exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi !
I'm seeking infos about the 32Mhz Booster kit. For my simple use of my STE : 100% games. Is it useful ? What's the purpose of this kit, I mean I understand the CPU runs at 32Mhz instead of 8Mhz but concretely what's happening in my software ?

Thanks for any infos or link to educate my ignorance about this subject !

Astuck wrote: 15 Mar 2022 14:32 Hi !
I'm seeking infos about the 32Mhz Booster kit. For my simple use of my STE : 100% games. Is it useful ? What's the purpose of this kit, I mean I understand the CPU runs at 32Mhz instead of 8Mhz but concretely what's happening in my software ?

Thanks for any infos or link to educate my ignorance about this subject !

The booster will simply increase the speed at which the CPU can execute instructions and with a suitable ROM, ROM accesses are faster, the speed of the RAM and other components remain the same.

It will give you an overall speed boost, but it does have its limitations. I have two boosted STEs and things like Elite 2 and Stunt Car racer, so 3D games requiring a lot of calculations, were a good deal faster, but I saw little to no increase in 2D games where assets were already present and there weren't lots of mathematical calculations to be done.

You'll get an excellent speed boost for desktop apps (because the booster can make use of the faster ROM) but for games you'll get something in the region of 12-15% boost for any that are currently CPU limited. Some will run too fast.

I would hesitate to say you shouldn't buy it, but I'd suggest for a 100% games user, it's of limited value.

BW

Emulators like Hatari and STeEm can emulate an accelerator to give you an example of what it might be like.

Typically because of the tricks they had to use on the Atari ST for games (opening the borders, sync scrolling) accelerators are useless as they cause incompatibilities.

alexh wrote: 16 Mar 2022 08:44 Emulators like Hatari and STeEm can emulate an accelerator to give you an example of what it might be like.

Typically because of the tricks they had to use on the Atari ST for games (opening the borders, sync scrolling) accelerators are useless as they cause incompatibilities.

Does Hatari retain the 8MHz memory access speeds when it changes the virtual CPU speed? It always seems to outperform on memory to me.

BW

Badwolf wrote: 16 Mar 2022 10:48 Does Hatari retain the 8MHz memory access speeds when it changes the virtual CPU speed? It always seems to outperform on memory to me.

Unknown but ST-RAM memory speed would seem to be a fundamental part of the emulator.

You really would need to discuss this with the Hatari Devs over at Atari-forum. Lead developer Nicolas Pomarède aka Mr.Styckx is a great guy, very open to discuss ideas like this.

alexh wrote: 16 Mar 2022 11:18

Badwolf wrote: 16 Mar 2022 10:48 Does Hatari retain the 8MHz memory access speeds when it changes the virtual CPU speed? It always seems to outperform on memory to me.

Unknown but ST-RAM memory speed would seem to be a fundamental part of the emulator.

You really would need to discuss this with the Hatari Devs over at Atari-forum. Lead developer Nicolas Pomarède aka Mr.Styckx is a great guy, very open to discuss ideas like this.

I have raised it before -- the reason I asked is I'm not up to date with the bleeding edge version and wondered if it were fixed.

Anyway, caveat emptor: Hatari at 32MHz may considerably overstate the advantage a 32MHz CPU alone will give you.

BW