@pavlor

IIRC Gravis Ultrasound was released in 1992. Up to 32 sound channels (24 IIRC for 44.1kHz playback) and up to 1MiB local RAM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Can you report them? I found only some SpecInt 89:

That is SpecMark (combined Int and Fp results). I have separated SpecMark (Int and Fp) results for some CPUs, but not for 680x0 or 80386SX. That is why I rely on Dhrystone for anything lower than 68040/80386DX.

@megol

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IIRC Gravis Ultrasound was released in 1992. Up to 32 sound channels (24 IIRC for 44.1kHz playback) and up to 1MiB local RAM.

Price? Remember, we are in A1200 league.

@cdimauro

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As you can see, there are few on 1988 and 1989, some of which were notable (Speed Buggy, Dungeon Master and It Came from the Desert, Police Quest 2: The Vengeance). But starting from the 1990 the 1MB requirement increased a lot, as you can see.

Well, I was sure there are more 1MB+ games I could have named, and quite a few I could never imagine requiring 1MB (must be lazy coders!) considering how much BETTER games were done in 512k

But yeah, that list also proves the original point: the majority of games worked on 512k.

On the other hand, few good games require it, and perhaps there was thought "This will probably be for all games in the future..." in the air

Quote:

Unfortunately AGA and ECS games were mixed, but the former appeared only on the last part of the 1992.

Of course the list also doesn't differentiate games, that either require more than 1MB, or require continuous 1MB (so 512k chip + 512k fast wouldn't do), as this discussion was about an A500 with 512k expansion. But those probably came later.

On the other hand, I think some "512+512" games didn't work on A600, as it had a different memory configuration (1MB continuous chip ram). Not many, but few. Of course the bigger issue was games, that used "missing keys" for control

Last edited by Jupp3 on 21-Jun-2015 at 11:49 AM.

@pavlor

I honestly don't remember but it was certainly premium priced given the specs. On the other hand I could buy one so it couldn't be too extreme :)

@megol

199 USD at end of 1992 - good price. However, lack of SoundBlaster compatibility was severe limitation.

@pavlor

There were two soundblaster emulators delivered with the card, it wasn't ideal (and didn't always work) but was okay I guess.
I hooked up a SB card in parallel and got a hardware solution instead :)

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Can you report them? I found only some SpecInt 89: That is SpecMark (combined Int and Fp results).

So no, forget them: I really don't like combining "integer" and floating point benchmarks. They are completely different, and I want to know them separately.
Quote:

I have separated SpecMark (Int and Fp) results for some CPUs, but not for 680x0 or 80386SX.

But you told before that you had it for 68030, 68040, and 80386DX. Even if there's not 68020 and 80386SX, I think that they are very interesting too.
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That is why I rely on Dhrystone for anything lower than 68040/80386DX.

OK.

@Jupp3

Quote:

Jupp3 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: As you can see, there are few on 1988 and 1989, some of which were notable (Speed Buggy, Dungeon Master and It Came from the Desert, Police Quest 2: The Vengeance). But starting from the 1990 the 1MB requirement increased a lot, as you can see. Well, I was sure there are more 1MB+ games I could have named, and quite a few I could never imagine requiring 1MB (must be lazy coders!) considering how much BETTER games were done in 512k

... I feel I bit sad, honestly.

When I worked to Fightin' Spirit the goal was to create he best beat'em up from all point of views. That's why we've chosen Half-Brite mode for the graphic (64 colors for ECS machines. Used by a few games, because the vast majority used 32 or 16 colors), a wide screen (the original version, which was called Perpetual Craze, had a 608x256 screen; the final was had 576x256 screen to save some memory for other things), big characters (tall up to half of the screen) with a lot of animations & "moves", rich soundtrack, and plenty of sound effects, ... and the code of course.

For this reason 1MB was mandatory, and we used almost all bytes. With only 512KB, this game wasn't possible. No question here.

The same for the other game which I was working on, USA Racing (never released): just the tiles for the screen map required 480KB of memory. Then you have to add the memory for map (8192x65536 pixels), the cars (48x48 pixels each one), the various road signals (flags, curves, warnings, etc.), soundtrack, sound effects, and the code.

This just to say that goals for games can vary a lot, and requirements too. This doesn't mean that the coders were lazy...
Quote:

But yeah, that list also proves the original point: the majority of games worked on 512k

Absolutely. But many notable games required it, and in the second part of ECS "life" it was mostly mandatory to have the 512KB expansion.
Quote:

On the other hand, few good games require it, and perhaps there was thought "This will probably be for all games in the future..." in the air

Hum. From the list I see several good games that required it. Take a look at 1990 and above.
Quote:

Quote: Unfortunately AGA and ECS games were mixed, but the former appeared only on the last part of the 1992. Of course the list also doesn't differentiate games, that either require more than 1MB, or require continuous 1MB (so 512k chip + 512k fast wouldn't do), as this discussion was about an A500 with 512k expansion. But those probably came later.

Let say this: 1MB of chip mem would have been the best (but it was a rare configuration), but unfortunately Commodore engineers were goats and gave to the user the infamous "slow mem", which wasn't chip mem and not even fast mem. It had the combined defects of both, without any advantage. Incompetent people...
Quote:

On the other hand, I think some "512+512" games didn't work on A600, as it had a different memory configuration (1MB continuous chip ram). Not many, but few. Of course the bigger issue was games, that used "missing keys" for control

The problem with many games which didn't work on the Amiga 600 (and 500+) was that many coders were goats too, and didn't know the guidelines from the "Hardware manuals".

In theory you should recognize the memory at the boot, and use the memory accordingly. Instead, they pretended that the extended memory has to be at $C00000, where usually the icky slow mem was located.

Similar issues (unknown guidelines) brought to problems with ECS, AGA, and even with different Kickstart versions...

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @megol 199 USD at end of 1992 - good price. However, lack of SoundBlaster compatibility was severe limitation.

But GUS had a good support for games, either directly or by SB emulation.

@cdimauro

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But you told before that you had it for 68030, 68040, and 80386DX.

Ah, I was wrong about me... I found SpecInt89 value for HP 9000/340 (68030 16 MHz): 2.7 SpecInt89 (I have also results for all 4 integer benchmarks in this SPEC suite)

Intel 386/387 33 MHz: 6.4 SepcInt89

Now 68040:
HP 425t (68040 25 MHz): 12.3 SpecInt92
M4420A4 (68040 33 MHz): 17.8 SpecInt92

@pavlor

any SPEC results for 68060 and 486 and Pentium(Cyrix and AMD equivavalents also welcomed)?

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@WolfToTheMoon

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any SPEC results for 68060

No SPEC results for 68060. My estimate is 40-50 SpecInt92 for 68060 50 MHz.
80486DX 33 MHz: 18.2 SpecInt92
80486DX2 66 MHz: 32.2 SpecInt92
80486DX4 100 MHz: 51.4 SpecInt92
Pentium 66 MHz (first generation): 65.1 SpecInt92
601 66 MHz: 62.6 SpecInt92

Cyrix and AMD are hard to find (I probably have some results, but it may be harder to find these).

@cdimauro

Quote:

Quote: Well, I was sure there are more 1MB+ games I could have named, and quite a few I could never imagine requiring 1MB (must be lazy coders!) considering how much BETTER games were done in 512k ... I feel I bit sad, honestly. When I worked to Fightin' Spirit the goal was to create he best beat'em up from all point of views. That's why we've chosen Half-Brite mode for the graphic (64 colors for ECS machines. Used by a few games, because the vast majority used 32 or 16 colors), a wide screen (the original version, which was called Perpetual Craze, had a 608x256 screen; the final was had 576x256 screen to save some memory for other things), big characters (tall up to half of the screen) with a lot of animations & "moves", rich soundtrack, and plenty of sound effects, ... and the code of course.

Well, like I said, "few I could never imagine requiring 1MB", of course I would never expect f.ex. Liberation or Nemav IV to work on an unexpanded system!

What I meant was games like:
Ghosts'n'Goblins
Speed Buggy
Neuromancer
Star Control
Hero Quest
Rampart
Smash TV
And various SSI games.

There's something common between all of these, can you notice what?



Yes. There's also C64 version available. If they can squeeze all the data into 64k (perhaps loading more whenever needed), they should be able to do that in 512k. Sure, I know, the code takes more space, and so do better graphics and sound. But the difference between 64k and 512k is BIG. Especially considering that unlike C64 game developers, Amiga game developers didn't have to consider "people who are too poor to buy a disk drive", and could load data on demand more freely.

Yes, some of these use extra memory efficiently (better graphics, music + sound) but they COULD have gone the "missing X% of sound effects / different tiles if only 512k memory" route, as many others did.

And yes, the C64 version of Star Control sucks

(On the other hand, Rampart is better)

-EDIT-

Also regarding memory requirement comparisons between Amiga and X86, remember whenever someone says that his VGA 386 system has "640k ram", he actually means "640k ram+ (probably) 256k gfx ram".

Sure, it's quite different from Amiga chip ram, but on Amiga, you need to set aside enough chip ram to store the end image that's going to be shown on screen (*2, if using double buffering). On VGA, this ram is separately on GFX card.

Last edited by Jupp3 on 21-Jun-2015 at 05:45 PM.
Last edited by Jupp3 on 21-Jun-2015 at 05:40 PM.

@pavlor

How about AMD Am29040 and 29050?

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@WolfToTheMoon

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How about AMD Am29040 and 29050?

No idea.

@pavlor

PA-RISC 7100(lc)/7150/7200/7300lc?

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@WolfToTheMoon

HP 9000/E45 (PA7100LC 80 MHz): 74.5 SpecInt92
HP 9000/B132L (PA7300LC 132 MHz): 6.45 SpecInt95 (= cca 238 SpecInt95).

You may find many (if not most) Spec CPU95/2000/2006 results on www.spec.org website.

Spec CPU92 results were available on performance database server website, but it is nearly impossible to display this page today. Some are also in spectable (like cdmauro linked above).

@pavlor

So, if you can get a 100-133 MHz 68060 in 95-96(with die shrink, possibly some further smaller improvements like bigger cache), you're still competitive + no need to port OS or software library. In the meantime, invest in 68070 or 68080(fully pipelined FPU, maybe OoO). On the plus side, 68060 is laptop friendly, Apple was not able to produce PPC601 PowerBooks and Pentiums were really expensive...

According to this http://processortimeline.info/proc1994.htm

68060 @50 MHz was 263$(in 94') which was not overly expensive.

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@WolfToTheMoon

When 68060 was released (1994), Intel offered 100 MHz second generation Pentiums. 2 years later, you would compete against Pentium Pro, Pentium MMX, 603e or 604e - your 68060 133 MHz would be half as fast as other designs for the same price.