cknight@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (King Claudius) (01/20/90)
I hear a lot of people say "a 486 machine can beat an Amiga..." Sure they can. But you also have to pay for that power. And how many 486 machines have THESE FEATURES + NTSC standard output + Blitter chip + Hardware supported multitasking + DMA channeling + Two joystick ports (I know, but it's another ~$50 for IBM's) So the point is--so you don't get quite as fast a machine, but you get more for your $. If you want to do a fair comparison go and spend the same amount on an 80486 machine and an Amiga (buying a processor board first off...like a 68030 with a meg or two). -- cknight@polyslo.calpoly.edu ---King Claudius---
wayneck@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne C Knapp) (01/20/90)
In article <25b76ec2.18b3@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>, cknight@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (King Claudius) writes: > I hear a lot of people say "a 486 machine can beat an > Amiga..." > Sure they can. But you also have to pay for that power. > And how many 486 machines have THESE FEATURES Your point is good, but your feature list isn't very good. The Amiga does have a lot of good features, but not exactly the ones you listed. > + NTSC standard output Yes the Amiga best home video feature! Except it isn't the whole story. For the most part video is easier on the Amiga hands down. But if you want to get broadcast quality video with a good genlock the IBM is even a little cheaper. As an example you can get VGA producer for the IBM from Magni for $1795 which give both broadcast quality video and a great genlock. However, in the home market the Amiga is without a doult NTSC King! + 1 point here. > + Blitter chip If you have a 486 you don't need a blitter. A 68000 is really helped by the blitter but I think even by the time you get a 68020 it is questionable how much gain the blitter gives when you consider the overhead of using a co-processor limited to blitting. (Okay filling and line drawing too) Smalltalk is well know for its very heavy use of blitting. I've seen several papers concede that the Tektronix Smalltalk blitting is the fastest and best seen in the Smalltalk wrold. Yet the Tektronix blit routines are software only (although VERY CLEVER, the always fit in the 68020's on chip cache). So with software only Tektronix has beat out hardware blitters. Make's you think, doesn`t it? No points here. > + Hardware supported multitasking Ummm? The Amiga's don't have hardware support for multitasking it is all in software. 386s and above do have hardware support. -1 point here > + DMA channeling Almost every computer I've ever heard of has DMA of some kind. No points here. > + Two joystick ports (I know, but it's another ~$50 for IBM's) Okay if you want a game machine ... Want some valid Amiga plus points? How about. 0. Price right now, this year a cheap 486 machine is 5 grand. (If you wait a year or two it will be only a couple grand.) 1. Low cost software for Amination/destop video. Amiga is clearly the current leader hear. 2. More public domain demo's than any other machine. 3. Commodore support ... ophs! that was a slip .... ... Wayne Knapp