agami Quote:

To everyone who cites how this or that tech was introduced in some year prior to AGA: There is a big difference between technology being available and technology has large adoption.

Yes, that was the point I was just trying to make. There was x86 hardware that was more powerful than the Amiga but most x86 personal computer hardware in the home wasn't overall better than the Amiga until the mid '90s. I showed that even the original genuine from IBM PS/2 VGA hardware which first came with a pseudo 8 bit chunky mode didn't have the performance for Doom because of lack of CPU performance and VGA gfx performance. High performance hardware starting around 1990 could play Doom but was very expensive. A 80486@33MHz in 1990 cost $953 which is more than than a low end Amiga computer cost. Because x86 hardware won the Clone Wars, there is this idea that x86 hardware was superior back in the late '80s and early '90s when it was not on average. There was very expensive x86 hardware for businesses and universities but it was rarely used for gaming until the Doom gaming boom. The performance/price of x86 hardware was generally poor until the gaming boom and brute force using the CPU was the only way to move gfx data around unlike the Amiga. Amiga did not really have high end hardware but the low end hardware was generally better than most x86 hardware up to and including the Amiga 1200 in 1992.

Doom was a clever game in many ways. Before Doom, game producers generally created games for the lowest common denominator of hardware which was low and slow to progress for PC clones. Doom was scalable in performance by shrinking the screen size so customers could see the difference in hardware as a sort of visible benchmark and wanted more performance. This is when large amounts of gold could be found in the hills of the dumps where old, and even not so old, x86 hardware ended up.

agami Quote:

When it came to game development, in many ways the Amiga was like a game console. Developers could rely on a known quantity of the install base. The move away from sprites had not began in earnest prior to 1992. But when it did happened, it happened quickly. Far too quickly for a struggling Commodore to keep up.

It is surprising the Amiga didn't try to introduce an ECS based Amiga game console after the Amiga PC was introduced (only the CDTV device but dropped even standard CD support after it failed). NES turned around the console market and the next generation SNES and Sega Genesis were big successes also. The Sega Genesis used a 68000 and was similar to the Amiga. The Genesis which was introduced in 1988 (1989 for U.S. and 1990 for PAL version) had better sprite hardware but was otherwise inferior. The Amiga chipset hardware could have added more console like features but even AGA only added minor improvements in this direction and was late at that. It was easier for a computer like the Amiga to drop into the console market than for a console to move up into the computer market as an OS is required. Selling into both the computer and console markets would have increased volumes for mass production and made CBM more defensive by being in two different cyclical markets. CBM should have been developing and marketing products for the embedded market as well which is a defensive (non-cyclical) market that was starting to boom. CBM could have added higher performance processors along with the chunky AA+ they were planning and had both console compatibility and higher performance CPU brute force chunky which maybe could have been adequate if a little behind the performance curve provided prices were lower. The 2D console sales actually tapered off gradually. The SNES with just a 16 bit 6502 CPU wasn't discontinued until 2003 with nearly 50 million units sold and the Sega Genesis was discontinued in 1999 with 32 million units sold. CBM could have added 3D support with Hombre to the Amiga chipset if they wanted to compete with the newer consoles. CBM was well positioned with the Amiga in 1985 to become a tech power house but they botched it. CBM died a one trick pony failing to diversify into other tricks and failing to improve their one trick enough to remain competitive. Only at the end did they almost succeed with a new trick when they introduced the CD32 console but it was too late to market with upgraded technology and for CBM's finances.

ppcamiga1 Quote:

c2p is not for free. c2p times for 030 are easily available so dont lie that "AGA was not a major bottleneck for Doom and other chunky gfx games" c2p on 030 50 MHz take almost half of cpu time in 320x200 8 bit 25 fps.

Actually, c2p is free on the 68040 and 68060 with fast memory as the conversion is done at copy speed. In other words, the CPU can do the c2p conversion while waiting on chip memory writes. Yes, chip memory back then was slow and the chip memory bandwidth was low as the Amiga chipset was made for the masses but it was still better than many VGA implementations, including the original IBM PS/2 VGA, as I showed above.

coder76 Quote:

Both chunky and planar modes have their own advantages. But there exists chunky to planar routines (c2p's), which converts a chunky screen held in fast ram to chip ram planar format. On a 68040/68060 its copyspeed, so this conversion does not slow down copy speed to chip ram. With Doom, you really see that planar format does not slow down faster Amigas. A 68030/50 MHz even outperforms a 386/40 MHz running Doom in benchmarks by a frame or two, despite doing the c2p. Also, a 68040 outperforms a 486 PC running Doom at same clockspeed. The chip ram access speed is more of a bottleneck on the Amigas, rather than the planar format.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?s=5875a681b8c4cd80838d34b4f39428fc&p=1192120&postcount=5

Last edited by matthey on 13-Nov-2021 at 06:49 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 13-Nov-2021 at 06:27 AM.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

AGA was many times slower because it has not chunky pixels.

So why didn’t you do like you’d do with a PC or Mac, and get an Amiga with a graphics card capable of chunky graphics?

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