My experience jumping from SAM460LE to X5040.

I wanted to share with you my brief experience moving from a SAM460LE to an X5000/040.

My first experience with an AmigaNG system was in 2017 with MOS and a Mac Mini. Up until that point, I had always been a user of classic Amigas since 1991. The experience was wonderful; I had never used PPC on an Amiga before.

In 2019, I started look a solution for AmigaOS4, look the Tabor/A1222, but Covid and the uncertainty surrounding the release of the A1222+ and the emulated FPU didn't quite convince me.

Finally, in 2024, I bought a SAM460LE and, for the first time, I was able to experiment with AmigaOS4.x.
I was hooked from the very beginning; for a year, I spent countless hours in front of AmigaOS4, learning and reading on forums like this one.
The problem I had with the SAM460le is that it's a very limited system in terms of speed, and although you can use the new RX graphics cards, its performance is poor, possibly due to the lack of GART. As an introductory system to the world of AmigaOS4, it's wonderful, but once you push it a bit, it falls short, at least in 2025.

Finally, in 2025, I received and offert to upgrade my SAM460LE and pay a little extra to get an X5040.
The X5000 realy works good.
In the case of the SAM460, I downloaded many games in their MiniGL version because the EGL/Ogles4/Warp3DNova-based versions worked but were slower than the MiniGL ones. With the X5000, that has clearly changed; now the EGL/Ogles4/Warp3DNova versions actually run much faster than the MiniGL versions.

Another important difference I've encountered is that on the SAM460, going over 1GB of RAM made the system somewhat unstable, and if you tried to copy or fill the RAM with files larger than 1GB, the AmigaOS would freeze. Now with the X5000, I can easily manage the 2GB of RAM without fear of the system freezing. Everything runs faster and everything works better and more stable overall on the X5000. It's clear that over time, AEON has done a good job on these machines.

The downside, besides the price of the X5000, is a few minor details that mar the product. It doesn't have a manual or a basic user guide for basic installation operations, updates, information on uboot commands and basic procedures, etc. You have to download everything individually from here and there and seek the help of other users on forums like this one. Finding these user guides compiled and easily accessible on the AEON website is impossible. In this sense, I feel a bit abandoned as a buyer. Fortunately, the Amiga community is always able to overcome almost any product flaw.

The slightly lower performance of the graphics cards in an X5040 vs an X5020 is another negative point and the problem I have encountered with using 2 graphics cards that does not seem to exist in an X5020 is another bug that (SOLVED) https://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=9911 .

I hope AEON can fix to make a complete system.

In short, the jump from the SAM460LE to an X5040 is wonderful, but with a slightly bitter taste due to the particular problems of the X5040 vs X5020 that I have already mentioned.

@kikems

Thank you for sharing your story and photos. I like the cats

Very interesting comparison between SAM460LE and X5040.

Cheers,
redfox

I forgot to mention another very important point in my post about the SAM460 vs. X5000: the use of UAE.
With the SAM460, running AGA games at full screen and full frame rate wasn't possible in most cases; it didn't have enough power, and the sound stuttered.
Now, with the X5000, everything works perfectly, even AGA games.

Since 2015, many developers already own at least an X1000 and this is noticeable in their developments. They optimize their ports until they have a good performance on their computers, and this is very noticeable if you have a computer with a lower speed.

In 2025, for current SDL and 3D ports, I believe the minimum recommended speed is 1.4/1.5 GHz; below that speed, many things are very limited in speed.

To fully enjoy the AmigaOS4 experience today, you need a Radeon SI or Radeon RX and Warp3D Nova. With a system that doesn't support these technologies, you're missing out on a lot of exciting new things. A SAM460 is capable of using these technologies, but in a very limited way.

Older AmigaNG systems that only have access to MiniGL and old Warp3D were fine 10 years ago, but a lot of things are missing today.

The X5000 is a computer with wonderful features; the only downside is its high price.
An X5000 little without PCI slots and only 3 pcie slots with a CPU with 1,5 Ghz at lower price will be the most popular AmigaNG system. You can say me ... kikems this is A1222.
In my experience and opinion, the A1222 with the emulated FPU is not a suitable system. An A1222 has everything a SAM460 lacks: good CPU speed, it works very well with modern graphics systems, and high speed RAM. However, the handicap of the emulated FPU prevents many things from running correctly or at the appropriate speed. For me SAM460 with lower specs but real FPU is better solution than A1222 at similar price.
In my opinion, an A1222 would only be justified if it had a really low or almost ridiculously low price.

Maybe Mirari can meet those needs at a more reasonable price; we'll see when it's released with AmigaOS 4.

@kikems

Quote:

Would you mind telling us a little more about the "offer" and where you bought your X5040? I've never heard of an upgrade offer like this. And the current supply of X5040's seems to be extremely expensive. Supply and demand?

@tao

Of course, the offer wasn't official trade from AEON or anything like that; it was a user-to-user deal.

If you live outside the UK, the best thing you can do is contact with Laurent at Amedia Computer. In my experience, he's the best person to buy or negotiate an X5000 today. If you're really interested, I'm sure Laurent can always offer you an interesting payment or trade-in plan.

I'm not affiliated with Laurent or anything like that, I just recommend him because I've always had very good experiences with him. Maybe Relec, Amiga on the lake and other dealers will be a good option too but I'm not have experiences with them.

@kikems

Thanks for sharing you view, very interesting!

I went the other around (not quite but nearly).

I already own an AmigaOne X1000 (this one is my Roll's Royce, I formely used a AmigaOne G4 1,26 Ghz).

I bought one of the latest Sam460LE from Relec during the OCCC Festival in 2024 since I need a computer that I can bring easyly during small events (the X1000 is such a big beast) and I don't regret it. I used to have a Sam440ep that I could boos to 733 Mhz but it was still too slow for my needs.

I wrote (in French but there is now lots of tools to translate to nearly any language) somes articles (one from G4 to X1000 and another with the arrival of the Sam460LE :) ):

https://amiga-ng.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=66
https://amiga-ng.org/static.php?op=Sam460LE.html&npds=1

@K-L

Yes it very similar experience. Very interesting your articles.

@kikems

Thank you for sharing. I love my X5000 as well. It was my first real hardware Amiga since my A3000s. I always wanted to try OS4, but could not justify the price. But once I was able to emulate it in on a decent PC, I fell in love with it. I almost pulled the trigger right before covid and thought I missed my chance. But then a few years later, on a whime I emailed Amigakit to see if they had them, and I got an email from Launrent saying he had some in stock.

I didn't want to miss out again, so I went for it. A little expensive, but not too much more than I would pay for a new Mac or decent PC.

@livebyfaith74

Yeah,,, the price I would have to pay for "getting my A1200T back" would be much more money compared to the X5000/020 I bought 3 years ago.

Love it... and I recently got myself an X5000/040.

I used to own a Sam460CR, but I gave it away to a friend of mine who is into retro-computing. He actually designed his own 16/32 bit Atari motherboard called Raven. Google it... an amazing project. :)

Looking forward to what he can do with the Sam460 and AmigaOS 4.x :)

@kikems

Quote:
The A1222 is reported to be a very capable system for general OS4 use, and that's how it should be seen and marketed. That said, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who might aim at doing audio work beyond mere playback. Most DSP algorithms used for audio processing use floating-point math and require sound samples to be presented as floats. This can't really be remedied on the application level: even if the developer took the plunge and forced his/her software to only use integers, some of the many sound libraries you need will use floats at some point if not all the time. There's no escape using FPU in audio, so keep that in mind if your AmigaOS4 aspirations are musical.

@livebyfaith74

There is no Mac or PC that offers you as many hours of entertainment and that you will use for as long as an X5000.

@trixie


In short, A1222 fails on anything that requires intensive FPU usage: audio, Blender, video/audio encoding, 3D FPS games, etc. unless you have specific versions compiled for the A1222, in which case they perform well.
For everything else, it seems to work wonderfully.

In my case, those things that fail are 50% of the things I use daily, and it's main reason because A1222 is not a solution for me.
But I'm also aware that many people use AmigaOS4 to emulate the classic Amiga, browse the internet, email, and many other tasks that don't require intensive CPU usage. For those users, the A1222 is a good solution.

I agree with the sentiment of your post, the X5040 is a lovely machine and the A1222’s lack of FPU and requirement for SPE is just a non starter.

I’d add on top that the design of the board is mad. And this applies to x5040 too. Putting the x4 slot so close to the x16 that you have to resort to hacks to use it is a really bad choice. Put it an extra slot away, make it physically 16x (not electrically) and do away with that combo port instead. Job done. No more messing with adapters.

Also, the cpu cooler is just terrible.

Also software wise, the more I use it, the more it disappoints. It’s becoming very obvious that they are beta / test boards that were only sold because they ran out of 5020’s. They’re not ready. And at this point we don’t seem to be getting any more fixes which is really poor given the price people are being charged.

The whole issue with GPUs in the 4x slot appears now to be 5040 specific and when I decide to say sod it and just go with x1650 in the 16x slot (and just use mos) I can’t because that GPU doesn’t provide a picture through my HDMI switch, my capture device and 4K monitor even though my RX560 does. I’d have to forgo the capture card at least and go direct into the 1080p monitor and I don’t want to do that.

So for now I have no choice but to put up with a buggy system until something else comes along. Sad but true.

@MartinW

For AOS4 I'm using RadeonRx550 low profile that use only one space slot.




But yes , X1000 has 2 16x pcie slots and x5000 should also have them and leave a free space under each 16x slot for large graphics cards. This this card I can use pcie 16x slot and pcie 4x slot without problems.