Capability comparison of two different fpga devices

[mutilenka]

Hello all,

I'm new to fpga programming and want to get my hands dirty with some projects in the coming weeks. I want to make basic 1980s atari-like videogames with fpga devices. Now I'm a student coming from a relatively poorer country and I will be buying the fpga device with the money I've been saving in the last 4 months so I want to make sure that this purchase counts : ). I'm going in between the basys 3 fpga and the breadboardable cmod a7-35 t fpga module. Both of them are on sale here and the price comparison is as follows:

basys3 > breadboardable artix--35t fpga.

Which one of these devices would suffice for the projects that I'm planning of doing? Are any of these overkill for my purposes? Please let me know, any help appreciated.

Edited January 17, 2023 by mutilenka

[zygot]

The A7-35T is probably a bit small for video applications, even low resolution VGA ones, but you can do simple display things with the Basys3, as this tutorial points out: https://forum.digilent.com/topic/19910-basys3-game-tutorials-beeinvaders/

A problem with small devices like the A7-35T is that Vivado IP and MicroBlaze will use up a lot of its resources if you have to use that design flow. For an all HDL design you can fit a lot of functionality into even the smallest A7 device if it doesn't use external DDR3 memory.

Someone with a very tight budget has to be very careful before spending money. These days boards don't necessarily come with all the stuff that you need to use them; like USB 2.0 cables, power supplies, etc. Also, because of global chip shortages process for even old board have gone up 50-100% over what they sold for when originally released.

I'd recommend that you take an inventory everything that you will need to actually enjoy the fruits of your labor and add up the costs. It might be cheaper to spend more money on something that provides most of it than starting off with a minimal expenditure and buying add-ons as you go. For any kind of game experience you not only need a video output, and cable that's compatible with a monitor that you have handy, you need some way for the user to interact with your application. Do you expect to have audio? Do you need joystick inputs? Make a list and add it all up.

Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, how are you going to proceed with your project goals? Do you want to learn FPGA development, or are you more interested in bootstrapping projects that you've found on the web? If it's the latter, then buying a platform for which project code has been written for might make more sense.

Be careful of making an investment in something that may not allow you to get to your end goal, or will be a lot more expensive getting there by the time that you've purchased all of the extra stuff that's needed... only to find that you have a platform with very limited potential. Most cheap FPGA boards are designed to sell you more stuff. If it's a trap, avoid it, if it gets you to your goal within your budget, then do your homework and go for it if it makes sense. Even some cheaper Intel FPGA boards have PMOD connectors these days. Be cautioned that Intel has restricted the free version of Quartus to Cyclone 10LP and earlier and that some of it's free IP, like DDR interfaces, are broken or very hard to use.

Cheaper Xilinx FPGA boards might not be the best choice, in terms of value for cost. The Cyclone V Start Kit is available for about double what it originally costs, but comes with a lot more features than a really cheap A35T board. I'm not recommending that as an option, just as an example of something different that's currently available from distributors. Unfortunately, this is not a good time to dive into cheap FPGA board development on a very tight budget.