About Xellent30 real performance

[repoMan]

I'm really puzzled about the real performance of a Xellent30 accelerator. Seems that it has a 68030 clocked to 20Mhz so basically it must be 200% of a standard X68000, I even expected a bit more due the 68030's cache; so, with the integrated LHES "MPU power" meter I can only get a pityful 126% with caches on.
BASIC programs tested also show a mere, more or less, 25% speed increase so seems correct.

I've seen Youtube videos with greater performance, like X68000 CPU Accelerator - The Obsolete Geek, about 156%; but still far from what I expected from a 68030/20 

In the above video, the Xellent is working in a SUPER, that model is very close to my PRO, I can't see any reason that can explain such difference.

Am I doing wrong?, has anyone experiences about this?

Oh, and btw, Happy Xmas to you all! 

[famiac]

What drivers are you using? For some reason, when i use my xellent30s on my expert i only get 97% mpu power

[samaron]

Any benchmark software available? On my Amiga 1200 I would always use a benchmark program to test out the turbo cards to verify the performance.

Not sure how accurate that number in LHES is... on my computer (XVI at 16MHz) it says 145%.

[repoMan]

Definitely seems that this matter seems far from perfect in X68000 world...

Let's see, I'm also using LHES MPU power meter and now I get about 160% from my Xellent30 20Mhz (no idea about the reason my first results were so low); checked against a Compact, this one gives me 183%! in 16Mhz mode, pretty weird this power meter.

Seems that TF file manager also has some kind of benchmarking tool; but as far as I've been able to read, the best one is CPUPOWER. CPUPOWER bases all its results in the XVI-10Mhz as 100%, and also has estimated performances of RAM and I/O, not only CPU. Funny enough that in the docs you can find some figures about the XVI performance and reports that this model working in some "16Mhz mode" but with a "10Mhz clock" (what's that?) is the slowest machine due to low I/O and RAM transfer rates; so seems that the X68000 suffers of "wait states" when the CPU tries to communicate with the rest of the system
I need to check this software ASAP.

My Xellent30 has installed the firmware from "ch30_omake.sys" of the original? disk supplied with the accelerator. It reports as being BIOS 1.0 - 87.05.07 and I have no clues if it's really the same firmware found in CH30_OMAKE in the X68K software library (v2.15). The docs doesn't give info about speed improvements except the ones related to the SCSI boot.

About the 97% MPU power I can only imagine one logic reason, you have installed the old firmware (no ominous logo at boot) and it starts by default with your 68030's cache off, rendering the machine to perform like a snail. You can always try to execute a "CACHE ON" and repeat the measurements.

[famiac]

Thanks for the details. Will check and report back 

[repoMan]

After some little problems (a PRO and a Xellent30 busted in the meanwhile) I can add some detail about the performance measured by LHES (Xellent30pro - 20Mhz):

- As expected, "CACHE ON" makes a big difference: 75% -> 125%
- If you enable HIOCS.X you'll get faster display I/O: 125% -> 165%

No idea yet about the effect of extras like XT30DRV that seems to use the MMU (if present) to map memory. I need to investigate how to correctly take advantage of this.

[famiac]

You're running "cache on" after boot right? My drivers seem to start the cpu with the cache off.

I was able to get 166% from lhes with cache on. It goes to 140 something if i run xt30drv (weird right?)

[repoMan]

Yep, I need to enable cache right after booting up. In fact is a good thing, using CACHE and MPUSW commands I can set the preferred config for each game :-)

I don't really trust LHES powermeter anymore, tools like the aforementioned CPUPOWER give a more detailed info that really shows the true 030 horsepower.

I'm not sure about the use of XT30DRV; but if to some extent part of its functionality relies on a MMU, you'll need to have a full 68030 and not a EC030 one...

There's still a lot of Xellent30's info to dig in 

[famiac]

I have a full 68030 installed for sure. I have an XC68030 in there right now, but previously i had an MC68030 40Mhz chip. (clocked at 20)

Also, I got a hold of ch30inst.x, if anybody wants it. I should probably upload it to the ftp.