which fpga evaluation kit

[C-Man]

Hi friends,

our company wants to "play around" and get a litte bit of knowledge with fpga design.

There is a really cheap starter kit from ALTIUM. You can choose between a version with Altera Cyclone (EP1C12F324C8) and Xilinx Spartan-3 (XC3S400-4FG456C).

Which one would the experts here prefer and why.

If anybody can help to decide which one to choose I would be glad for your input.
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LiveDesign Evaluation Kit with evaluation board
This LiveDesign Evaluation Kit includes a LiveDesign Evaluation Board that can be specified with either a high-capacity Altera® Cyclone™ (EP1C12F324C8) or Xilinx® Spartan®-3 (XC3S400-4FG456C) FPGA device. This versatile development platform not only interacts with Altium's software but can be used directly with FPGA vendor tools as a standard development board with no requirement for additional hardware or accessories.
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thanks and best regards

 

[hcet]

Hi C-Man,
look there:

It's just valid until december 3.
Regards, ep20k.

 

[greek]

Try from the softdown site

 

[IanP]

I received the same offer from ALTIUM (same dilema..).
Here in Australia it is offered for AU$149. How much does it cost in other countries?

 

[zcq]

Personly, i prefered Xilinx.

 

[Bingo600]

If you want to play a little then have a look at these boards

**broken link removed**
$164


**broken link removed**
$399 and i asked about delivery , its 1500 is 6-8 weeks ARO (received a week ago)

/Bingo
Who just got the Xilinx CPLD+Spartan starterkit

 

[Black Jack]

MAXII-DEVKIT-1270 $150

The MAX II Development Kit includes the following:
MAX II Development Board
MAX II EPM1270F256C5ES CPLD
Universal serial bus (USB) media access control (MAC) with physical layer (PHY) and Type B connector
PCI Edge connector (3.3 and 5 volt tolerant)
LCD module
SRAM (128k x 8-bit)
Temperature gauge with serial peripheral interface (SPI)
Onboard power meter
Active I/O sense circuitry
One 3.3-V-tolerant expansion/prototype header (41 available user I/O pins)
Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) connectors
Four user-defined, push-button switches
Four user-defined LEDs
Quartus® II Web Edition design software
Cables and accessories
ByteBlaster™ II parallel download cable
Type A-B USB cable (3 feet)
Reference designs and demos for MAX II including:
USB reference design
PCI reference design
Low power demo
Real-time in-system programmability (ISP) demo

https://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-maxii-1270.html