Many were waiting for the day when new and strong Amiga(One) will appear. That happened now. Currently, the X5000 can be purchased with the dual-core processor. In the future, a more powerful machine will be available. Is it worth buying the current model or wait for a four-core version?
A look at the new X5000. Note that the author is Polish (I think), and English isn’t her or his first language.
So these new Amiga’s are just basic pcs running on an overpriced custom mainboard?.. That’s really disappointing, but understandable. At least I got to experience the Amiga when it was something new, different, and in many ways before its’ time. I almost want to dig my A500 and A1200 out of storage for a weekend of nostalgia.
No, they are not basic PCs. They’re 64-bit POWER RISC systems. In PC terms, this would be more like putting a Xeon processor in your home computer than an i7. They’re not as powerful as the IBM POWER chip as they’re designed for low-power rather than absolute performance. You can find more about the processor here:
http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/power-a…
I suspect the OP was referring to the fact that a modern Amiga is just stock (if a little unusual) hardware. What made the original Amigas unique was the specialist chipset. A modern Amiga is expensive hardware with an interesting OS.
Yup, exactly! It’s a shame Commodore wasn’t able to continue maturing their hardware. Would be interesting to see what would’ve happened.
This is 2010 technology and were even sold as embedded CPUs more than half a decade ago:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100622005877/en/Freescale-U…
It is likely that a modern/cheap Core i5 CPU or a 400 Euro Xeon machine from eBay is going to obliterate this CPU. In fact, it seems to be in the same ballpark as the Mac Mini G4 1.5GHz:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_i…
Edited 2017-04-22 06:49 UTC
I had no idea it was that slow per clock cycle. So in theory it would get wooped by the APM86290 1.5ghz from 2011. Ouch.
Actually, it crushed the G4 in many of the tests, running 2 to 3 times as fast. In the ones where it was about the same performance or only slightly faster, remember that you’re comparing the results of running a 32-bit app optimized for the G4 rather than optimized for the POWER chipset.
64-bit is not necessarily much faster. It depends on the algorithm being tested, register pressure, availability of relevant SIMD instructions, etc. At any rate, it should be clear that this CPU is not near a 2010 Xeon CPU, let alone a 2017 Xeon CPU. As some sibling poster said, this is a CPU for embedded devices.
Or put differently, when we are arguing how much faster this CPU is than a G4 Mac Mini, then
No, they are not basic PCs. They’re 64-bit POWER RISC systems. In PC terms, this would be more like putting a Xeon processor in your home computer than an i7.
is definitely false.
Edited 2017-04-23 06:36 UTC
Hahah, no.
Clock speed is not an indicator of performance and never has been. These chips perform more instructions per clock cycle and are, thus, faster than you thought.
Umm … no …
These are nothing like a xeon processor.
They are actually designed to go into networking equipment like switches and routers.
In other words, they are aimed at embedded systems.
Sure, high performance embedded, but embedded none the less.
They are not some high end number crunching monster chip.
You don’t get it but that’s ok.
Xeons are x86 chips, and can work perfectly in a desktop/gaming PC. A better analogy would be to drop an Itanium into your PC. It isn’t going to work.
Edited 2017-04-23 16:03 UTC
I think the article author might have been using Polish -> English Google Translate for parts of it 🙂
I’m just about to get a Ryzen 7 1700 system for much less than this (and that includes 64GB of DDR4 RAM and an M.2 SSD) that blows it out of the water and will run Windows, Linux, BSD etc. etc. As the first poster said, this is just a boring and expensive PC with a boing case and what sounds like a half-finished OS to me…wake me up when something interesting happens…
My problem with theses systems has always been that they don’t actually have much to do with the original Amigas, outside of the OS. All the original software is supported through emulation and newer software for the most part is just ports of open source software I can already get under Linux.
That said, if they were to release one around 500, I would probably get it. Even the brand new PPC accelerators that the reborn Phase 5 are putting out are costing around 1500..
Ignoring Amiga OS for a minute, could this board be a low cost/performance alternative to the Talos Secure Workstation? A Power PC workstation that seeks to eschew the Intel Management Engine (ME)
https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
No.
The power8 chip on the talos board is just not comparable to the embedded chip on the x5000 board.
The performance of the talos is vastly superior.
They are not even on the same planet.
Yea I gather the processor is not in the same league. I am speculating if it would be a useful and lower cost/performance computer compared to the Talos. Even so, the X5000 remains a relatively expensive personal computer.
Edited 2017-04-22 08:00 UTC
It’s not relatively expensive.
It’s _very_ expensive for what it is.
Just get an old powermac G5 for like 50 bucks. It would absolutely beat the pants off this x5000.
Its nice to see alternatives is all I am getting at. Its cool to geek out over something new like this and speculate about alternative uses.
Edited 2017-04-22 08:08 UTC
Whatever.
Actually, it does not, and it can be objectively verified and observed, but it does not appear that you’re here to contribute anything constructive in this conversation, just stir the pot.
Guy edited his comments twice, turning them around 180 degrees.
One was a reply to me “semantics much”?
I’d like to see benchmarks between the processor in the x5000 and a G5. Isn’t the PPC in the x5000 supposed to be a lot faster? I got a G5 iMac from someone, but don’t know what to do with it because I hate OS X, and I already have a far more powerful system with Linux on it, and it has an nVidia chip in it, so can’t use morphos either…
2300 euros for an atx board with an unremarkable and quite slow (nowadays) embedded powerpc processor?
ha
haha
ok no thx
Have you ever heard of this specie called… audiophiles ?
lol kochise.
I like your sense of humor
Right I mean 2300 Euros is just enough for a decent set of wooden knobs, or a Neil Young endorsed voodoo box. When you don’t believe in science, no price is too high to pay for anything.
Wait!
Writes the word “AMIGA” on it
There. That’ll be €2300.
Imagine the price if it had “APPLE” on it.
Oh… wait…
Even Apple fanboys didn’t fall for the Mac Pro.
Since the person in question spent more than 2 grand on an obscure computer that gets bested by a low-end PC just to run an obscure OS, I am going to go with “his”, not “hers”.
You need to expand your social circle if you believe only men do this.
When women do tech, they tend to not participate in holy wars and they do not deal with obscure stuff. They just focus on the benefits offered by the tool they chose without any overt romanticism (= what basically makes someone buy a computer like the X5000).
Plus, there is a video of the dude talking on the same page.
Nice sexism going on there. Who the f are you to speak for all of womankind? How do you know what individual women do and don’t like to do with hobbies and their spare time? I bet there’s plenty of geeky gals out there who dig their specific computer interests and don’t mind spending their money on things that matter to them.
“Who is Jeri Ellsworth?”
Anita? Is that you?
Dude, first of all you do realize this is a site for niche OS fans, founded by a woman?? Why on earth are you even on this site?
Wow just wow, making the assumption OP identifies as male. So much sexism.
haha, I had a feeling that was coming.
These comments sound as if the people buying X5000 are clueless consumers. They are not. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Live long and prosper, Amiga!
I loved the amiga as a platform and used it longer than was probably sane! (went to pc at 166mmx).
However after commodore all that has occured is the milking of the few left.
If anyone cared about the OS they would have gone to ARM or X64. But they fear piracy and cheap hardware. They know the remaining few will pay though the nose.
I kind of wish I had gone 2nd Gen acorn back then. The Raspberry Pi is now the way forward on risc os. And that is cheap and the sane.
Ahh well, I have my memories.
This fear of piracy and cheap hardware is what hastened the demise of the Amiga… The Amiga platform owes much of its success to both being affordable and having pirated games readily available, indeed most amiga users at least in europe had a large number of pirated games (and usually quite a few paid ones too) which they shared among friends, and this sharing with friends encouraged further Amiga purchases.
In its later years, what few developers were left were all looking to make a quick buck from amiga users, which made the amiga (which had always been a capable and affordable system) a terribly expensive platform for using online, where even a telnet client had a price tag. And those amiga users who did have the money to afford all this overpriced software were extremely hostile to anyone who pirated it, which only served to drive users away.
And now insisting on requiring custom hardware to run amigaos only ensures that it will only ever be an extremely niche platform, only die hard users who have money to burn will ever use amigaos, there are hardly any users, very little software being developed for the platform and the hardware available is massively overpriced and outdated.
If they ported to x86 sure there would be piracy, but also a lot more paying users. The OS would have more value because more software would be available and would run on faster, cheaper and more readily available hardware.
True, Amiga OS4 isn’t going to go anywhere very fast, if at all. What hasn’t been mentioned also, is the current X5000 is dual core and is planned to go quad core in the next iteration. OS4 isn’t SMP though and will only utilize a single core making it all pointless unless you intend to just run Linux on expensive and exotic hardware, there isn’t even a plan yet for SMP in OS4.
MorphOS has plans to move to x86/x86-64 in future so at least there’s some sanity there, and AROS has just implemented a “sort of” SMP that works fine across all cores. It’s still only available in the development version though but is expected to go main soon.
OS4 is being left behind rapidly even with the slow advance of hardware it runs on.
Yeap, but porting AOS4 to x86 is more expensive than the amount of revenue it could generate.
OTOH Amiga is one of the few 80’s platform still active and producing new hardware and software.
So, from a pragmatic point of view, this business model makes sense to hardcore AMIGA fans. AROS is x86 and nobody cares about it, so being x86 is not a guarantee of success.
While the PPC (and overpriced, underpowered boxes like “Amiga” X<put your lucky number>) approach sucks, the problem with “go x86” is that modern PC has tons of possible hardware configurations. No way to support it. Possibly a more realistic approach would be to standarize on selected cheap, low-spec boards (like Raspberry Pi) and/or virtual machines (KVM, VBox, VMWare).
You don’t need to support every hardware configuration… take a look at Apple. They’re doing it for a different reason but if Amiga would only support like 3-4 motherboards and two video cards it would be completely understandable.
At this point I think they would be better off making a very thin baremetal OS for x86 with integrated PPC emulator and running Amiga OS on top of that
Amithlon PPC would be brilliant.
This is nonsense. There’s nothing stopping them from releasing a system that has support for a select few components.
For most basic I/O subsystems there are popular pieces of hardware that are supported. If you have to stick a PCI network card in to your box to get ethernet, then so be it, but with ubiquitous availability of these components, it’s not at all unreasonable for someone to only support a select few components.
The value add of the system is not being able to plug in whatever shiny thing you happen to desire, that’s not it’s place in the computing landscape. There are other platforms to fit that bill.
Over time, as suppliers dry up, the vendor can add more support for the dominant parts in the industry, incrementally. But, no, they don’t need to support 100 network cards, they need to support one.
Love it. Want one.
Wonder how the porting of AmigaOS’s exec to SMP is coming along?
Thom? Got a url?
As someone who has paid $1000 for a working Apple III in the past few years I won’t cast stones at X5000 customers who are paying $2000 for this underpowered equipment. It’s hitting its target niche market. My only criticism of the review is that they tried to downplay the price premium for the hardware. Beyond that I think its great to see the Amiga community enjoying new products that work for them.
The problem of course is supply and demand. If there were much higher demand for these, then the supply would go up and the prices would go down.
I think the only thing that would/could ever get Amiga as a whole to be a viable platform again is some kick ass software you can only get there. As it is, they are still struggling for a decent browser. From my understanding, Timberwolf (Firefox port) is still not done.
While I enjoy messing around with Operating Systems, I currently get my OS4 kick from FS-UAE, since I bought the OS4.1 Final Edition for Classics.
The NXP evaluation system for this chips did cost more then 4000USD, so 2300Euro is fair.
Of course one can get more power for less money. But Amiga users never were power-users, just gamers 😛
(Atari ST for ever!!)
Well, comparing Vidi ST to Video Toaster is a bit hair stretched. Comparing Cyber sculpt to Lightwave is another split. The ST perhaps had a midi port, but by default Paula did a better job than the ym or pcm of the STe. Or, HAM video mode was a mess, but not much than the ST’s planar modes.
And Amiga had (unstable) multitasking while ST had, well, Multitos that made your computer crawl like never. And would also ‘bomb’ rather often on several software combinations. So ‘power user’ is a bit over evaluated to me.
Edited 2017-04-24 18:13 UTC
There we have the old and stimulating war between Atari ST and Amiga 🙂
In ancient times one bought an ST or an Amiga not because the one could do something better than the other. Main reason (at least in my area) was what other used to be able to “share” games 😉
Game were better on Amiga, period. Especially on 1200.
Underpowered for what? It’s the most powerful hw available for AOS4 and it’s hyper powerful in Amiga terms. X5000 does what AOS4 users want.
I think people forget what’s the point of products like X5000… X5000 is for hardcore Amiga fans, nobody is trying to convert PC/Mac users to Amiga. Average computer users are not the target of this product, X5000 is for Amiga fans by Amiga fans. It’s a dream come true.
Also X5000 has a very good price point taking into account what Amiga users are used to pay for a PPC expansion boards for example, so going X5000 is a good option for people who wants to get rid of all the legacy super expensive Amiga PPC hw and do the jump to a full Amiga PPC system. Everything is super expensive in the Amiga world and in that context X5000 makes sense.
The thing people miss here is that as cool as OS4 is, there is very little you can do with it. There is ONE browser with javascript, and it is super slow in winuae. Unusably slow. Many if not most modern web content sites are unusable in OS4. OS4 has less functionality than our hobby os’es did 20 years ago, and they’ve had years longer to do something about it. There is little to no dev community for OS4, and it shows when you get it up and running and then go look for some software to make it a usable desktop. I like OS4. I’d like to use it. There just isn’t anything here. The user experience is barren. Ask yourself if you want to use an environment with no Facebook, no Youtube, no Netflix, no Hulu, no Steam, no productivity suite, nothing resembling Photoshop, the list could go on all day….
NeXT gave such a better experience, and at least we got a second lease on life with Apple’s acquisition of our old os. While Mac OS has gone backwards instead of forwards since Snow Leopard, at least there is still a rich user experience due to the wealth of software, with portable extensions of our desktops thanks to ios devices.
I just don’t understand what has kept the Amiga community alive to this day when there is absolutely nothing to make you want to be there. Old, expensive hardware and an operating system lacking in almost all of the basic amenities. An mp3 player and classic Amiga games in emulation is not justification for an entire os. smh
Meanwhile, on (software emulated) Atari : myaes.lutece.net/telechargement/myaes097demo.mp4
“Her or his” is a very awkward construction. In English, you could instead use “their” for a gender neutral statement. I believe it is a guy though.
https://twitter.com/thomholwerda/status/855904291579609088
Wait. Because I like your sense of humor
http://jsonformatter-online.com
Edited 2017-04-26 02:26 UTC