cheung@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Wilson Cheung) (08/11/88)
Recently I got in 3 Zenith 386 PC's. Well I installed windows 386 and was surprised how quickly it updated its windows after resizing. I was able to quickly flip back and forth through all pull down menus at random and windows was able to keep up. Then I ran a line drawing demo, similar to the one for the Amiga; the lines in windows seemed to just flash on the screen simultaneously rather than sequentially. This rather impressive speed causes me to wonder which is actually faster in animations, a 16 Mhz 386 with no wait state 32- bit memory and a 256K EGA card or the blitter on the Amiga. Ah, remember the days in which I was proud to own a hot machine called the Amiga. Now a days I am embarrassed to say the name Amiga in the same breath of IBM PC. Being an EE student mentioning the Amiga is seems a sure ticket for some substantial joking ridicule. "Oh, and here is my 386 machine with 287 coprocessor, 2 Meg of RAM, VGA card and Zenith flat screen VGA monitor. Hey what's that sorry linking terminal in the corner." : a a a its an amiga Hey isn't that one of those game machines. Say what's it doing in your office your supposed to be working not playing! : And in a futile attempt to show the serious side of the Amiga I pop up WordPerfect, Diga, and Maxiplan Hey why does that display look so crappy. Why is the disk drive so slow? Why is text so slow? The windows and multi-tasking hardly gets noticed and they walk away losing interest. Well, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. The question I'd like to post for discussion is whether an Amiga could hold up to a 386 computer with proper NTSC interfacing and similar animation software.
rminnich@udel.EDU (Ron Minnich) (08/11/88)
In article <1800@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU> cheung@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Wilson Cheung) writes: > This rather impressive speed causes me to wonder which is actually >faster in animations, a 16 Mhz 386 with no wait state 32- bit memory and >a 256K EGA card or the blitter on the Amiga. Ah, remember the days in which >I was proud to own a hot machine called the Amiga. Now a days I am embarrassed You oughta read comp.arch. Then it would be clear that for many types of blit-type operations, the 386 will win big. That's the way it goes... Does the 386 machine have multiple screens? HAM? If you just take a stock amiga and don't do much with it, it won't look like much. Have you tried vScreen yet? Photon Paint? leisure suit larry (oh, just joking). Finally, how much did those 386 boxes cost? Yeah, EGA is real nice, until you want more than one color map. Boy it can get awful fast! >mentioning the Amiga is seems a sure ticket for some substantial joking >ridicule. perhaps from ignorant people, yes. > Well, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. The question I'd like to >post for discussion is whether an Amiga could hold up to a 386 computer >with proper NTSC interfacing and similar animation software. price, price, price. From what i know a same-price amiga will compare just fine. The 386 boxes i have seen, outfitted with what you mentioned, are not cheap (except to universities, maybe). ron -- ron (rminnich@udel.edu)
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/12/88)
in article <1800@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU>, cheung@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Wilson Cheung) says: > Keywords: Which is faster? Well, even if it's running a brain-dead OS like MS-DOS, a '386 machine is a real 32 bit machine. Real 32 bit machines do have an annoying habit of going faster than 16 or 16/32 bit machines that run at 1/2 the clock speed. You can expand an Amiga (at least an A2000) to compete with this; it's not going to be on the average college kid budget, however. > This rather impressive speed causes me to wonder which is actually > faster in animations, a 16 Mhz 386 with no wait state 32- bit memory and > a 256K EGA card or the blitter on the Amiga. Well, I understand the CPU interface to most EGA cards is really slow, but if you've got the '386 doing you computations, it'll look fast. Possibly faster than the Amiga+blitter, especially if you don't have any FAST memory. The 68020 also stacks up pretty favorably against the Amiga's blitter. The blitter will still do some operations faster, but the main advantage of the blitter on the Amiga in a full 32 bit system is that it give you parallelism -- The blitter can scroll a screen for me while my CPU does something else. > Ah, remember the days in which > I was proud to own a hot machine called the Amiga. Now a days I am embarrassed > to say the name Amiga in the same breath of IBM PC. Being an EE student > mentioning the Amiga is seems a sure ticket for some substantial joking > ridicule. "Oh, and here is my 386 machine with 287 coprocessor, 2 Meg of > RAM, VGA card and Zenith flat screen VGA monitor. > Hey why does that display look so crappy. Well, I have this nice A2000 here with 7 meg of RAM, 68020, 68881 coprocessor. Add a FlickerFixer and you'll get a VGA compatible display that looks just as sharp as any VGA or Mac II display. Think of it in terms of video card -- you buy different video cards for the PC, EGA or VGA. For improved video on the Amiga, you'll have to upgrade too. The FlickerFixer will give you more colors than EGA, though not quite as much as VGA (though a 320x400 HAM stacks up pretty well against VGA's 320x200, 256 colors mode). > Why is the disk drive so slow? Are you still floppy based? The PCs I've used around here (XTs and ATs) have a pretty miserable disk performance when running similar things. You need a hard disk, and V1.3 software. That'll bring disk performance up to par the absolute best and fastest 20 and 25MHz '386 machines. Last I heard, around 625K Bytes/Sec. I'm sure all those PCs around there have hard drives; you've got to make similar comparisons. > Why is text so slow? Well, you are on a bit-mapped display, some of them aren't. But even at that, the current OS is probably using the blitter for small text moves, and that can be slow. The Amiga is capable of absolutely fantastic display speeds, though the software isn't yet as highly tuned as it could be. > Well, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. The question I'd like to > post for discussion is whether an Amiga could hold up to a 386 computer > with proper NTSC interfacing and similar animation software. I've heard '386 machines with NTSC display boards usually come out in the $10,000-$15,000 range. You could buy two fully loaded A2000 systems for that kind of money. And there's still better animation and rendering software on the Amiga than anything you can get on the PC. -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"
dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (08/15/88)
:> Keywords: Which is faster? : :Well, even if it's running a brain-dead OS like MS-DOS, a '386 machine is a :real 32 bit machine. Real 32 bit machines do have an annoying habit of going :faster than 16 or 16/32 bit machines that run at 1/2 the clock speed. You :can expand an Amiga (at least an A2000) to compete with this; it's not going :to be on the average college kid budget, however. I may not *like* a 386, but it is *fast*. Motorola would love us comparing a 68000 to a 386 ... gives the 68020 and 68030 a definate advantage, no? HOWEVER, as far as arbitrary bimmer operations go, the Amiga's Bimmer is still quite a bit faster than an 80386 for non-trivial operations. A 808386 running @ 16MHz WITH a cache could probably copy bitmaps faster, but that's about it. ... So why don't we start comparing a Cray to the Amiga now? -Matt
eberger@godot.psc.edu (Ed Berger) (08/18/88)
OK, the Cray X-MP (soon to be replaced with Y-MP) here is faster than The Amigas, I've seen. It must be those coprocessors :) The Pixar has more resolution than the amiga, but ofcourse is more difficult to videotape... Oh my, We don't have stereo sound! Guess, I'll have to get an Amiga after all...
mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (08/20/88)
> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.sys.amiga: 10-Aug-88 Blitter vs. 80386 Wilson* > *Cheung@vu-vlsi.Vi (1682)* > Well, I'm getting a bit sidetracked. The question I'd like to > post for discussion is whether an Amiga could hold up to a 386 computer > with proper NTSC interfacing and similar animation software. This is exactly like the people who compare vanilla MacII and vanilla A2000's, while totally ignoring the fact the MacII configuration that's "so obviously superior" to the Amiga costs about four or five times as much money. For the money the 80386 system costs, you can outfit an A2000 with a FlickerFixer board, a multisync monitor, a DMA hard disk interface and a 68020/68881 board. In this instance I think the A2000 would offer comparable performance to a 386 box in terms of processing power, I/O speed, display clarity and text display. On top of that, you get the NTSC interfacing, windows and multitasking at no extra cost. The 386 box wins on the variety of software it can run under MS-DOS and the potential software that is expected for OS/2. --M Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: rainwalker@drycas "if you ain't ill it'll fix your car"