BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz (01/13/90)
Hmm... At the risk of jumping on the bandwagon: Why do people keep expecting a 68000 based machine to handle faster/bigger/more colourful graphics than a 368 machine. Why don't you compare your IBM clone with an Amiga with 8 transputer boards? It's only a little less sensible. Regards Alan
evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard) (01/16/90)
In article <4144@wehi.dn.mu.oz>, BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz writes: > >Why do people keep expecting a 68000 based machine to handle faster/bigger/more >colourful graphics than a 368 machine. Why don't you compare your IBM clone With the Amiga's custom graphics chips the CPU is freed up to do other things while in the PC/Mac world the CPU is all too often bogged down processing the graphics operations. That is why the 68000-based Amiga 1000 can still outperform a '486 VGA box on similiar graphics operations. I'm sure there are graphics co-processor boards that take alot of this burden off the Intel/Mac but compare the $$$$ to an Amiga. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Rob Gabbard (uunet!sdrc!evgabb) _ /| Workstation Systems Programmer \'o.O' Structural Dynamics Research Corporation =(___)= U =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) (01/16/90)
In article <1051@sdrc.UUCP>, evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard) writes: > With the Amiga's custom graphics chips the CPU is freed up to do other things > while in the PC/Mac world the CPU is all too often bogged down processing the > graphics operations. That is why the 68000-based Amiga 1000 can still outperform > a '486 VGA box on similiar graphics operations. I'm sure there are graphics > co-processor boards that take alot of this burden off the Intel/Mac but compare > the $$$$ to an Amiga. Two things: 1. $$$$ to Amiga to pc clone and the Amiga loses on hardware costs, which is the first thing most people see. 2. The amount of help the Amiga co-processor chips give can be very limited. They don't help while doing things like drawing a circle or changing the color of a pixel. Many things are done by the 68000 in the Amiga also. This is why I contend that the major bottleneck in the Amiga is the chip RAM bandwidth. Note that a cheap pc clone and VGA com- bination can also have a horrible bottleneck. I've seen over 20 wait states per VGA access. Now there are better things coming on the Amiga so I'll change my tune when I see them. However on the pc end it is not too hard to get a 340x0 based card that allows one to do real co-processing when it comes to graphics. It even has a C compiler for it. (Maybe someday Commodore will release Rich Miner's 34010 based board!) Anyway you could program the 34010 (given enough RAM) to say rotate the current screen image by 1 degree. This could happen with a sinlge command from the processor. Now that is co-processing! Wayne Knapp
tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) (01/17/90)
In article <1051@sdrc.UUCP> evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard) writes: >In article <4144@wehi.dn.mu.oz>, BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz writes: >> >With the Amiga's custom graphics chips the CPU is freed up to do other things >while in the PC/Mac world the CPU is all too often bogged down processing the >graphics operations.That is why the 68000-based Amiga 1000 can still outperform >a '486 VGA box on similiar graphics operations. I'm sure there are graphics >co-processor boards that take alot of this burden off the Intel/Mac but compare >the $$$$ to an Amiga. Ummm...Actually, how many '486 boxes have you seen? I've played around with flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms the Amiga's ability to display fast complex graphics. I mean we are talking about a '486 here! These things are _incredibly_ fast! Even a '386 running at 20MZ is faster than an amiga when running flight sim. But a '386 at 16mz, well, that's getting more in the ballpark. Remove the floating point chip, and it's closer even more! I am a diehard Amiga fan, but let's not get carried away! I would like to see an amiga with a 32bit 68030 running at the same speed with 32bit video chips. Now _that_ would really be flying! :-) -Tom -- "Hey COW!" _____________(( "My employer couldn't care less about BOVINES!" / ** o \ ______ _______________________ /| **** \ _/moo...\ | Tom McConnell | / | ** /\__/ \______/ | uunet!microsoft!tom |
uzun@pnet01.cts.com (Roger Uzun) (01/17/90)
>> Tom McConnell talks about flight sims on 486 and how fast they are >> mentions a 16 Mhz 386 sans math chip i s closer to amiga in speed In graphics rendering speed, it would make little difference if one had a 486 or 386 and absolutely NO difference if a 387 was added to a 386 system, because no flight sim I have ever heard of has any 387 code in it! If you do see improvment in the performance on a 486 system, it means that the program was taking a lot of time to calculate things, the code to render the objects is limited by the BUS bandwidth of your VGA adapter, and here you are looking at about 10-20 waitstates period, the fast the processor, the more waitstates on your bus. 99% of all PC busses run at 8 Mhz, a few will run at 12 Mhz. In my experience updating an ega display (320X200X16 color) is slower on a 386 machine (any speed, it makes NO difference, but some VGA/EGA adapters do better than others) than it is on an amiga, actually much slower. The EGA screens jave a funny memory architecture, and no special support hardware to access it. So the speed increase you see on your flight simulator is due to increased calculation speeds, NOT due to increased graphics speeds. In fact in all my tests, a stock amiga can easily outperform a 20Mhz 386 while updating a 320X200X16 color screen, try some simple animations yourself and you will see. -Roger UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd ucsd nosc}!crash!pnet01!uzun ARPA: crash!pnet01!uzun@nosc.mil INET: uzun@pnet01.cts.com
840445m@aucs.uucp (Alan McKay) (01/18/90)
In article <10302@microsoft.UUCP> tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) writes: > >Ummm...Actually, how many '486 boxes have you seen? I've played around with >flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms the Amiga's ability to display ^^^^^^^^^^ > >I would like to see an amiga with a 32bit 68030 running at the same speed with >32bit video chips. Now _that_ would really be flying! :-) ^^^^^^ > >-Tom Pun intended? -- + Alan W. McKay + VOICE: (902) 542-1565 + + Acadia University + "Courage my friend, it is not yet too late + + WOLFVILLE, N.S. + to make the world a better place." + + 840445m@AcadiaU.CA + - Tommy Douglas +
ifarqhar@mqccsunc.mqcc.mq.OZ (Ian Farquhar) (01/19/90)
In article <10302@microsoft.UUCP> tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) writes: >In article <1051@sdrc.UUCP> evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard) writes: >>In article <4144@wehi.dn.mu.oz>, BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz writes: >>> >>With the Amiga's custom graphics chips the CPU is freed up to do other things >>while in the PC/Mac world the CPU is all too often bogged down processing the >>graphics operations.That is why the 68000-based Amiga 1000 can still outperform >>a '486 VGA box on similiar graphics operations. I'm sure there are graphics >>co-processor boards that take alot of this burden off the Intel/Mac but compare >>the $$$$ to an Amiga. > >Ummm...Actually, how many '486 boxes have you seen? I've played around with >flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms the Amiga's ability to display >fast complex graphics. I mean we are talking about a '486 here! These things >are _incredibly_ fast! Even a '386 running at 20MZ is faster than an amiga >when running flight sim. But a '386 at 16mz, well, that's getting more in the >ballpark. Remove the floating point chip, and it's closer even more! You are absolutely correct. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the polygon filling capabilities of the Amiga. Under certain circumstances they can work well, but for a general 3D system they aren't too hot. The main problem arises when you get a polygon with a vertex that has a very small inner angle (say a very pointy isocelles triangle). The Amiga will actually fill it, but when the outline becomes one line, it will fill to the left to the line to the edge of the fill area! Most disturbing, needless to say. I have thought about this problem for a while, but have not produced any decent solutions. The closest I have gotten is to ensure that if such an angle is required, the top point (or wherever it is) has one of the lines offset by one pixel, thus ensuring that there is always a proper boundary for the fill. If anyone has a better solution, please do tell. If you want to do real fills, you can still use the blitter: you just use the line drawing capability. As usual, you scan convert the polygons and create a display list containing horizontal lines, which can be rendered by the blitter. This is an asynchronous operation, and line draw and scan conversion can proceed simultaneously. Your other statement about removing the FP chip is not quite correct. Only the most masochistic of programmers would ever write a 3D game (or indeed any system requiring real-time animation) using a FP chip, as they are rarely fast enough. It is far quicker to do fixed point integer multiplies than wait for the chip to finish. They also make dealing with rotations rather difficult, as they tend to force radians for trig functions when the average graphics programmer might want 65536 pseudo-degrees (map the top eight bits to the look-up table, and use the least significant byte to interpolate the extracted values). >I am a diehard Amiga fan, but let's not get carried away! Agreed. Stupid statements like the one above just make the Amiga look bad. It reminds me of the pretensious little brat who walked into a store near this university and announced that he wanted some IIGS software. The assitant - as they don't sell IIGS's - humored the kid who then proceded to compare his machine to the Amiga with th argument that his machine was better because it has a 65816 that ran at 500MHz! I am sure that you see my point. >I would like to see an amiga with a 32bit 68030 running at the same speed with >32bit video chips. Now _that_ would really be flying! :-) > Yes, it would. In those custom chips should be hardware rotation and scaling for blits, a real polygon filler, hardware rendering of bezier splines (cubic and triangular), and a 3 x 3 fixed point 64 bit matrix multiplier. Now that, kiddies, would be a mean 3D machine! Do I ask too much? I don't think so. All hail Saint Fubar, parton saint of computer programmers. +-----------------------------------+-------------------------------+ | Ian Farquhar | Phone : (02) 805-7420 (STD) | | Microcomputer Support | (612) 805-7420 (ISD) | | Office of Computing Services | Fax : (02) 805-7433 (STD) | | Macquarie University NSW 2109 | (612) 805-7433 (ISD) | | Australia | Also : 805-7205 | +-----------------------------------+-------------------------------+ | ACSNet ifarqhar@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz | | ifarqhar@mqccsuna.mqcc.mq.oz | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ D
farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren) (01/20/90)
tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) writes: >I've played around with flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms >the Amiga's ability to display fast complex graphics. Well, I'm not awfully surprised, somehow - but then, FS has been optimized to run on PC systems over the course of almost ten years now, by one of the best optimizers I've ever seen - Bruce Artwick is a speed genius. Two things come to mind, though: first, what setup is the '486 using? Full screen resolution, full color? Hercules? 8-bit or 16-bit graphics card? Second: FS uses some very specific techniques to achieve its speed. Its performance is NOT a general-purpose graphics benchmark. More telling would be a comparison of the speeds of the '486 and the Amiga doing things like line draw, rectangle move, rectangle move with masking, area fill, etc. - things the blitter handles on the Amy. Not that I'm saying the '486 wouldn't still win, but I think the Amy might surprise you; it'd likely be a lot closer than you might expect. And this without even considering the power of the CPU to be doing other stuff while the blitter does its thing. >Even a '386 running at 20MZ is faster than an amiga when running flight sim. >But a '386 at 16mz, well, that's getting more in the ballpark. >Remove the floating point chip, and it's closer even more! Hmm. So what you are saying is that a system which costs (conservatively) seven to ten times what the Amiga does will definitely outperform it, one that costs only five times as much might outperform it, and one that costs three times as much would go neck-to-neck (without multitasking, of course :-). I guess this is what is known as a left-handed insult :-) -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.usa
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne C Knapp) (01/20/90)
In article <15588@well.UUCP>, farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren) writes: -> tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) writes: > - >I've played around with flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms - >the Amiga's ability to display fast complex graphics. > ... > Second: FS uses some very specific techniques to achieve its speed. Its > performance is NOT a general-purpose graphics benchmark. More telling > would be a comparison of the speeds of the '486 and the Amiga doing things > like line draw, rectangle move, rectangle move with masking, area fill, > etc. - things the blitter handles on the Amy. Not that I'm saying the > '486 wouldn't still win, but I think the Amy might surprise you; it'd > likely be a lot closer than you might expect. And this without even > considering the power of the CPU to be doing other stuff while the blitter > does its thing. Yes you would be surprised! You would find out the following! a) While drawing both systems are limited by the bus interface to the graphics memory. This is the real bottle-neck. b) While drawing at okay speeds - the Amiga system blitter calls have a huge amount of overhead in them so much that a tiny blit takes about 3 milli-seconds. This really hurts the the Amiga since it 3 msec. is long time to waste in computer time. c) Most people talk about blazing blitter speed have never written code that uses that blitter and don't know what they are taking about. (I wrote my own blitter interface routines. This is where I learned most of the people talking about the blitter are only talking and not blitting) Now I like my Amiga 1000 very much. I still program on it every day. But, when it comes to raw drawing speed it is hard pressed to complete in any way with the newer PC clones. Let's hope that the 3000 will be a major improvement in this area! Newer PCs are getting fast. Still the Amiga is pretty impressive considering it came out in 1985! - >Even a '386 running at 20MZ is faster than an amiga when running flight sim. - >But a '386 at 16mz, well, that's getting more in the ballpark. - >Remove the floating point chip, and it's closer even more! > >Hmm. So what you are saying is that a system which costs (conservatively) >seven to ten times what the Amiga does will definitely outperform it, one >that costs only five times as much might outperform it, and one that costs >three times as much would go neck-to-neck (without multitasking, of course :-). Huh? My 25Mhz 386 with VGA 100Mbyte disk cost $2770? I does bet my Amiga 1000 hands down in everything as far as speed goes. But you mean I can buy a new Amiga 500 system with say 20Mbyte hard disk for less than $400? Also PC clone prices have dropped a lot since I last bought. You need to get up to date. I think that is one reason why the Amiga is having a hard time in the market, PC clones are getting really cheap for the power you get. In 1986 there was the 7 to 10 times price difference but not today. Not only that but these cheap PC clones are starting to have a lot more graphics abilites than the Amiga. We should try to be realistic when comparing the Amiga to other computers. The Amiga has many strong points, but slowly some of its old strong points like graphics are becoming weak points. SO COMMODORE HOW ABOUT SOME POWER FOR THE PRICE!!?!! IT IS TIME FOR A MUCH BETTER AMIGA!!!! Wayne Knapp
pkenny@dakine.ADS.COM (Patrick (Amiga Hacker) Kenny) (01/20/90)
In article <5389@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) writes: > >> Same here. It does sound interesting. The name is silly, though. I >> mentioned before, FM Towns sounds like some guy who lives next door to >> MC Boon and Billy-Bob Thudpucker. > >This is a interesting statement. My wife is Japanese and she told me that >'Amiga' is a wierd name and sounds like some kind of Indian word. So I just >asked about the name 'FM Towns' and she said, "FM Towns sounds a lot more >sophisted than the name Amiga". I guess it depends on your background. Note >my wife was born and raised in Japan and didn't start learning English until >she was almost in high school. > > Wayne Knapp Ok so I know that Amiga means 'Girl Friend' in spanish. And I know that most people out there need an Amiga. But where did the 'Amiga' name really come from. Who's Idea was it really? Any one care to comment on this. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^| Patrick Kenny pkenny@dakine.ads.com |___________________________ Advanced Decision Systems 1500 Plymouth Street | Mountain View, CA 94043 |
evgabb@sdrc.UUCP (Rob Gabbard) (01/22/90)
In article <1204@crash.cts.com>, uzun@pnet01.cts.com (Roger Uzun) writes: > In graphics rendering speed, it would make little difference if one had > a 486 or 386 and absolutely NO difference if a 387 was added to a 386 > > So the speed increase you see on your flight simulator is due to increased > calculation speeds, NOT due to increased graphics speeds. In fact in > all my tests, a stock amiga can easily outperform a 20Mhz 386 while Thanks for backing me up. This is what I meant orignally but was getting beat about the head and shoulders w/o some real data. I was not trying to say that the Amiga alone was faster than a '386 or '486 I was simply implying that the Amiga was quicker on graphics operation such as animations, double buffering, bit-blits, etc. If I needed to do some number crunching (with a PC) I would probably choose a '486 over the Amiga but then again I would probably choose a 33 or 50 -Mhz '030 over a '486. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Rob Gabbard (uunet!sdrc!evgabb) _ /| Workstation Systems Programmer \'o.O' Structural Dynamics Research Corporation =(___)= U =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren) (01/23/90)
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne C Knapp) writes: > a) While drawing both systems are limited by the bus interface to the > graphics memory. This is the real bottle-neck. Indeed. And it's a much more significant bottleneck on the IBM graphics systems than it is on the Amiga - you do NOT get direct access to the graphics memory on an IBM system (except CGA, but who cares?). You have to go through the hardware on the graphics adapter, which creates its own benefits and problems. Benefits: if you are doing single-color fills, etc., the hardware handles the bitplane selection for you, and you can do all the planes with only one write. Nice. Drawbacks: if you are doing general blitting, you must do it one plane at a time, with significant setup required between blits (yeah, yeah, BitBlt software, not blits as the Amiga knows them, but still...) > b) While drawing at okay speeds - the Amiga system blitter calls have > a huge amount of overhead in them so much that a tiny blit takes > about 3 milli-seconds. This really hurts the the Amiga since it > 3 msec. is long time to waste in computer time. Not germane. Have you ever used the standard graphics calls available in the Microsoft C Compiler graphics library? Slow isn't the word... For maximal speed, regardless of the system, you don't use the packaged routines - they are always too general for optimal speed. The Amiga's ROM routines are actually about the most efficient I have ever seen, as far as packaged routines go, and suffice for most purposes just fine. > c) Most people talk about blazing blitter speed have never written code > that uses that blitter and don't know what they are taking about. However, I am NOT one of those people. My blitter routines have been hand- coded from day one. I DO know what I'm talking about, thank you. >Huh? My 25Mhz 386 with VGA 100Mbyte disk cost $2770? I does bet my Amiga 1000 >hands down in everything as far as speed goes. But you mean I can buy a new >Amiga 500 system with say 20Mbyte hard disk for less than $400? Also PC clone >prices have dropped a lot since I last bought. You need to get up to date. The article in question was talking about 16-MHz '386 systems with VGA, running Flight Simulator. You don't need a hard drive to run FS. The lowest price I've seen for a 16MHz '386 system with VGA and monitor is around $1700. There may be lower prices, but I haven't seen 'em. An Amiga 500 system with monitor can be had for about $750. "Three times the price" was exaggerating just a bit - it's actually only 2.2 times the price, or so. And you STILL don't get multitasking :-) >I think that is one reason why the Amiga is having a hard time in the market, So you say. But define "hard time". Last I heard, Amigas were still selling, and Commodore was still profitable. The Amiga will NEVER have the market share that the PC clones have. Never. But so what? -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.usa