AmigaOne Micro vs SAM motherboards

I was wondering if anyone knows how an AmigaOne Micro A1-C would perform if set up against a SAM440EP or SAM460? Just basic setup with only internal graphics card on all.

Is the CPU (750Fx G3) much slower than the 440EP or 460?

Thanks in advance for input. :)

@BobSacamano

It's not the CPU performance, it's the overall stability and reliability that sets the Sam way above the Micro.

@trixie

I saw a couple of videos on YouTube of AmigaOne Micro emulating Project X and Superfrog etc. with good speed, while I have problems getting this working on SAM460. Therefore curious if the CPU on it, for example, is stronger. The Micro seems to run other stuff very well too.

@BobSacamano

Sam460 has support Radeon HD, and has CPU clocked at 1.1 or 1.0 Ghz.

MicoA1-C G3 is 800Mhz.

The Sam440 was clocked at 733Mhz or something like that?

I guess sam460 is the fastest, MicroA1 I guess comes in 2en place, and then sam440.

Yes the AMCC chips are embedded chips, while the G3 is desktop class CPU.

At time of Sam440 there were no new motherboards to buy from Eyetech, so it made perfect sense, also there lots issues in XE / SE models, the microA1 was last model from Eyetech, if I remember correct they done something to make it less buggy.

There are also factors like form factor connectivity and GPIO ports and so on, I think the different cards offers different things.

I have a MicroA1.

It's about as stable as plate of Jelly in an earthquake

About as reliable as C64 power supply.

@BobSacamano

I have a MicroA1 with 750GX CPU and 256 MB RAM.

My main limitation is that the builtin graphics has only 32 MB of video RAM.
I generally operate with compositing mode turned off and very little eye candy.

Unfortunately, I don't have a SAM, so I can't compare systems.

AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1 is quite stable for me, occasional unexplained random crashes that I cannot pinpoint a cause.

One dev suggested that the 750 GX CPU had some faults. Apparently, the 750 FX CPU is more reliable.

I purchased my system near the end of 2004.

As I recall, AmigaOS 4.0 July 2007 Update was actually the most stable version of AmigaOS4 that I have ever used on this machine, but that version is way too old for the web browser software I am using now.

redfox
AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1
MicroA1 with 750GX CPU and 256 MB RAM
Western Digital hard drive
LiteOn combo DVD/CD drive

@redfox

Does your MicroA1 crash randomly?

@redfox

How does emulation of old Amiga games work on your setup? Do they run well? Amiga 500 titles in particular. Also, have you tried Battle for Wesnoth on it? It is slow on my 460, but remember it as faster on older systems. :)

@Mikey_C

Yes, occasional unexplained random crashes that I cannot pinpoint a cause.

This occurs less often now since I disabled the rear USB connectors and set both hard drive and combo drive to autodiscovery (PIO mode).

Of course, I see lots of DSI errors while I am making rookie mistakes programming with ARexx and RxMUI and ProAction.

---
redfox

@redfox

Fair enough. I have just dropped down the quality on my Workbench.
Made the rendering good instead of best and dropped the graphics from 32 bit to 16 bit.

It seems to like crashing every time I use a web browser and then close it.

Doesn't matter which.

Also, at startup, Wookiechat won't even load unless I leave it for 5 minutes.

Meh A1222 can't come soon enough.

@BobSacamano

Generally, Classic Amiga emulation runs okay. Don't have battle for wesnoth.

@BobSacamano

I have not tried Battle for Wesnoth.

A demo version of Myst (called DEMO_MystCGFX) works ok directly from OS4 using whatever emulation is builtin to OS4.

For some of my old favourites, I use a very old version of PPC E-UAE to emulate my old A2000HD and Amiga OS 3.1. I emulate a 68000 CPU.

I think this emulator is called E-UAE 0.8.29-WIP3 SDL

I installed E-UAE years ago, long before Hyperion included it with OS4.

Shanghai, SimCity, MegaBall4, Lore of Conquest, and Lemmings games all work fine.

Some time ago, I was able to run SimCity 2000 on OS4.
It required a program called CIAgent which emulates the classic chipset.
This does not work with AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition.

SimCity 2000 does work in E-UAE, but it is extreamly slow and crashes often. I had to make config changes to emulate a 68060 CPU and AGA chipset.

---
redfox

@BobSacamano

I think I read newer versions of Wesnoth are slower on the Amiga.
Maybe that's why you see as being slower than in the past?

Cheers

@Mikey_C

I have the following web browsers on my system:

AWebPPC (AKA AWeb APL Lite 3.5.12)
IBrowse OEM-Version 2.4 (68020 version supplied with OS4)
NetSurf 3.9
Odyssey Web Browser 1.23 (25.12.2013)
Origyn Web Browser 3.31 (Pukapuka)
Timberwolf 4.0.1

Aweb and IBrowse were my first two web browsers on OS4.

Neither one can keep up with todays web sites.

My current favorites: Origyn, Odyssey and NetSurf

I use Origyn Web Browser for casual browsing.
I use Odyssey Web Browser for amigans.net.
I use NetSurf or Odyssey for downloading.

Timberwolf always crashes on exit.

---
redfox

I have a Sam440ep mini itx and I had a micro amigaone and there is an entire world between them. The only advantage of the micro amiga one is the CPU Power that is a G3 800Mhz. The micro also has problem with internal ide chip, indeed if you enable dma and try to watch dvd with dvplayer you will encounter random freezes due to the via chipset. A workaround to this problem is to add a pci sil3114ide card to the pci slot. The sam gives you modern ram, modern hard drive (sata), new audio onboard (compared to the micro) and stability,stability and stability and also a new gpu that is a9250 instead of a radeon 7000. Then if you take a 460 you have an entire new world of possibility like for example the graphic card..

@nubechecorre

Quote:
I second that. The Sam440ep-Flex + OS4.1 FE combo is the most stable Amiga system I've ever used (based on my ownership of four classic and three NG machines). My X5000 is also remarkably stable, considering the system on it is still in pre-release state.

I never had stability problems with my MicroAOne. However, the 32 MB graphics RAM made me using in in 16-bit mode. And IDE transfers were very slow.

The Sam440 has no L2 cache and its frequency is lower but I always found responsive even with this embedded-class processor. I used the Flex version, not the EP one.

Sam460 has better performances than these venerable machines.

@BobSacomano The CPU is not the single part of a machine. Do you have a use case in mind? Or was it just for a global feedback (feeling)?

@corto

Thanks for the info. :)

Yes, I'm struggling a bit with getting classic Amiga emulation to run well on the Sam460. There is stuttering in both graphics and sound. Have tried several version of E-UAE to no avail.

In this context I watched videos on YouTube of a Micro AmigaOne running classic Amiga games through emulation without problems (as far as I could see), as well as performing great with other tasks as well.

This made me think about the differences.

Also saw a Micro for sale on eBay and got tempted. ;)

@BobSacomano Ok, I understand better. Thanks.

About Amiga emulation, that should perform better on Sam460. I see there were already some discussions about what you face. One said a monitor mode at 150 Hz ... and there is another source that seems to give more information:
https://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewtopic.php?post_id=88398

It could be a matter of sam460 config in E-UAE and wrong timebase management ...

@corto

That looks interesting! I will see if I can manage to get proper speed by trying some of the solutions presented in that thread. :)