TF1260-got a Rev.5 68060 let's see if it can overclock and run stable with the latest Alpha firmware & compare it to my Cyberstorm MKIII in my Amiga 4000 !!!
Was lucky to find a full Rev5. 68060 (FPU & MMU) recently without having to sell my kidney lol I was originally thinking to put into my Amiga 4000 BUT then I realized the headache of taking it apart to get to my Cyberstorm MKIII by Phase5 (the CPU connector isn't fun to take off...) and thought my Rev.1 has been rocking for decades in my A4k so better to try overclocking it in my Amiga 1200 Tower via my TF1260!
First to carefully take off my Rev.1 68060:
-I used to use a small flat head screwdriver and s-l-o-w-l-y lift up each edge until eventually it would come off without bending any pins but luckily I found a removal tool on AmiBay that makes the operation so much quicker and most importantly it has alot more support on each edge of the CPU which drastically improves the chance of damaging pins.
Here's the Rev.5 securely on the socket:
- CPU in great shape. Bought it as tested and confirmed FPU and MMU as there's alot of rebadged Chinese knockoffs online nowadays unfortunately.
Now to put the heatsink on the Rev.5:
- first some double sided thermal tape...careful it's sticky stuff! I used wax paper and an exacto knife to peel & place on the 060
- one side on
- wax paper off
heatsink & fan on:- won't connect the fan on now as I want to see how hot the 060 gets after overclocking & testing fist
and finally the moment of truth!..always worried about the magic smoke showing up still :-):
- phew great news no magic smoke & we boot right up into the newly released AmigaOS3.2-Update 2
- after making sure all is good at the stock 50Mhz and checking if it actually is a Rev5 with FPU & MMU it's time to start overclocking!
- using the new Alpha version of the cpuspeed command from the shell I try 70Mhz and it locks into 67 Mhz. All seems fine until I try to load up a program then the HD light stays on all the time and although I can still move my mouse and move windows around in Workbench I can't do anything else so time to reboot the 1200 Tower and try again
- after reboot I try at 63 Mhz and sadly same thing SO reboot again and try for 60 Mhz and cpuspeed locks in at 58.33Mhz...all looks good as I can load up programs and some games but just as I load up SysSpeed to do some benchmarks the system freezes up..dammit! I try again after a full power down (no reset) and same thing :-(
- disappointed as I know some friends with full Rev.5's with the Alpha firmware run very stable at 67Mhz but I also know that some don't like to be overclocked and it's just a flip of the coin which ones do or don't ! After the initial disappointment I felt grateful that at least my new CPU was humming along very stable for over a few hours running 060 specific demos and it was barely hot to the touch (quite a bit cooler than my Rev.1) so I decided not to connect the fan at all. Also my full Rev.1 can be easily sold for close to the cost I paid for the Rev.5 so it was definitely worth the upgrade.
SysSpeed results at 50 MHz with OS3.2.2:
Comparing with my Phase 5-Cyberstorm MKIII at 50 MHz with OS3.2.2:
WoW..very impressive stuff from the TF1260!
-The ROM & Fast memory tests are over 3x faster than the CSMKIII
- The Fast Ram speeds are on average approximately 4% faster (though I would have expected more since the modern chips on the TF1260 are much faster than the old DRAM chips on the MKIII
- The Fast Ram to Chip Ram speeds are only approximately 0.5% quicker on the MKIII.
- The CPU MIPS are 0.7% quicker on the TF1260
- The MFLOPS (FPU) are 0.25% on the TF1260
Overall bravo Terrible Fire developers!!! Looking forward to more firmware updates in the future
And of course the obligatory picture of what the mancave looks like at the time of writing this post (east end anyhow..notice the latest addition?)
