips. As you said the Warp 1260 the biggest problem is the 68060 chip there are many fake ones out there now. My first 68882 had the top remarked, I sent it back the next one looked ok and it works nice at 50Mzh.
Awesome video, extremely well edited and narrated. As was your Amiga 500 vampire video and the Vampire V4 one. Only one gripe, the Vampire card has 128mb ram and the Vampire V4 standalone has 512mb ram. So any comparison right off the bat is a bit redundant.
Thanks for the positive words! The reason I compared the V2 and the V4 is that many people wrestled with the question of which one to buy. The 512MB ram of the V4 will for sure give it an advantage over the V2. But not everyone will have a use for that much ram. But that is just my opinion. Thanks for watching!
I had planned to do a video for the A2000. I have been slowly buying parts for the A2000. Because it is such an awesome machine and i got a ZZ9000 for it. It is just.awesome.
Ok, some hard questions1, max resolution via the Vampire on rtg? 2, Price of your setup including all cabling inside the case. I already have a cd burner I want to try in my machine. 3, 2meg graphics memory is it still the limit or does the vampire use onboard mem? 4, do old 68k games work via roms? 5, is it really worth it if you say have to upgrade a powersupply to make it work? and lastly the rf module removal does it improve stability like I've been told? Thanks if you can answer this with some detail.
Quake on 68040@40 Mhz + AGA= 6-7 fps. Blizzard 1260 + AGA 10-12 fps. Doom on 68040@40 Mhz + AGA=16 fps. Blizzard 1260 + AGA= 35 fps. I play with 68040@40 and Blizzard 1260@50. Interesting that Warp1260 is much slower in SysInfo and then much faster in real softwares.
Doom running at 35 fps is not a useful benchmark. That's how Doom runs at its fastest, even on a very fast PC. ADoom inherited this limitation from the original game. That it runs consistently at 35 FPS in the video is an indication that it could run somewhat faster uncapped. Quake is probably quite floating point performance dependent, and the difference there isn't as dramatic (Vampire being just about 3x faster). It is also the case that the graphical benchmarks are likely going to be bottlenecked by the chip RAM performance, so the difference won't be as dramatic if you're essentially waiting for the bus to be ready to push pixels.
My Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU and 128MB 50ns RAMDPEED have on my 4GB MicroDrive around 2.8MB/s. Running ClassicWB ADVSP with 3.1 ROM chips . Running with WB 3.1 - BetterWB 4.3 with a 8GB CF card is around 2.4MB/s. Test it with SySInfo V4.3 The ACA1233n-55 have a IDE Speeder which have around 3.6MB/s. Have three recapped Rev2B motherboards with Timing fixes and have a recap Rev1D.4. Use now the new Indivision AGA MK3 which is perfect on my BenQ BL702A VGA monitor. Is a lot better than the old MK2CR. Waiting for the Vampire 1200 V2, ACA1260 and the old Blizzard 1260. My ACA500Plus with the ACA1233n-55 is fast around 7MB/s.
Waiting now for the ACA1234-50 for the CF slot on it which can reach 10MB/s. Like the 68030 cards more than a fast card such as the Warp 1260 or the Vampire 1200 V2. Maybe I buy the ACA1260 if it come out. Would use it only for heavy AGA Demos.
Nice video and comparison. I hqve a couple o f questions before i want to buy this card too: 1 is this accelerator the same as the Icedrake 1200? 2 if this is the apollo icedrake is it 100% compatible with AmigaOs 3.9 etc. How about using combination with mediator 1200 TX anyone already tested?
1. The Icedrake is the next version of this card and has more features. The V1200 isn't produced any more but you will still find it second hand. 2. It will run OS3.9 just fine. I used OS 3.9 without any issue. As for the mediator..........I don't know that it does work. I seem to recall someone saying they had tried it and it didn't work for them. I would assume that it doesn't until you find someone who has got it working.
Did I see it correctly, that you've connected the SATA-Storage to RapidRoad and getting 3mb/s? This seems rather high, considering that the clockport peeks at ~500KB/s and FastClockport ~1.2MB/s, but would be great to get such transfers :D
@@neocdtv The sata device is connected to the ide port. The cabling was brining both sata and USB to the eSatap port which allows you to connect both USB or eSata devices into the same socket. USB devices would work over Rapidroad whilst SATA devices over the ide connector.
I wonder why you had so slow fps on quake? I think I had the same performance on my 68040@40 mhz. And I could tweak the game to run faster with faster I mean like a few frames more.
You should do a new video called the death of the V2 and the shananagans of Apollo developers whom have vested interests in the V4, only a year or so after this video the V1200 etc are apparently now obsolete, kinda understandable since the developer of the V1200 decided to stick with old Altera Cyclone III FPGA's, but what is not understandable is why Apollo developers seemingly deliberately make new software incompatable with the V2 even tho they both use the same 68080 CPU core, this is the same developers that preach how easy and efficient it is to program for 68k, yet almost every simple game they release now convinently needs more memory than the V2's 128MB of available RAM.
The FPGA that was used in the V2 wasn't produced and was impossible to find in large enough quantities. This coincided with the developer Majsta, the man who designed and produced the board, retiring from the project. The decision to discontinue the V2 was a sad but inevitable and eventually all good things come to an end. This board will replaced with the something aligned to the V4. The claim that "every game released today requires more than 128MB of available RAM." is just silly. Even if it were the case (and it isn't) how could the apollo team force independent software developers to adhere to such a ridiculous restriction. Which games enforce this fake requirement, unnecessarily? Your disappointment in the discontinuation of the V2 is understandable. Your other claim is just baseless rubbish.
Everyone always review games, demos, or runs SYSINFO or AIIB. Launch Lightwave and do some some rendering. An app that actually takes advantage of such speeds. It crashes. A lot. My 060 Doesn’t crash. I think the Vampires are neat, but they have a long way to go. (Yes I have a v4 SA)
I don't get any crashes. If you do, you should reach out to support on the Apollo Core forums or on Discord. Your experience isn't normal. It certainly isn't indicative of the V4 and certainly not of the V1200 (which is the real subject of this video). You might also be note that I did test programs that use the speed of the processor. I tested Quake 1 & 2 which are CPU bound for sure as well as Vista pro. I also demonstrated a very CPU heavy demo showing how much better it runs on the Vampire. All of these demonstrate the additional CPU power in a video better in a video than watching rending in my opinion. Because the improved performance is visible with the naled eye. But perhaps lightwave could be a better benchmark tool. I could pit my 030, 060 and 080 against each other in lightwave or something similar. At least seeing how long they take would be interesting statistic If you you are unable to get support for your V4 crashes, let me know. You can find me on the Apollo discord server under the same name.
@@RonnieBeck none of those programs execute the suite of integer and more importantly fpu code that a rendering application does. Which is why render programs are critical in testing actual simulation. Even the simple calls AIIB does aren’t a complete and proper test. I’ve reached out to Apollo via Discird and been told to flash to an older core in addition to running a real Amiga rom. Like 3.1 or 3.1.4. While the real rom helped along with CoffinOS, the crashes and locks when using programs like Lightwave and Forge persist.
@@HoldandModify I think you misunderstood the purpose of the video. It is a high level look at the V1200 and how it performs. It isn't a deep dive into integer of floating point performance. It is a general view of what the card has to offer. You don't need to investigate the "suite of integer and fpu code", as you put it, to know it is going to generally perform better than an 060. Just watching the card in action side-by-side with an 060 makes that plainly obvious as you no doubt saw. I am glad you were able to get some improvements with some help. Can you tell me what core you are using, what version of Lightwave and what/when it crashes? If we can reproduce it just as you do, then it can be looked into. Forge? What is this exactly? If found this, if this is the same thing you mean: de4.aminet.net/gfx/3d/AmiForge040.readme
Its impressive but somehow i expected more from vampire series, especially from v4 in VGA mode with such a huge chip memory bandwidth. I think that problem is due to software implementation of a lot of graphics functions on vampire because of small number of FPGA gates (also applies to FPU functions to some degree). ASIC implementation of 68080 should resolve this and bring huge improvement in games, not to mention it will run on GHz scale rather than 100Mhz. Igor did announce ASIC development but it will certainly take years...
What on earth are you talking about? VGA mode? Software implementation because of small numbers of FPGA gates? ASIC. There is no ASIC planned. There isn't any VGA (maybe you meant RTG). The processor is the fastest 68k processor around. The RTG implementation is accelerated with AMMX and is very fast.
@@RonnieBeck No i meant AGA, its a typo. Ive read several comments/ speeches from apollo team regarding this. And they are saying that there are too few FPGA gates to fit AGA graphics and FPU at the same time. And that FPU is partially realized through software anyway, for the same reason. Majsta did mention plans for ASIC several times, i dont know what phase of development did they reach, or even started at all, but its definitely in their minds. Hope you now have better understanding what im talking about.
@@fradd182 Ok, so what exactly do you mean by "software implementations" in the context of AGA? AGA is AGA. It performs the same as native AGA. It is rather pointless to make AGA go any faster than native (aside from satisfying curiousity). With some very few exceptions, hardly any of the Amiga titles of the time would benefit. Bit planar graphics had reached the end of their useful life arguably with the release of AGA. All games would benefit with faster graphics heading in the direction of 256 or more colours and bitplanar starts to become too slow for that. The custom chips can help somewhat but once you have a speedy 030 or better, their benefit starts to be marginal. Look at the quake frame rates of AGA vs RTG. RTG gets 13 FPS more just because it isn't having to do bitplanar. Back to the point about being too little space on the FPGA to fit AGA and an FPU. This refers to problems bringing AGA to the A500 and A600. This has nothing to do with the V4 or the V1200. The V1200 is the fastest A1200 accelerator hands down and is near double the speed of the nearest competitor. The statement that you are dissapointed is simlpy mind boggling.
@@RonnieBeck By "software implementations", i mean the way that AGA is realized on A500 and A600 models, as well as on V4 standalone model. It means that graphics functions are not implemented through FPGA logic, but (mostly) within software. I am aware that this soft impl. is faster than original AGA chips on A1200, just as the RPG on vampire (also mostly soft) is faster than any graphics card for the classic amiga. What im saying is: it would be much faster with proper hardware implementation within ASIC (or separate modern gpu), since there are no available gates to do that in FPGA. Vampire is the fastest 68k accelerator, but if the team goes for the ASIC project it will be totally new game. You may think that there is no point, but many said the same for vampire also.
I had mine within a week. But that was before corona. Now, it is a different world. The boards a manufactured by Majsta who resides in Bosnia. His region and large parts of Croatia have been rocked by an earth quake. I would take that into consideration when aligning your expectations. But maybe your card was already out of the country when the quake hit. Either way, it is coming to you. And it will be well worth the wait.
Doom is probably not a great benchmark for comparison here. Classic Doom is hard capped at ~35 fps, so on the Vampire boards we simply see Doom running at full framerate. Uncapped, it might have run even faster. Modern source ports like GZDoom and PRBoom+ remove this limitation, but I don't know if either of those run on the classic Amiga.
There is a utility called "vcontrol" which can set the card to "turtle" mode. This reduces to the speed to something akin to a stock A1200. This mode is more for running old games that are poorly programmed and misbehave when running on much faster CPUs.
@@RonnieBeck I see. In a way that is kind of too bad it is only 2 speeds. I would like to see a slider for it so we can have the option to pick our performance target. Though most would probably leave it full blast anyhow lol. Even the ability to pick the amounts of ram or even cpu behavior. Though I know I am in the extreme minority. I look at the vampire as 1 of 2 things, 1 as a cheap(ish) way to bring an old amiga up to what would be possible if we were willing to spend thousands on upgrades and options, so one can for a little bit experience what that 700 dollar 060 accelerator would perform like....and beyond.. Heck, it is even hanging with PPC cards. and the other way i see it is as an emulator (or simulator) that uses the amiga as really nothing more than a glorified keyboard and power supply. Playing with the hardware to achieve a certain experience is what a good portion of us do in addition to playing the games.. Sort of like how Dos itself is number 7 on the top ten list of best dos games on vintage PC's...lol Being able to make custom cores for it would be kind of neet, though I think they have that part locked down. And as far as I know they dont have intention of opening that up at all.
@@wishusknight3009 I don't know what you mean by simulator. The V1200 is an accelerator. It powers the rest of the amiga. Everything on the A1200 mother board is used. It doesn't "simulate" any part of the amiga. As for having a variable speed control...................Maybe you could propose some good use cases for that on the Apollo Forum and it might happen. For me, I don't ever want my accelerator to work at any speed other than full speed. I can't imagine why you would want to cripple the board artificially other than to support badly written software that breaks when it runs on super fast CPUs. But maybe there are some good use cases I never thought of.
@@RonnieBeck I guess it depends on the vampire used. For example the 500+v2 uses the SAGA core which essentially makes the OCS onboard the amiga itself redundant. (afaik) Thus turning the amiga into a glorified keyboard. The other thing I mentioned though was it is often kind of neat to configure it to approximate different amiga models and configurations we don't have to get the experience of people that did have them. But I am a minority. It is by no means for correcting for bad software. Just seeing what is achievable given a certain level of hardware. Vampire is amazing in what it achieves, but it somehow also kind of removes the magic of the amiga hardware for me too. I am kind of divided on that. Having an earlier revision A2000 now for many years and doing countless hardware mods and having every sort of chip expansion possible poking off the motherboard with every slot filled was half of the fun for me.
@@wishusknight3009 On the V500, saga is only RTG. It doesn't replace the OCS/ECS chipset. It is actually just putting an accelerator and RTG card into an amiga. And even if it did replace the OCS chipset, you still need keyboard, mouse, floppy, parallel, serial and joystick port. It is an accelerator and it can't replace the entire board but it does enhance the experience of using those old machines. Maybe you are thinking of the V4 which is a standalone computer? I have a V500 in an A2000 along side a ZZ9000. It is an awesome combination. I love it! But having two RTG cards on an amiga can feel like overkill :-)
The lack of a real time clock is annoying. For some reason, most of the accelerator boards I've seen don't have one built in. Also, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the raw parts price for those Cyclone III FPGAs... around $200. All the people still making Amiga hardware these days must really do this stuff out of sheer passion! 8)
@@apacher6433 If you are not low, then you must be high. :-D Sorry, I couldn't resist. Since you don't mention what from the video is so low, I can't comment. I used NovaCoder's quake port. I don't have ClickBoom's quake port which I believe is much faster. There are a handful of other ports which might also be faster. In the end, this video is about the hardware. The V1200 is clearly the fastest A1200 card. The time spent making these videos is already a lot. I don't need to find the fastest version of every single software to demonstrate comparative performance difference. I just need one version which I test on all hardware in the same way. That said, If you could perhaps tell me what version of quake you use, I would be happy to test that and include it for future vidoes, if it is indeed better.
I just think it all misses the point of an Amiga 1200. The best reason (in my opinion) for owning an a1200 is to experience the very best of the 16bit home computer era and games. All you get from these mega-accelerators is as you demonstrated, fast video playback, faster pc games, nicer workbench - but none of that makes sense to me. When I turn my Amiga on I want to play 'Beneath a steel sky' or any other great old game, if I wanted to watch an mpeg video I certainly wouldn't use my Amiga. If I wanted to experience these things in something resembling an a1200 I would grab an a1200 case and keyboard, load a Raspberri Pi inside, and experience all that you demonstrated here for a much lower price, but like I said, it isn't about that anyway.
It is all really quiet obvious if you properly think about it. If it doesn't makes sense to you, don't buy it. There is certainly a point to having an accelerator: to go faster. There is even a bigger point to having a vampire: to go the fastest. The a1200 was capable of more than playing games and it there where speed really counts. This isn't a new phenomenon. Accelerators for Amigas have been around several decades, so there is no reason that it shouldn't make sense to you. Accelerators are highly sort after, even today. The vampire has been sold about 5000 units. If you are confused about why people buy them, why don't you ask them. They are not so easily confused and clearly they don't share your opinion. BTW, an A1200 is 32bit, not 16bit.
WinUAE (which is the free emulator Amiga Forever is built on) will do much better in benchmarks on a modern PC. Of course, at that point you might as well run most software demonstrated here, (e.g. Doom, Quake, Quake II) natively on the PC instead. Personally I avoid emulation because of the latencies introduced in order to buffer input, screens and sound.
The 1200 already has Wifi via the pcmcia. The two expansion ports on the accelerator can be used for this as well but someone needs to write the driver.
Ooh crap, I know I had sell my kidneys one day.... And get it to run stable and not randomly lock up and refuse too boot again for everything from 10s to 10 months... and yes, its been recapped without any change.
I'll never buy another Apollo product #burned .. Spent close to a grand aussie for the thing years ago, then get told my serial number is unsupported as it was made separately by some Apollo guy that lost some pissy internal argument I have no clue about .. so no more updates and half the features will now never work. Wasted money. Stuck it back in the box and in the corner. Couldn't even sell the thing in good faith.
Considering that the V2 cost 400+ and the V4 cost shy of 550 dollars; I wonder if people are sane. This is without even factor the cost of a 1200, which these days demand prices that are more insane than the 060 card. A raspberry pi can emulate the amiga pretty much close to 100% of its functionalities; and cost 60 bucks. If someone complain that they do not want an ARM, then they can get a Mister FPGA board to emulate the amiga in the same way the Vampire does, for less than 200 dollars, and that will allow you to emulate another 20 different systems via FPGA, so perfect 1:1 replicas fundamentally. I am ashamed to see people making anything Amiga related and sell it at prices that are out of this world. Of course there are whales that feed those makers, otherwise I can't understand how anything bearing the Amiga brand can fetch such prices. Of course to each their own; I am quite happy with my stock A1200 with a Blizzard 030, which I paid 15 years ago less than 300 dollars. I use it so rarely that at times I wonder if I should sell it to someone with a lot of disposable income, for 800-1000 dollars or so.
The price for Amiga stuff has never made sense. Not to anyone. Even when commodore did exist, retailers would sell standard SCSI drivers with a selfmade "For Amiga" with a mark up. This isn't new. Now collectors fork out their hard earned cash for original parts. As they die, they become rarer and more expensive. I agree that paying such money for an A1200 and an 060 (in the realms of 1200-1600 US dollars) is mad. But people do. Why should a seller part with his old Amiga for $100 when he knows someone will pay $500? That would make even less sense. The guys producing the Vampire boards are struggling to keep up with demand. People are happy to pay the asking price. So the price is right. It might not make sense to you, but it doesn't need to. It just needs to make sense to those who really want one. For everyone else...........well like you say there is a raspberry pi. In the end, it doesn't matter what you think. Clearly you are not interested in buying these things so I don't know why you commented here. Maybe just to moan?
Well, you were warned. Personal attacks are not really interesting to anyone and your inappropriate behaviour isn't in keeping with a sensible discussion. Your comments are deleted.
Basically, you're comparing ancient oop original product (which is priceless with the time) to a cheap (like 40 euro) fpg emulator. No sense. On my rev6. 060@100Mhz Quake is 13 FPS which is the same result as on fpga card. No sense again. Fpga core is a much faster clock but has the same 3D performance. I do not mind the vampire card, at all. If it cost like 100-150 euro (like it was back in 2015), but asking 450 is just a way overkill. And you cannot compare diamond vs artificial carbon.
You raise some interesting points here. So lets look at your first complaint "You're comparing ancient original product to a cheap (like 40 euro) fpg." - Ignoring the emulation claim, the question of why compare the Vampire, a modern recently developed card which benefits from modern components and design, against a really old accelerator with an out of date processor is a valid one. If you an A1200 looking at an accelerator, this is exactly the question you will ask. Should I buy an old card or a new one. For some the choice is easy. A collector will want the original parts from that time period and a Vampire (and probably a Warp1260 also) card will simply never be considered. But there are many who are just looking to give their A1200 the biggest kick possible. Even your 100Mhz 060 cannot come close to the Vampire in terms of CPU and memory performance. Looking at the price aspect of the complaint, the FPGA on the board costs about 200€, not 40€ as you claim. The connector was also hard to source at the beginning and the manufacture of the board plus parts as well as the time that was invested is non-trivial. Your beliefe that this card should only cost 100-150€ is just plain wrong. The only rivals out there cost more and deliver less. I don't think the claim that the V1200 is overpriced has any basis at all. In the end, the market decides the price and consumers will vote with their wallets. There is a waiting list of enthusiastic buyers for a reason. The only real competitor to the Vampire, the Warp1260, will reportedly sell for more and doesn't include the CPU. Then your second complaint: "On my rev6. 060@100Mhz Quake is 13 FPS which is the same result as on fpga card. No sense again." I am going to guess these are AGA results you are speaking of (because the RTG score is much higher). You must surely know that AGA is the limiting factor here and not the CPU. This you see clearly when you compare the RTG scores of the Vampire (27FPS) against the Warp1260 (17FPS), that there is a big difference. The 060 is just outpaced, even despite the double overclocking it needed to achieve this score. "Fpga core is a much faster clock but has the same 3D performance." The core speed of the Vampire is 85Mhz. The Warp1260 footage used in this video was clocked at 95Mhz and your 060 was 100Mhz. Your statement is just outright wrong. If the vampire achieves the same score as your 060 with 15Mhz less clock speed, the conclusion must be that the Vampire is more efficient and better. The opposite (your claim) is just logically false. I suspect that your objection to the Vampire lies elsewhere. You haven't done any really research to hold any real facts on the topic. And it bares out in your comment here. Real criticisms of the Vampires are not hard to find but you didn't mention a single one. Instead, you assert some bad assumptions or incorrect information. I might go as far as to say that you never even watched the video before commenting because many of your claims are contradicted by the tests and information in this video.
Well, I must say this is certainly by far the best review of this product I have seen. Very professionally put together.
Awesome. I hope these come back in stock at some point, looks like a lot of fun to play around with.
Very nice V1200 promo, thanks! Loved the gaming and other real time comparisons to Blizz 060!
Great video, really impressive and thanks for NOT destroying the A1200 case for the CDROM. You really got me first, showing the drive laying in the top of the case.
Original case A1200 is better than a pc like box e.g. too.
Awesome review. I just bought a Vampire 1200 II, and I can't wait to install it!
Excellent review of the vampire! It really does get some unfair criticism. I don't have one for my a1200, but I love my a500 vampire. It just breathes new life into that beautiful machine.
The great video inspired me to make the same modifications for my amiga
First really great video I’ve seen on the V1200. I was fairly late to the waiting list (May) so might be waiting a bit longer for mine.
Don't worry, it's worth the wait, on the Apollo discord I read that Majstrowicz is already making January orders, so it's still waiting, I ordered my card in April and I'm still waiting 😀
Great video and showcase. My blizzard 1260 is looking greener than usual.
Thanks for the video. Looks like a really interesting product.
Nice setup, its amazing how flexible computer Amiga is and how smart people are.. :) could you extend that video with more on that ethernet module, comparisin with PCMCIA network card. There are also some adapters that turns ethernet ports into wifi..
I have a A1200 with a ACA 1233n I put a 68882 in a socket on the card (Bad Me). If I need speed I got to my PI4 or my Mister. I would love to have a very fast A1200, but the cost for me is too much and I don`t use a Amiga all the time. It is nice to see new cards come out that use newer chips. As you said the Warp 1260 the biggest problem is the 68060 chip there are many fake ones out there now. My first 68882 had the top remarked, I sent it back the next one looked ok and it works nice at 50Mzh.
Awesome job!!! keep up the great work.
Awesome video, extremely well edited and narrated. As was your Amiga 500 vampire video and the Vampire V4 one. Only one gripe, the Vampire card has 128mb ram and the Vampire V4 standalone has 512mb ram. So any comparison right off the bat is a bit redundant.
Thanks for the positive words! The reason I compared the V2 and the V4 is that many people wrestled with the question of which one to buy. The 512MB ram of the V4 will for sure give it an advantage over the V2. But not everyone will have a use for that much ram. But that is just my opinion. Thanks for watching!
@@RonnieBeck No probs! thankyou for the clarification
I'm still waiting for one!! really need to give my blizzard A1230-50mhz a rest!!
How about another update video? Loved this one!
great rewiev mate, thanks !!!
Great video mate, and loved the bonus outtake at 14:56! ;)
You might be the only one to notice that! :-)
Nice review! Well done! Long live Amiga :)
Ronnie, great review. I'd like to hear something about your A2000, my particular passion 😁😁😁
I had planned to do a video for the A2000. I have been slowly buying parts for the A2000. Because it is such an awesome machine and i got a ZZ9000 for it. It is just.awesome.
@@RonnieBeck looking forward to it mate!!
I enjoyed this video a lot, thanks
Thanks for the video.
A good video presentation Mr. Beck.
so how much does the Vampire V1200 cost ?
Where professional video, liked side by side comparison.
Ok, some hard questions1, max resolution via the Vampire on rtg? 2, Price of your setup including all cabling inside the case. I already have a cd burner I want to try in my machine. 3, 2meg graphics memory is it still the limit or does the vampire use onboard mem? 4, do old 68k games work via roms? 5, is it really worth it if you say have to upgrade a powersupply to make it work? and lastly the rf module removal does it improve stability like I've been told? Thanks if you can answer this with some detail.
About time it was released
It is, you just have to wait a year or so while one man assembles everything by hand.
Great rewiev. Signed up for mine Vampire 1200 today. 😊 Do you have a list of what parts you use. Can’t seem to find the thin HDMI cable you use.
Great video mate.
Fantastic "challenge" !
Quake on 68040@40 Mhz + AGA= 6-7 fps. Blizzard 1260 + AGA 10-12 fps. Doom on 68040@40 Mhz + AGA=16 fps. Blizzard 1260 + AGA= 35 fps. I play with 68040@40 and Blizzard 1260@50. Interesting that Warp1260 is much slower in SysInfo and then much faster in real softwares.
which quake port is this? I used the port by novacoder. It seems what you are using is far better. Also, what resolution?
Doom running at 35 fps is not a useful benchmark. That's how Doom runs at its fastest, even on a very fast PC. ADoom inherited this limitation from the original game. That it runs consistently at 35 FPS in the video is an indication that it could run somewhat faster uncapped.
Quake is probably quite floating point performance dependent, and the difference there isn't as dramatic (Vampire being just about 3x faster).
It is also the case that the graphical benchmarks are likely going to be bottlenecked by the chip RAM performance, so the difference won't be as dramatic if you're essentially waiting for the bus to be ready to push pixels.
My Blizzard 1230 IV with FPU and 128MB 50ns RAMDPEED have on my 4GB MicroDrive around 2.8MB/s. Running ClassicWB ADVSP with 3.1 ROM chips . Running with WB 3.1 - BetterWB 4.3 with a 8GB CF card is around 2.4MB/s. Test it with SySInfo V4.3 The ACA1233n-55 have a IDE Speeder which have around 3.6MB/s. Have three recapped Rev2B motherboards with Timing fixes and have a recap Rev1D.4. Use now the new Indivision AGA MK3 which is perfect on my BenQ BL702A VGA monitor. Is a lot better than the old MK2CR. Waiting for the Vampire 1200 V2, ACA1260 and the old Blizzard 1260.
My ACA500Plus with the ACA1233n-55 is fast around 7MB/s.
I'm on a similar boat with my A1200 recap Rev1D4 and I'm waiting for Vampire 1200 V2.
Waiting now for the ACA1234-50 for the CF slot on it which can reach 10MB/s. Like the 68030 cards more than a fast card such as the Warp 1260 or the Vampire 1200 V2. Maybe I buy the ACA1260 if it come out. Would use it only for heavy AGA Demos.
Is Paula sound emulated on the Vampire on the A1200?
What's the song at the end?
Nice video!
Nice video and comparison.
I hqve a couple o f questions before i want to buy this card too:
1 is this accelerator the same as the Icedrake 1200?
2 if this is the apollo icedrake is it 100% compatible with AmigaOs 3.9 etc.
How about using combination with mediator 1200 TX anyone already tested?
1. The Icedrake is the next version of this card and has more features. The V1200 isn't produced any more but you will still find it second hand.
2. It will run OS3.9 just fine. I used OS 3.9 without any issue.
As for the mediator..........I don't know that it does work. I seem to recall someone saying they had tried it and it didn't work for them. I would assume that it doesn't until you find someone who has got it working.
Hi Ronnie, great video. Do you know if you can run the late versions of Imagine 3D? v4 or V5 onwards? Cheers
I am not sure. Is it available somewhere to download? I can always test it and get back to you.
@@RonnieBeck Thank you. I'll have a look around see if there is a DL version somewhere
I enjoyed this video fully... 👌
Awesome video!
Did I see it correctly, that you've connected the SATA-Storage to RapidRoad and getting 3mb/s? This seems rather high, considering that the clockport peeks at ~500KB/s and FastClockport ~1.2MB/s, but would be great to get such transfers :D
@@neocdtv The sata device is connected to the ide port. The cabling was brining both sata and USB to the eSatap port which allows you to connect both USB or eSata devices into the same socket. USB devices would work over Rapidroad whilst SATA devices over the ide connector.
@@RonnieBeck Can you disconnect the SATA drive on the fly if connected to the internal IDE?
I wonder why you had so slow fps on quake? I think I had the same performance on my 68040@40 mhz. And I could tweak the game to run faster with faster I mean like a few frames more.
500euro pricetag for blizzard1260? I think somthing bearween 800-900euro pricetag😀
You should do a new video called the death of the V2 and the shananagans of Apollo developers whom have vested interests in the V4, only a year or so after this video the V1200 etc are apparently now obsolete, kinda understandable since the developer of the V1200 decided to stick with old Altera Cyclone III FPGA's, but what is not understandable is why Apollo developers seemingly deliberately make new software incompatable with the V2 even tho they both use the same 68080 CPU core, this is the same developers that preach how easy and efficient it is to program for 68k, yet almost every simple game they release now convinently needs more memory than the V2's 128MB of available RAM.
The FPGA that was used in the V2 wasn't produced and was impossible to find in large enough quantities. This coincided with the developer Majsta, the man who designed and produced the board, retiring from the project. The decision to discontinue the V2 was a sad but inevitable and eventually all good things come to an end. This board will replaced with the something aligned to the V4. The claim that "every game released today requires more than 128MB of available RAM." is just silly. Even if it were the case (and it isn't) how could the apollo team force independent software developers to adhere to such a ridiculous restriction. Which games enforce this fake requirement, unnecessarily? Your disappointment in the discontinuation of the V2 is understandable. Your other claim is just baseless rubbish.
do you have a link to that eSATAp port? I can't seem to find it.
www.delock.com/produkte/1154_SATA---eSATA/63921/merkmale.html
You in Switzerland ??
Everyone always review games, demos, or runs SYSINFO or AIIB. Launch Lightwave and do some some rendering. An app that actually takes advantage of such speeds. It crashes. A lot. My 060
Doesn’t crash. I think the Vampires are neat, but they have a long way to go. (Yes I have a v4 SA)
I don't get any crashes. If you do, you should reach out to support on the Apollo Core forums or on Discord. Your experience isn't normal. It certainly isn't indicative of the V4 and certainly not of the V1200 (which is the real subject of this video).
You might also be note that I did test programs that use the speed of the processor. I tested Quake 1 & 2 which are CPU bound for sure as well as Vista pro. I also demonstrated a very CPU heavy demo showing how much better it runs on the Vampire. All of these demonstrate the additional CPU power in a video better in a video than watching rending in my opinion. Because the improved performance is visible with the naled eye. But perhaps lightwave could be a better benchmark tool. I could pit my 030, 060 and 080 against each other in lightwave or something similar. At least seeing how long they take would be interesting statistic
If you you are unable to get support for your V4 crashes, let me know. You can find me on the Apollo discord server under the same name.
@@RonnieBeck none of those programs execute the suite of integer and more importantly fpu code that a rendering application does. Which is why render programs are critical in testing actual simulation. Even the simple calls AIIB does aren’t a complete and proper test. I’ve reached out to Apollo via Discird and been told to flash to an older core in addition to running a real Amiga rom. Like 3.1 or 3.1.4. While the real rom helped along with CoffinOS, the crashes and locks when using programs like Lightwave and Forge persist.
@@HoldandModify I think you misunderstood the purpose of the video. It is a high level look at the V1200 and how it performs. It isn't a deep dive into integer of floating point performance. It is a general view of what the card has to offer. You don't need to investigate the "suite of integer and fpu code", as you put it, to know it is going to generally perform better than an 060. Just watching the card in action side-by-side with an 060 makes that plainly obvious as you no doubt saw.
I am glad you were able to get some improvements with some help. Can you tell me what core you are using, what version of Lightwave and what/when it crashes? If we can reproduce it just as you do, then it can be looked into. Forge? What is this exactly? If found this, if this is the same thing you mean: de4.aminet.net/gfx/3d/AmiForge040.readme
The king is dead! Long live the V1200!
Its impressive but somehow i expected more from vampire series, especially from v4 in VGA mode with such a huge chip memory bandwidth. I think that problem is due to software implementation of a lot of graphics functions on vampire because of small number of FPGA gates (also applies to FPU functions to some degree). ASIC implementation of 68080 should resolve this and bring huge improvement in games, not to mention it will run on GHz scale rather than 100Mhz. Igor did announce ASIC development but it will certainly take years...
What on earth are you talking about? VGA mode? Software implementation because of small numbers of FPGA gates? ASIC. There is no ASIC planned. There isn't any VGA (maybe you meant RTG). The processor is the fastest 68k processor around. The RTG implementation is accelerated with AMMX and is very fast.
@@RonnieBeck No i meant AGA, its a typo. Ive read several comments/ speeches from apollo team regarding this. And they are saying that there are too few FPGA gates to fit AGA graphics and FPU at the same time. And that FPU is partially realized through software anyway, for the same reason. Majsta did mention plans for ASIC several times, i dont know what phase of development did they reach, or even started at all, but its definitely in their minds. Hope you now have better understanding what im talking about.
@@fradd182 Ok, so what exactly do you mean by "software implementations" in the context of AGA? AGA is AGA. It performs the same as native AGA. It is rather pointless to make AGA go any faster than native (aside from satisfying curiousity). With some very few exceptions, hardly any of the Amiga titles of the time would benefit. Bit planar graphics had reached the end of their useful life arguably with the release of AGA. All games would benefit with faster graphics heading in the direction of 256 or more colours and bitplanar starts to become too slow for that. The custom chips can help somewhat but once you have a speedy 030 or better, their benefit starts to be marginal. Look at the quake frame rates of AGA vs RTG. RTG gets 13 FPS more just because it isn't having to do bitplanar. Back to the point about being too little space on the FPGA to fit AGA and an FPU. This refers to problems bringing AGA to the A500 and A600. This has nothing to do with the V4 or the V1200. The V1200 is the fastest A1200 accelerator hands down and is near double the speed of the nearest competitor. The statement that you are dissapointed is simlpy mind boggling.
Yes, this is like having the best i7 CPU and Nvidia card from 1999 and complain you can not play recent games.
@@RonnieBeck By "software implementations", i mean the way that AGA is realized on A500 and A600 models, as well as on V4 standalone model. It means that graphics functions are not implemented through FPGA logic, but (mostly) within software. I am aware that this soft impl. is faster than original AGA chips on A1200, just as the RPG on vampire (also mostly soft) is faster than any graphics card for the classic amiga. What im saying is: it would be much faster with proper hardware implementation within ASIC (or separate modern gpu), since there are no available gates to do that in FPGA. Vampire is the fastest 68k accelerator, but if the team goes for the ASIC project it will be totally new game. You may think that there is no point, but many said the same for vampire also.
I'd use the pcmcia port for ethernet and the Vampire expansion port for something else 🙂
How long after making payment did you wait for a confirmation e-mail and shipping, i have just payed for one.
I had mine within a week. But that was before corona. Now, it is a different world. The boards a manufactured by Majsta who resides in Bosnia. His region and large parts of Croatia have been rocked by an earth quake. I would take that into consideration when aligning your expectations. But maybe your card was already out of the country when the quake hit. Either way, it is coming to you. And it will be well worth the wait.
07:49 V4, is that the standalone???
Yes. But it is an early model. The current boards look slightly different and have an additional USB conenctor.
Doom is probably not a great benchmark for comparison here. Classic Doom is hard capped at ~35 fps, so on the Vampire boards we simply see Doom running at full framerate. Uncapped, it might have run even faster.
Modern source ports like GZDoom and PRBoom+ remove this limitation, but I don't know if either of those run on the classic Amiga.
Can the Vampires clock speed be adjusted to different clocks? say like half speed or something to approximate different performance levels?
There is a utility called "vcontrol" which can set the card to "turtle" mode. This reduces to the speed to something akin to a stock A1200. This mode is more for running old games that are poorly programmed and misbehave when running on much faster CPUs.
@@RonnieBeck I see. In a way that is kind of too bad it is only 2 speeds. I would like to see a slider for it so we can have the option to pick our performance target. Though most would probably leave it full blast anyhow lol. Even the ability to pick the amounts of ram or even cpu behavior. Though I know I am in the extreme minority.
I look at the vampire as 1 of 2 things, 1 as a cheap(ish) way to bring an old amiga up to what would be possible if we were willing to spend thousands on upgrades and options, so one can for a little bit experience what that 700 dollar 060 accelerator would perform like....and beyond.. Heck, it is even hanging with PPC cards.
and the other way i see it is as an emulator (or simulator) that uses the amiga as really nothing more than a glorified keyboard and power supply.
Playing with the hardware to achieve a certain experience is what a good portion of us do in addition to playing the games.. Sort of like how Dos itself is number 7 on the top ten list of best dos games on vintage PC's...lol
Being able to make custom cores for it would be kind of neet, though I think they have that part locked down. And as far as I know they dont have intention of opening that up at all.
@@wishusknight3009 I don't know what you mean by simulator. The V1200 is an accelerator. It powers the rest of the amiga. Everything on the A1200 mother board is used. It doesn't "simulate" any part of the amiga. As for having a variable speed control...................Maybe you could propose some good use cases for that on the Apollo Forum and it might happen. For me, I don't ever want my accelerator to work at any speed other than full speed. I can't imagine why you would want to cripple the board artificially other than to support badly written software that breaks when it runs on super fast CPUs. But maybe there are some good use cases I never thought of.
@@RonnieBeck I guess it depends on the vampire used. For example the 500+v2 uses the SAGA core which essentially makes the OCS onboard the amiga itself redundant. (afaik) Thus turning the amiga into a glorified keyboard. The other thing I mentioned though was it is often kind of neat to configure it to approximate different amiga models and configurations we don't have to get the experience of people that did have them. But I am a minority. It is by no means for correcting for bad software. Just seeing what is achievable given a certain level of hardware.
Vampire is amazing in what it achieves, but it somehow also kind of removes the magic of the amiga hardware for me too. I am kind of divided on that. Having an earlier revision A2000 now for many years and doing countless hardware mods and having every sort of chip expansion possible poking off the motherboard with every slot filled was half of the fun for me.
@@wishusknight3009 On the V500, saga is only RTG. It doesn't replace the OCS/ECS chipset. It is actually just putting an accelerator and RTG card into an amiga. And even if it did replace the OCS chipset, you still need keyboard, mouse, floppy, parallel, serial and joystick port. It is an accelerator and it can't replace the entire board but it does enhance the experience of using those old machines. Maybe you are thinking of the V4 which is a standalone computer?
I have a V500 in an A2000 along side a ZZ9000. It is an awesome combination. I love it! But having two RTG cards on an amiga can feel like overkill :-)
The lack of a real time clock is annoying. For some reason, most of the accelerator boards I've seen don't have one built in.
Also, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the raw parts price for those Cyclone III FPGAs... around $200. All the people still making Amiga hardware these days must really do this stuff out of sheer passion! 8)
Install a real time clock on the clock port. That is why it is there.
Quake on my amiga 1200 with blizzard 060 90 MHz, gives 16Fps. Why such a low frame rate ??
I can't say why you get such a low frame rate.
@@RonnieBeck I'm not low. I ask why it was low here in the video ...
@@apacher6433 If you are not low, then you must be high. :-D Sorry, I couldn't resist. Since you don't mention what from the video is so low, I can't comment. I used NovaCoder's quake port. I don't have ClickBoom's quake port which I believe is much faster. There are a handful of other ports which might also be faster. In the end, this video is about the hardware. The V1200 is clearly the fastest A1200 card. The time spent making these videos is already a lot. I don't need to find the fastest version of every single software to demonstrate comparative performance difference. I just need one version which I test on all hardware in the same way. That said, If you could perhaps tell me what version of quake you use, I would be happy to test that and include it for future vidoes, if it is indeed better.
I just think it all misses the point of an Amiga 1200. The best reason (in my opinion) for owning an a1200 is to experience the very best of the 16bit home computer era and games. All you get from these mega-accelerators is as you demonstrated, fast video playback, faster pc games, nicer workbench - but none of that makes sense to me. When I turn my Amiga on I want to play 'Beneath a steel sky' or any other great old game, if I wanted to watch an mpeg video I certainly wouldn't use my Amiga. If I wanted to experience these things in something resembling an a1200 I would grab an a1200 case and keyboard, load a Raspberri Pi inside, and experience all that you demonstrated here for a much lower price, but like I said, it isn't about that anyway.
It is all really quiet obvious if you properly think about it. If it doesn't makes sense to you, don't buy it. There is certainly a point to having an accelerator: to go faster. There is even a bigger point to having a vampire: to go the fastest. The a1200 was capable of more than playing games and it there where speed really counts. This isn't a new phenomenon. Accelerators for Amigas have been around several decades, so there is no reason that it shouldn't make sense to you. Accelerators are highly sort after, even today. The vampire has been sold about 5000 units. If you are confused about why people buy them, why don't you ask them. They are not so easily confused and clearly they don't share your opinion. BTW, an A1200 is 32bit, not 16bit.
How does it compare to amiga forever on pc.. Thats all I have 😒
You can't really compare to be honest. Amiga Forever is software.
WinUAE (which is the free emulator Amiga Forever is built on) will do much better in benchmarks on a modern PC. Of course, at that point you might as well run most software demonstrated here, (e.g. Doom, Quake, Quake II) natively on the PC instead. Personally I avoid emulation because of the latencies introduced in order to buffer input, screens and sound.
There's no WiFi?
The 1200 already has Wifi via the pcmcia. The two expansion ports on the accelerator can be used for this as well but someone needs to write the driver.
Ooh crap, I know I had sell my kidneys one day....
And get it to run stable and not randomly lock up and refuse too boot again for everything from 10s to 10 months... and yes, its been recapped without any change.
Huh?
in this time impossible to get :(
I signed up around July 2020.
I'll never buy another Apollo product #burned .. Spent close to a grand aussie for the thing years ago, then get told my serial number is unsupported as it was made separately by some Apollo guy that lost some pissy internal argument I have no clue about .. so no more updates and half the features will now never work. Wasted money. Stuck it back in the box and in the corner. Couldn't even sell the thing in good faith.
060 purists thumbs down XD
Considering that the V2 cost 400+ and the V4 cost shy of 550 dollars; I wonder if people are sane. This is without even factor the cost of a 1200, which these days demand prices that are more insane than the 060 card.
A raspberry pi can emulate the amiga pretty much close to 100% of its functionalities; and cost 60 bucks. If someone complain that they do not want an ARM, then they can get a Mister FPGA board to emulate the amiga in the same way the Vampire does, for less than 200 dollars, and that will allow you to emulate another 20 different systems via FPGA, so perfect 1:1 replicas fundamentally.
I am ashamed to see people making anything Amiga related and sell it at prices that are out of this world. Of course there are whales that feed those makers, otherwise I can't understand how anything bearing the Amiga brand can fetch such prices. Of course to each their own; I am quite happy with my stock A1200 with a Blizzard 030, which I paid 15 years ago less than 300 dollars. I use it so rarely that at times I wonder if I should sell it to someone with a lot of disposable income, for 800-1000 dollars or so.
The price for Amiga stuff has never made sense. Not to anyone. Even when commodore did exist, retailers would sell standard SCSI drivers with a selfmade "For Amiga" with a mark up. This isn't new. Now collectors fork out their hard earned cash for original parts. As they die, they become rarer and more expensive. I agree that paying such money for an A1200 and an 060 (in the realms of 1200-1600 US dollars) is mad. But people do. Why should a seller part with his old Amiga for $100 when he knows someone will pay $500? That would make even less sense.
The guys producing the Vampire boards are struggling to keep up with demand. People are happy to pay the asking price. So the price is right. It might not make sense to you, but it doesn't need to. It just needs to make sense to those who really want one. For everyone else...........well like you say there is a raspberry pi.
In the end, it doesn't matter what you think. Clearly you are not interested in buying these things so I don't know why you commented here. Maybe just to moan?
Well, you were warned. Personal attacks are not really interesting to anyone and your inappropriate behaviour isn't in keeping with a sensible discussion. Your comments are deleted.
Basically, you're comparing ancient oop original product (which is priceless with the time) to a cheap (like 40 euro) fpg emulator.
No sense. On my rev6. 060@100Mhz Quake is 13 FPS which is the same result as on fpga card. No sense again. Fpga core is a much faster clock but has the same 3D performance.
I do not mind the vampire card, at all. If it cost like 100-150 euro (like it was back in 2015), but asking 450 is just a way overkill.
And you cannot compare diamond vs artificial carbon.
You raise some interesting points here. So lets look at your first complaint
"You're comparing ancient original product to a cheap (like 40 euro) fpg." - Ignoring the emulation claim, the question of why compare the Vampire, a modern recently developed card which benefits from modern components and design, against a really old accelerator with an out of date processor is a valid one. If you an A1200 looking at an accelerator, this is exactly the question you will ask. Should I buy an old card or a new one. For some the choice is easy. A collector will want the original parts from that time period and a Vampire (and probably a Warp1260 also) card will simply never be considered. But there are many who are just looking to give their A1200 the biggest kick possible. Even your 100Mhz 060 cannot come close to the Vampire in terms of CPU and memory performance. Looking at the price aspect of the complaint, the FPGA on the board costs about 200€, not 40€ as you claim. The connector was also hard to source at the beginning and the manufacture of the board plus parts as well as the time that was invested is non-trivial. Your beliefe that this card should only cost 100-150€ is just plain wrong. The only rivals out there cost more and deliver less. I don't think the claim that the V1200 is overpriced has any basis at all. In the end, the market decides the price and consumers will vote with their wallets. There is a waiting list of enthusiastic buyers for a reason. The only real competitor to the Vampire, the Warp1260, will reportedly sell for more and doesn't include the CPU.
Then your second complaint:
"On my rev6. 060@100Mhz Quake is 13 FPS which is the same result as on fpga card. No sense again." I am going to guess these are AGA results you are speaking of (because the RTG score is much higher). You must surely know that AGA is the limiting factor here and not the CPU. This you see clearly when you compare the RTG scores of the Vampire (27FPS) against the Warp1260 (17FPS), that there is a big difference. The 060 is just outpaced, even despite the double overclocking it needed to achieve this score.
"Fpga core is a much faster clock but has the same 3D performance." The core speed of the Vampire is 85Mhz. The Warp1260 footage used in this video was clocked at 95Mhz and your 060 was 100Mhz. Your statement is just outright wrong. If the vampire achieves the same score as your 060 with 15Mhz less clock speed, the conclusion must be that the Vampire is more efficient and better. The opposite (your claim) is just logically false.
I suspect that your objection to the Vampire lies elsewhere. You haven't done any really research to hold any real facts on the topic. And it bares out in your comment here. Real criticisms of the Vampires are not hard to find but you didn't mention a single one. Instead, you assert some bad assumptions or incorrect information. I might go as far as to say that you never even watched the video before commenting because many of your claims are contradicted by the tests and information in this video.
FPGA is not an emulation, it is hardware simulation. Consider FPGA as a draft and ASIC as the final version of a book.