For all intents and purposes, my A2000 is as good or better (in most cases much better) than any Commodore A3000. It’s faster than the 3000 and is vastly easier to upgrade. There are infinitely more after-market options made for it, and they are simply easier to install from a practical standpoint. One can argue aesthetics (and I’d quickly give the nod to the 3000 like everyone else) but in terms of raw horsepower and potential, my 2000 beats the 3000 in every department.
Except one.
The 3000 came with a built-in scan doubler that supported flicker-free multi-sync monitors using what Commodore called the “Amber” chip. And with the 3000 you could switch between 15Hz and 30 Hz with the flick of a switch.
However, in 1991, Commodore released the “Amber card,” or the A2320, which plugs into the video card slot.
This card - mainly intended for the A2000 but also usable with the A4000, doubles all of the default screen modes and comes equipped with a handy little enabler switch, too. So in those rare times you need to go into interlaced modes but don’t want to get an instant headache, this card fixes all of that.
I’d seen images in Deluxe Paint or PD disks that were in hi-res that made my standard C= monitors jiggle. But it wasn’t until I installed Pagestream that it really hit me hard - you can ONLY use that program if you have a scan doubler and multisync monitor. If you don’t it’s virtually unusable for any extended period of time.
To be clear - if you don't have a multisync monitor, this card won't do anything for you. You have to have both. I plan on using my Princeton Graphics CRT with this card. It's a 16" monitor, which came equipped with multisync/multiscan. It's one of the very few non-Commodore 3rd party monitors that runs at native Amiga output.
Looking forward to hooking this up over the weekend and finally installing one of my serial expansion cards at the same time (so I can have multiple serial devices hooked up simultaneously). Quite the retro-battlestation to be feared!