** 2.5 page review / 2019 words ** Turbocharging the Falcon John Kolak considers his choice of Falcon accelerators... Prior to the FX board, the standard method for accelerating computers was to add a daughterboard to the computer containing a high performance processor clocked to a higher speed, while the motherboard remained clocked at its normal speed. Both Blowup FX and Nemesis took a new approach by adding faster oscillator components which clock the computer at a higher speed than it was intended to run. This approach opens a Pandora's box of potential problems because the computer is running faster than it was designed to go - a situation made worse due to the Falcon's flawed design (Atari rushed it into production when they decided to get out of the computer business). To complicate matters, not all Falcon production runs were identical. Problem Falcons and Falcon Problems Both the Blowup and Nemesis manuals recognise potential problems. The Blowup manual states "Although we have tested it carefully and it works with the Falcons of our numerous beta testers, there is no guarantee that it will function properly on your special Falcon." The Nemesis manual states, "With so many differences in the Falcon, it is impossible to say how each installation affects the various ones that exist." The greatest problem lies in the DMA circuitry in the SCSI support area. Both products provide troubleshooting instructions. Nemesis provides a hardware patch and FX provides hardware and software solutions. This is perhaps the greatest area of difference in the acceleration aspect between the two products. Nemesis is sort of a "one size fits all product". If it works in your machine great, if not, there is no means of adjusting the timing for fine tuning. FX offers six buttons on its control panel for fine tuning of the timing adjustments. ** FXCNTRL.JPG here ** ** Caption ** The FX Control Panel eXtension (CPX) provides fine tuning buttons to adapt the accelerator to the widest variety of existing Falcon production runs. Note the dialog box also allows selection of processor speed ** /caption ** As a last resort, both products offer lower acceleration speeds in case your Falcon will not support maximum acceleration. The FX oscillator speeds are 18 and 20MHz, whereas the Nemesis oscillator speeds are 20 and 25MHz. While this appears to indicate Nemesis is the faster product, the issue is more complex than this. The hardware acceleration features of the Nemesis and FX designs are near identical - they both employ faster oscillators and cut into the Falcon motherboard in nearly the exact same places. However, the FX design offers additional features which may make the FX a better choice for some users. FXtra features ** UL ** * Falcon memory access logic: The FX bypasses Falcon logic which treats the 68030 processor like a 68000 which yields a 33% speed increase in processor memory write speeds. * Processor clock doubling: In addition to accelerating the bus speed (like Nemesis) the FX control panel also enables clock doubling of the processor. * TT-RAM: (Also known as FastRAM or burst mode 32-bit memory) FastRAM is significantly faster than standard memory. * Resolution enhancement: The Blowup Screen Expander hardware has been incorporated into the design which overcomes the limitations of the Falcon video system and provides TrueColor at high resolutions, depending on the capability of your monitor. (Nemesis also accelerates the system bus and enhanced screen performance can be achieved using the Videlity software which is available separately). ** UL ** How fast is fast? When I first tried a Falcon it felt "sluggish" compared to my TT. At the time I was not aware of the relationship between the performance of the computer and the amount of screen data the computer has to process at higher resolutions and colour depths. A review of the Crazy Dots II TT video card where the GEMBench results degraded from 470% to 138% as the colour depth increased from 2 colours to 16,777,216 (24-bit) colours respectively, clearly demonstrated how much the computer slowed down as it has to process more video data. This effect is evident in the sluggishness of the Falcon colour video modes. ** Boxout 1 here ** Clocking Strategies In recent years the trend has been to increase the clock speed of the processor by doubling or tripling it compared to the motherboard clock. The TT was originally a 16MHz computer, until at the last minute, the processor was moved to a daughterboard and double clocked - a marketing triumph! Real time benchmarks demonstrate doubling the internal processor clock does not double overall system performance and the performance increase can be as low as 10 or 20%. For example PCs are typically sold based on the processor's internal clock speed. Ratings such as the Cyrix PR300 M2 (Pentium II class) chip are attained by taking a 66MHz bus and three-and-a-half clocking the internal processor core, then performance rating against an Intel brand 300MHz chip. Armed with this knowledge, a Falcon FX running its processor at 40MHz doesn't sound nearly so bad! It's hard to believe the Falcon clock situation is opposite to this trend - while the rest of the world is clocking the processor faster than the motherboard, the Falcon processor clock runs SLOWER than the system clock! The Motorola 68030 processor runs at 16MHz and the system clock runs at 32MHz! The FX double-clocks the processor chip to 40MHz which provides considerably more grunt than Nemesis, which although it provides a higher 50MHz system clock, actually runs the processor clock at half speed (25MHz). This performance difference is evident in the benchmark data. The FX without CPU doubling benchmarks illustrate the FX is feeble accelerator compared to the Nemesis. However the last column, which shows the FX running at maximum speed, easily outstrips the Nemesis' maximum performance. The benchmarks also show the degradation of ST RAM memory access performance as colour depth is increased, compared to the performance of TT RAM which remains constant. This illustrates the importance of adding TT RAM/FastRAM to the Falcon for maximum performance - even though a few (mostly older) software titles may not support it. Installation Installation is not for the faint hearted. Although both products include illustrated manuals with troubleshooting tips both products require cutting fine traces on the motherboard, cutting legs on chips, and soldering wires to these points. If you are not comfortable with this don't DIY! The Nemesis installation process has you install it one step at a time and test each step, with excellent "if you see this, good; if you see this, TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER NOW!" instructions which is better than the FX manual which merely provides a checklist of things to look for in case of trouble. How Safe is Overclocking the Falcon? There is some disagreement over this issue. There have been reports of increased Falcon failure rates since the advent of overclocking accelerators but both Titan and Blowup don't think there's a connection. Titan's David Encill states, "Most chips in the Falcon are rated to operate up to 70 C - very hot!" and Blowup's Georg Acher says, "I don't think that you should be much concerned about overclocking, since in today's computers this is mainly a heat problem. But the chips on the Falcon (even the CPU and Videl) stay relatively cool compared to a Pentium II. The instability in the Falcon stems from delicate timing, and not from the heat itself." It seems to me it's more likely any increased failure rate is due to bodged upgrade attempts but that's pure speculation on my part! Analysis The impetus for writing this article was to try to ascertain whether an accelerated Falcon could equal or outperform a TT 030 computer (or to put it another way, did I make a mistake selling my TT to buy a Falcon?) so let's take a closer look at some benchmarks. Darek Mihocka's Quick Index is a great way to get a quick comparison to the TT because one of the options allows for percentile ratings of the system to be compared to a stock TT. ** QINDEX.JPG here ** According to Quick Index only the FX Falcon running at maximum acceleration is able to exceed TT processor speed and keep up with 16 colour TT video speed (with NVDI installed). Running in 256 colours Falcon video performance drops off rapidly and although it's not fair to compare performance with a stock TT (which doesn't offer a decent 256 high resolution colour resolution) the sluggish screen response is disappointing. ** FALC_TT.ASC table here ** ** Caption ** All tests performed using Quick Index. The results, except the last column, are referenced with a standard TT030 which represents 100% ** /caption ** The significance of using NVDI is evident when comparing the two columns which contrast display performance with and without NVDI. Compared to a TT all other ST models exhibit poor TOS scrolling performance, the Falcon seems to suffer worst of all - even the STe is twice as fast in this benchmark. Falcon Relativity Nembench compares your accelerated Falcon to a stock Falcon running in duochrome (essentially monochrome) and indicates the relative speed improvement. However, because the Falcon is a relatively slow computer anyway, the benchmarks are effectively reporting a faster turtle is still a turtle! The Quick Index benchmarks are interesting because they can also compare the performance of Falcon accelerators to a stock TT - which is much harder to live up to. It's also worth pointing out screen performance and processor speed should be examined separately. For example if windows open and close slowly, and text scrolls at a crawl the machine will feel sluggish irrespective of the underlying processor speed. In ball-park terms the Quick Index benchmarks indicate a stock Falcon running in 16 colours feels roughly as responsive as an ST but the underlying processor speed of the Motorola 68030 will perform processor intensive tasks such as ray tracing, image conversion and other tasks performed while the screen is idle, roughly four times faster. Again in ball-park terms a stock Falcon running in duochrome resolution offers snappy screen performance and using the accelerators reviewed here you can enjoy similar screen performance in 256 colour resolutions. Enter CenTurbo II System Solutions kindly provided NemBench results for the TT 030 and the CenTurbo II Falcon accelerator (also distributed by Systems Solutions and reviewed in AC#12), which appear in the last column of the benchmark table. The CenTurbo II is similar to the Blowup FX in concept, except Centek, have incorporated a separate 50MHz 68030 processor directly on the accelerator board. This overcomes the 14Mb memory limit (CenTurbo supports 128Mb) which exists because Atari did not wire all the memory control lines on the 68030 processor - yet another symptom of rushing the Falcon to market? One striking indicator is the superior handling of TT RAM in the CenTurbo and TT NemBench results which indicates the FX is fighting against the Falcon's crippled design to add FastRAM whereas the TT and CenTurbo were engineered to utilise this feature of the 68030. Summary The products mentioned in this article cover a wide range of price and performance but the Blowup FX still offers excellent value for money. System Solutions still have a few in stock so get them while they've got 'em! Email: jkolak@jps.net ** Boxout 1 ** ** SPEEDTST.ASC table here ** ** Caption ** All speeds are compared to a stock Falcon running in two colour duochrome at 16MHz as a base 100% value. DSP benchmarks are not listed because all products mentioned clock the DSP to 50MHz which yields a predictable 156% performance level. ** /caption ** ** /Boxout 1 ** ** product boxout ** Blowup FX Three-in-One Falcon Extender Manufacturer: Acher, Eberl and Seibert GbR UK distributor: System Solutions 17-19 Blackwater Street, East Dulwich, London, SE22 8SD Tel: +44 (0)181 693 3355 Email: sales@system-solutions.co.uk http://www.system-solutions.co.uk/ Cost: œ99 Requires: Atari Falcon 030 Pros: Economical Falcon performance enhancer, well engineered Cons: No step by step installation testing 90% ** /product boxout 2 ** ** Images and captions ** ** QINDEX01.GIF ** Quick Index provides a useful comparison between Falcon and TT models because both computers have TT medium resolution in common (640x480x16 colours) ** FXPIC.JPG ** FX board mounted in the Falcon processor direct slot. Note the optional cooling fan mounted next to the cartridge port