Vampire Accelerator Showdown - V4 vs V2

What is faster at AGA? An A1200 or an A500? Find out as I explore the V4 based accelerators for the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 500 and compare them against the Vampire V2 for the Amiga 1200. I look at the CPU, Memory and network performance as well as the AGA over HDMI implementation. Is the V4 a worthy upgrade to the V2? Can the Icedrake beat the Vampire V2 1200? Stay tuned.....
For full disclosure, I am a member of the Apollo Team. Take that for what you will.

[@AncientShinrinYoku]

Probably one of the best Amiga reviews on the internet right now😍

[@Chrisst1961]

Hi Ronnie, thanks for making this video. It really lays out the benefits in the jump to the V4 range in a concise way. The V2 boards kicked off the revolution but the baton has now been handed over to the V4 which just gets better. Also many thanks to the Apollo team and everyone involved.

[@MalcolmHarvey]

Great video, yeah very informative. Yes if you can do another with the a600 one as well. eg: V4SA and 1200(Ice drake),500(firebird) and 600 (Manticore).

[@toddchamberlain6507]

I look forward to your next v4 video - stacking MantaCore up against the others... Especially interested in it's chipram speed. Thanks!

[@10MARC]

Excellent review of both of them! I was ready to order an Icedrake until the guys on the team told me that Interlace mode in AGA does not work well at all... And I use Interlace mode almost exclusively! How do interlaced screens look on the Firebird?

[@MichaelMordor]

Just wanted to give a heads up to anyone in the UK buying a Firebird v4 card from Apollo directly I had a £100.59 fee and taxes bill from UPS this is on top of the price you pay for the card so remember to take this into your budget when thinking of buying one of these cards, still cheaper than a Blizzard 060 👍👍

[@quetzal7753]

Wow. Fantastic video Ronnie!

[@KevinSaunders]

Awesome Review, this will be very handy for people considering upgrading their classics.

[@manueljesus3147]

I figured I'd check out some other Amiga accelerator and graphics products... Here are my findings. I have a ZZ9000 and 060 in an A4k... compared to say a V4 equipped A2k and A1200. In terms of ZZ9000 ecosystem the IRC support is empty but there are good forum posts. The card itslef has color shifts on HDMI out as it doesn't sit securely in the zorro 3 slot, IF you run a pal game on an NTSC machine the scan doubler chokes and displays a distored image in the top half of the screen. USB disk support didn't work for me as stated in the manual. Available RAM comes and goes...For the CPU component of this setup ...The 060 card, well that a BFG 68060 50mz LC chip. IT's all you can get nowdays... and it is SLLOOOWWW compared to anything on the Vampire range. In can say the V4 range represents the best value for dollar compared to other offerings. I respect the other product offerings and they have their place and I appreciate the time, passion and effort to make them. But when I look at the total package V4 is the way. I will replace the slow 060 card and nicely made ZZ9000 when Kraken comes out for sure.

[@manueljesus3147]

and Doug yes the interlace jitter is a pain in the ass. The V4 doesn't have an AGA Amber implementation internal scan doubling option AFAIK. But benefit of FPGA dev is this can eventually be sorted out.

[@boydpukalo8980]

I own a V4SA. My first Amiga. Very happy with it and that you can buy a brand new Amiga in the 2020’s. Looking forward to picking up another in the form of the V4 expansion board in mITX case. Also own 3141 and 32.

[@keyboard_g]

Super helpful video. Thanks!

[@haraldaichinger9335]

Great video, I want to ask what the oled display at 8:25 is for and which bracket you are using for mounting the display and USB outlets.

[@jkdsteve]

Great video

[@mheijink]

Nice review.

[@AmitenTV]

But Can It Run Crysis? 😂 , Great video Ronnie! cheers!

[@toddchamberlain6507]

Great comparison... let's see the 600 v4 MantaCore in the mix too. 🙏

[@espenskog8745]

Hi Ronnie. Thanks for the review. I really need to see a review of the Manticore and there is NONE on the itrawebz at all.... i mean....nada :) So -- could you pretty please make one as it seems like you have the Manticore board :)

[@ice2642]

Cool video, what is the icon theme that you are using in linux mint? If you can put the link where it is I appreciate. Best regards,

[@attic636]

Good review. But the IceDrake accelarator for Amiga 1200 can both run in V4 and V2 mode by settiing a jumper. Could you also compare its V2 mode to V1200 in v2 ? The difference may be minor, but surely interesting to find out. And s it true that the Icedrake deactivates the A1200 internal IDE and PCMCIA port - if yes it is only in v4 mode, isn't it? - as far as you can tell from your experience.

[@Cyberstormxiii]

Hello Ronnie. Could you please update the comparison to add in a Pistorm with a Pi4B, and look at all the pros and cons of its lower price, and faster speed but (maybe) less accurate emulation.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

That’s nuts!

[@toddchamberlain6507]

I'm wondering on the 1200 IceDrake, Is it possible to issue some command in order to switch and use the Vampire's AGA implementation, rather than the 1200 building chipset? Basically, is it possible to switch back and forth? It would be nice to be able to take advantage of the faster Vampire AGA chipram, but be able to switch back if there is any incompatibility.

[@RonnieBeck]

There was a beta core (firmware) released this week. It does this I believe but also increases chip ram to 9MB. A nice upgrade.

[@toddchamberlain6507]

​@@RonnieBeck Ok, that's good to know, thanx. I really love my original A1000 (Ser# 0000066) and having my A1000 Vamped would be cool. But, most of me things keeping it stock is best. I really thought Commodore got it (mostly) right with the A1200 -- so an IceDrake equipped 1200 could be my ideal daily Amiga -- but I wouldn't want to be missing out on the ChipRAM speed of the Firebird and V4SA in doing so. So yeah, if they're doing this in the new firmware, that would be ideal.

[@MrBrankovicv]

Which football game ia that on 16:16?

[@RetroJay1974]

What do you have in the cd drom bay of the A2000? I am interested to know is it an adpator holding a laptop cd drive?

[@RonnieBeck]

This is a laptop drive in a holder designed to adapt laptop drives for large 5.25" bays. The drive itself is SATA and I used ab IDE--->SATA adaptor to connect it to the Vampire accelerator.

[@andreyansimov5442]

Is it 2022?

[@fradd182]

For me, the future is obviously with standalone models packed in old-styled casings. Possibly with dedicated GPU instead of graphics being implemented through FPGA or, even worse, using old chipset.

[@another3997]

One of the problems with a dedicated GPU is drivers. Assuming they could implement the interface, there are no drivers for "new" PCI-E cards, and I doubt there are many people prepared to do any. Which cards? You'd never get access to the majority of features built in to modern GPUs, and you'd only have drivers for one or two specific cards at best. I also doubt the V4 devices could handle the data transfers to and from a modern card to make it worth while.

[@AmstradExin]

No Vampire A600?

[@AnnatarTheMaia]

The interlace doesn't work? It's always something! Why, for once, can't we have a 100% working system where everything works correctly?!? This is something that annoys the living daylights out of me as an Amiga user! It's always some trade-off, however one would expect to get every feature working correctly for one's money.

[@manueljesus3147]

No AGA amber implementation to scan double.. What do you need interlace mode for?.... Aside from NTSC / PAL and higher res for graphics and video compatibility it offered very little. Yes a higher res screen mode but it flickered. It was actually a sales killer when displayed alongside flicker free Macs and PCs of the era... For flicker free video I use the RTG modes.

[@RonnieBeck]

Interlaced Screen modes work, but they aren't deinterlaced. Sorry that I didn't make that clearer. That said, no game I am aware of ever used them for game play and productivity software can usually use RTG screens or be mode promoted. I agree it would be nice if it were deinterlaced but the need for them is the exception rather than the rule.

[@CartoonMonkeyStudio]

@@manueljesus3147 Dpaint, Brilliance... these hires interlaced screenmodes are essential for video work. And the programs really don't shine without them. It's a drag to have to work at half the resolution just to have to avoid flicker. Half the amount of pixels to work with in ntsc / pal modes. Had to sell my V4 and stick with my V2. Not a real Amiga in my opinion without them. Amiga was designed specifically around Pal / NTSC. Taking it away, I think it's a mistake.

[@mauricedoerr1992]

I agree, this whole range is not finished, for the price it is exaggerated

[@10MARC]

@@manueljesus3147 I actually use Interlace modes almost exclusively. I would say 95% of my Amiga use is in 640 x 480, and much higher resolutions on my A1200 with my Indivision MK2 - of course with that they are not interlaced... but you know what I mean!

[@mauricedoerr1992]

I have experimented with all these cards. The worst is the Firebird, impossible to get stability or run OS 3.2. Benchmarks are nice but in real life they often crash. It's not very good.

[@RonnieBeck]

That is for sure not the experience you should have. It sounds like there is something seriously wrong with your Amiga or you have defective Firebird. OS 3.2 works perfectly fine. It is stable for me at least on the two cards I have. If you join the Apollo Team discord server we could try and help you troubleshoot it.

[@mauricedoerr1992]

@@RonnieBeck hours wasted with support and they couldn't get my systems to work. I sold everything.

[@another3997]

@@mauricedoerr1992 With a sample size of one, and not actually having found the cause, you can't definitevely point the finger of blame at the Apollo team. Amigas are old, they're not the most reliable things even before you put in modern kit. You could have asked them, or someone else, to test it for you in another Amiga. They'd replace faulty equipment, assuming you bought it new.

[@cathrynm]

TBH, the Amiga seems about as compatible with games as real Amigas were with each other.

[@TheFusedplug]

Does it turn them into a CD32 yet? That's the one that'll catapult CD32 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT into 2023

[@RonnieBeck]

I tried using a CD32 emulator but with limited success. The V4 cards do have Akikio (the C2P conversion logic part) built in but there were so few games that used that. It is hard to boot from CD32 games like on a real CD32 because the Amiga 1200 and AFAIK the Amiga 500 didn't really boot from CD. Hence the need for some sort of emulation. I was a little disappointed with how few CD32 games worked properly. But this is the nature of CD32 games on A1200s.

[@RasVoja]

Oh boy vampire vs Angela v4