steve@digibd (Steve Wahl) (05/08/90)
In article <18017@snow-white.udel.EDU> CCUCARD%indsvax1.bitnet@uicvm.uic.edu (Paul Cardwell) writes: > > > > I have used an Amiga 3000 (4/28/90). > YES! Its awesome! Fast! > The Workbench 2.0 is REAL professional. Could someone who has seen the 3000 tell how it compares with a 2500/30? Especially one with a comparable hardware setup (similar HD, Flicker Fixer maybe). I'd like to know just how much of a jump has been made here. Do there exist any 1.4/2.0 Beta testers that ran 2.0 on a 2500/30 and have seen the 3000 and would like to post opinions on the differences??? :-) --> Steve -- Steve Wahl uunet!digibd!steve DigiBoard Inc. St. Louis Park, MN (612) 922-8055
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (05/09/90)
Since this question keeps coming up....
I have seen a 3000 and spent a couple of hours hands on.
A very nice machine, but the price is the real killer for now.
That's the only way in which it currently obsoletes the A2500/30.
The 16/2 (32-bit FAST/32-bit CHIP) Meg of on-board space is probably
the biggest difference from the 2500/30 (4/1 Meg 32-bit FAST/16-bit
CHIP) from a current performance point of view. The real magic in the
A3000 case will probably be in follow ons such as a 68040 board, etc.
My machine at work as a flickerFixer, and a NEC MultisyncII. The
display on the new monitor look slightly better in the same modes.
Some of the new modes are nice, but the highest resolution
(SuperHiRes) modes are hard to get useable. So a real (hardware) read
is about a factor of two improvement in video bandwidth. The OS
makes much better use of what is there however, so it feels like a
higher resolution display. The magic there is three (count-em three)
fonts individually selectable for the workbench: One for window and
screen header bars (make it a 15-point proportional font), one for
labelling icons (make it a much smaller proportional font), and one
for text windows (stick with the default, they did improve topaz).
But enough about the hardware. I have spent a lot of my life
building compilers. This is the first OS (AmigaDOS 2.0) that I have
seen where I would do most, if not all of my programming using
scripts! Between the AREXX support, links, and the improvements to
alias and assign, it is possible to do OOP in scripts. I am even
tempted to build a SDTS (Syntax directed translation scheme) tool to
build your own script language. My guess is we are seeing the first
true "personal" computer. Already, nobody uses the defaults. With
this OS, personalized environments will be the norm.
To sum up, I would not buy a A3000 to replace a 2500 or full-up
2000, but it does seem to retire the A1000, and the A500, to the role
of game machines. So I will keep my work machine (and upgrade with a
030 board, the 68020 is now obsolete hardware...), and buy a A3000 for
home. I get the best of both worlds, but in either case, for any
serious work AmigaDOS 2.0 is going to be it! Forget Unix. Even
though the A3000 is going to be a killer Unix box, very few people who
have one will use it that way. At work I currently use one of several
Sun's (from my Amiga) when I need a Unix box, and X doesn't require
the graphics display to be on the same machine...
Robert I. Eachus
Amiga 3000 - The hardware makes it great, the software makes it
awesome, and the price will make it ubiquitous.
--
Robert I. Eachus
with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) (06/01/90)
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: > I have seen a 3000 and spent a couple of hours hands on. > A very nice machine, but the price is the real killer for now. >That's the only way in which it currently obsoletes the A2500/30. >The 16/2 (32-bit FAST/32-bit CHIP) Meg of on-board space is probably >the biggest difference from the 2500/30 (4/1 Meg 32-bit FAST/16-bit >CHIP) from a current performance point of view. As will undoubtedly be pointed out several times over, that is A biggest difference, but not THE biggest difference. The Zorro III bus provides another biggest difference, and the 32-bit DMA provides Yet Another biggest difference. The net result is significantly better speed than a 2500/30, especially on disk-intensive applications. -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.us
eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) (06/02/90)
In article <18283@well.sf.ca.us> farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) writes: eachus@linus.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes: > I have seen a 3000 and spent a couple of hours hands on. > A very nice machine, but the price is the real killer for now. >That's the only way in which it currently obsoletes the A2500/30. >The 16/2 (32-bit FAST/32-bit CHIP) Meg of on-board space is probably >the biggest difference from the 2500/30 (4/1 Meg 32-bit FAST/16-bit >CHIP) from a current performance point of view. As will undoubtedly be pointed out several times over, that is A biggest difference, but not THE biggest difference. The Zorro III bus provides another biggest difference, and the 32-bit DMA provides Yet Another biggest difference. The net result is significantly better speed than a 2500/30, especially on disk-intensive applications. Two points. First there is a difference between "is better than" and "makes obsolete." The 3000 is better than the 2500/30 in a lot of ways, but if you have a 2500/30 or a GVP Impact board, there isn't enough difference TODAY to justify replacing it with a 3000. When 4x1 Meg SCRAMs are available in quantity, or when someone has a 68040 board for the 3000, or even when Zorro III boards with significant performance improvements show up then it may be a different story. But for now my impression is: don't buy a 2500/30, they cost too much, unless you need more (yeech!) IBM slots than in a 3000. I will probably put a GVP Impact or 2630 in my 2000 at work, however, if I find a good price. Second, I managed to get my hands on a 3000 (actually two) with 80ns 4x256K SCRAMs installed. It do make a difference. In fact the 3000 at 25 MHz slightly outperformed a GVP Impact at 25 MHz (your milage may vary...) The numbers are not statistically significant (7.73 to 7.65 MIPS) but this puts the 3000 way past any Sun 3 I have measured, and close to the SPARCstation. (I get 8.6 of MY MIPS on a SPARCstation...other people whose mix is less character oriented get other numbers.) Incidentally, my measurements come very close to those in both Amigo Times 1.10 and Amiga Software & Information (Volume 3 Issue 2 May 1990) on machines we both tested...I get a slighty lower number for the 2000 (0.79 MIPS) but all in all a very close match. This seems to be normal for the 680x0 family, while the RISCs and the Intel 80x86 families are both a lot more sensitive to instruction mix. For the record, AmigoTimes has the Impact A4000 at 33MHz at 10.34 MIPS, and ASI has the Impact A3001 at 8.32 MIPS. Not shabby at all. (For those who perfer Dhrystones, the AmigoTimes figures are A2000: 769 (which seems to indicate Dhrystone 2.1 done right), A2620: 2380, Impact A3001 (25MHz): 6250, Impact A4000: 7142. -- Robert I. Eachus Amiga 3000 - The hardware makes it great, the software makes it awesome, and the price will make it ubiquitous.