[comp.sys.amiga] Amiga emulation of ST

wayneck@tekig5.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) (05/24/88)

Here is some more information.  I forgot about the fast ram vs. chip ram
stuff on the Amiga. 

On Amiga:
|>At some point, I think about
|>about 40k of graphics memory the graphics refresh starts cutting into the
|>68000 cycles.


| You might also mention that this "cutting into the 68000 cycles" only
| applies to the first 512K (Chip RAM).  The other 7.5M of memory does not
| get "cut into" for any video mode (fast RAM).
| Mike Kersenbrock
| Tektronix Microcomputer Development Products
| Aloha, Oregon

This really is true to my experience.  An Amiga with 1.5 Megs seems to be a
much faster machine than the basic 512K Amiga.  When you have a ram disk and
other software to enchance the Amiga's disk drives it really improves.  Getting
rid of any cycle stealing also helps.  On the ST you don't see as much 
improvement since cycle stealing is very rare unless you are doing DMA.

My impression is that a 512K ST often out runs a 512K Amiga.  But if they 
have lots of extra memory, the performance of the Amiga improves much more than
the performance of the ST.  I do have both machine, but only 512K on my Amiga
now. 

                                   Wayne Knapp