dillon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (12/25/85)
Now that everyone has had their fun arguing between the ST and Amiga, I would like to point out a couple of facts (This by no means comprises a complete list, just an unbiased one): (A) Both the Amiga and ST have 68000's. I see no reason why both won't eventually have commercially available co-processor boards (e.g. 68020) etc.... (B) The processor speeds are almost identicle... the ST's processor is slightly faster, but the difference is hardly worth mentioning. In otherwords, the difference can be made up by the quality of the OS. (C) The Amiga is multi-processing, the ST isn't. Note that this will cause the Amiga's benchmarks to be slightly lower, in addition to the amiga being slightly slower. There is no reason why the ST won't soon have multi-processing packages, if not already. (D) Compiler optimization is THE ONLY REASON you people are getting such disastorous differences between the two computers. It seems to me that the ST has a better standard compiler, though there is no reason why the Amiga won't have one soon. Ibm's compiler's for their mainframes are so good, that you couldn't hand code any better. Vax compiler's are so-so (they don't take advantage of Everything the Vax can do). There are some Awsome 68000 compiler's out there, none of which have appeared in the Amiga or ST market yet. You can get anywhere from a factor of 1 to 10 (or more) speed difference between compiler's. (E) Both engineering designs have done a fantastic job of keeping co-processor "cycle-steeling" down. (I believe, that neither the Amiga or ST steel any cycles when idle in comperable graphics mode's. Please note, ST people, that this is the Amiga newsgroup. You do not have to justify to us or give us an ST-Amiga comparison for EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING, gadget, "awsome program", or like, that we do. -Matt