Phase 5 add to PowerUP product range

Oberursel, Germany, May 12 1997: phase 5 digital products today announced the expansion of the PowerUp range. Besides the two products announced earlier, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 603e Power Board, there will be an additional model for the A2000 and the Blizzard 603e+ Power Board, which combines the PowerPC RISC processor with an 68040 or 68060 CPU. Additionally, it has been decided that all PowerUp boards will come with SCSI on board instead of being an option.


Phase 5 will also release a fast graphics card as an add-on to those PowerUp models that go into the big-box Amiga models, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board.

The 1997 PowerUp accelerator product line includes the following models:


The following table lists the members of the PowerUp accelerator product family:

Cyberstorm PPC Blizzard 603e Blizzard 603e+ Blizzard 2604
Host Amiga A4000/A4000(T) A1200 A1200 A2000
Processor PowerPC 604e
150-200MHz
PowerPC 603e
175MHz
PowerPC 603e
200MHz
PowerPC 604e
150-200MHz
Companion CPU 68040/68060
25-50Mhz
68030
50MHz
68040/68060
25-50MHz
68040/68060 25-50MHz
Memory Options 128MB Max 64MB Max 64MB Max 128MB Max
SIMM sockets 4 1 1 4
Built-in SCSI Ultra-Wide Fast SCSI-II Fast SCSI-II Ultra-Wide
Availablity End of May 97 End of June 97 End of July 97 August 97
UK Price
No 68K CPU
150MZz £499.00
180MHz £599.00
200MHz £699.00
£299.00 £399.00 150Mhz £529.00
180MHz £629.00
200MHz £729.00
UK Price
PowerUp Upgrade
150MZz £460.00
180MHz £530.00
200MHz £620.00
£280.00 £329.00 150Mhz £490.00
180MHz £560.00
200MHz £650.00
Note: These retail prices include VAT at 17.5%, and are based on the exchange rate of 1UKP=DM2.70; specifications and prices are subject to change without prior notice. Performance estimations are based on Motorola manufacturers information. The availability of the Blizzard 603e/603e+ Power Board for A1200 desktop systems may depend on the finalization of the CE approval for these products, which may require the upgrade of A1200 desktop systems into tower cases which provide additional EMC shielding.

CyberVisionPPC - A graphic card for Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 PowerPC boards


The CyberVisionPPC is a high-performance graphic card which can be installed on the expansion slot of the PowerPC604e-based PowerUp Accelerators, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. It is scheduled for delivery in August, and will become available simultaneously with the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Especially for the Blizzard 2604 the use of the CyberVisionPPC is highly recommended as the slow access to the ECS chip memory or Zorro-II-based graphics boards in the A1500/A2000 may limit the system performance in applications with lots of graphic output; but also the performance of the Cyberstorm PPC will benefit significantly from the data transfer rates of up to 100 MB/s (from the processor into the video memory) in demanding applications such as fast 3D visualization and similar tasks.

Not only the ultra-fast access of the processor into the video memory, but also the internal speed and functionality of the CyberVisionPPC will provide for breathtaking performance. The CyberVisionPPC is equipped with the powerful PERMEDIA graphics controller, which provides an outstanding 3D performance of up to 42 million textured 3D pixels per second, with hardware-accelerated rendering functions such as z-buffering, gouraud-shading, fogging, blending and anti-aliasing. As the design of the PERMEDIA hardware suits perfectly for OpenGL implementations, it's 3D performance can support the CyberGL functionality of CyberGraphX V3 Native which comes along with the PowerUp boards. In combination with the high floating-point performance of the PowerPC604e processor a breathtaking performance in professional 3D applications can be achieved by this implementation. Additionally, the PERMEDIA processor supports functions like color space conversion, chroma keying and XY-scaling which will be used by the software MPEG decoding routines of CyberGraphX V3 Native.

The CyberVisionPPC uses 64-bit wide SGRAM with a data transfer rate of up to 660 MB/s; this in combination with the fast RAM-DAC allows display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 pixel in true color mode and with a high refresh rate of at least 70 Hz. The boards comes along with 4 MB of display memory as standard. The recommended price for the CyberVisionPPC will be at UK Pound 219.00; customers of a PowerUp upgrade can buy this board for a special rate of UK Pound 189.00.

Come see Phase 5 hosted by CU Amiga at the World of Amiga Show!