The BlizzardPPC cards will be pushed aggressively in the wake of the announcement last month by Amiga Inc that 680x0 plus PowerPC parallel CPUs were the next step in Amiga development. Unit prices for the 68060 remain high, but volume availability of high quality recycled 68040s has enabled the lower end cards to be released substantially more cheaply than originally thought. Final pricing will depend somewhat on current exchange rates, and looks set to be a little higher than the target prices we reported last month. The A1200 variant of the PowerUP card will ship with an AGA version of the CyberGraphX system, allowing the supplied CyberGraphX- only PPC software to be used without a graphics card. Current indications are that contrary to earlier expectations, all cards may be compatible with standard desktop cases, not requiring a tower conversion. Spring Blizzards The first version of the BlizzardPPC cards to be released will be the 160MHz and 200MHz versions. Long lead times on the 250MHz PPC 603e CPU components will mean that the higher end cards are likely to be delayed a little further, but phase 5 will be happy to push the lower end cards. Even at 160MHz, the PPC603e chip used on these cards will run several times faster than any 680x0 based Amiga, and the price point will make it a tempting product. Fitted with a 68040 25MHz companion processor, the board will retail for the kind of price a similar ’040 board would have cost only a year ago. We should have a full review of the first BlizzardPPC next month.
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