Click Here
home features news forums classifieds faqs links search
6071 members 
Amiga Q&A /  Free for All /  Emulation /  Gaming / (Latest Posts)
Login

Nickname

Password

Lost Password?

Don't have an account yet?
Register now!

Support Amigaworld.net
Your support is needed and is appreciated as Amigaworld.net is primarily dependent upon the support of its users.
Donate

Menu
Main sections
» Home
» Features
» News
» Forums
» Classifieds
» Links
» Downloads
Extras
» OS4 Zone
» IRC Network
» AmigaWorld Radio
» Newsfeed
» Top Members
» Amiga Dealers
Information
» About Us
» FAQs
» Advertise
» Polls
» Terms of Service
» Search

IRC Channel
Server: irc.amigaworld.net
Ports: 1024,5555, 6665-6669
SSL port: 6697
Channel: #Amigaworld
Channel Policy and Guidelines

Who's Online
31 crawler(s) on-line.
 153 guest(s) on-line.
 0 member(s) on-line.



You are an anonymous user.
Register Now!
 miggymac:  36 mins ago
 Gunnar:  1 hr 4 mins ago
 pixie:  2 hrs 24 mins ago
 DiscreetFX:  3 hrs 4 mins ago
 DWolfman:  3 hrs 13 mins ago
 cncparts:  4 hrs 46 mins ago
 saipaman4366:  5 hrs 32 mins ago
 Beajar:  5 hrs 52 mins ago
 Rob:  5 hrs 54 mins ago
 agami:  6 hrs 57 mins ago

/  Forum Index
   /  Amiga General Chat
      /  How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Register To Post

Goto page ( Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 Next Page )
Poll : How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
10p Excellent (Best at 2D/3D, colors, and resolution, frame rate etc.)
5p Good / better than most computer.
0p Barely hanging in there.
-5p Below average / slow but usable
-10p useless / horrible
 
PosterThread
Hammer 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 14-Mar-2023 7:05:28
#861 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote:

In 1991, when I returned to Australia and bought myself a used Amiga 500, as I had left my first one back in Yugoslavia for my brother, most parents of high-schoolers where buying used 286 XT machines with CGA graphics, or if their parents were a bit more generous a proper 286 AT with EGA graphics, in the same price range as the used A500.

The fact that VGA and SVGA were around at the time did not factor into the common family household budget for computers.

It really wasn’t until 1994 that performant hardware was available at a low enough price, coupled with the rising interest in 486 driven Windows systems for non-business applications, that there was a palpable shift toward purchasing a new and up-to-date computer from a growing number of self-branded beige box assemblers.



Year 1991 was Amiga 500's peak sales period before Commodore killed it in 1992.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-10-the-downfall-of-commodore/


Amiga 600 was a disaster. Amiga 600 was spec'ed by Bill Sydnes (a former IBM executive for the failed PC Jr) as Commodore's engineering manager.

Bill Sydnes is the major cause for AGA's delay and AGA chipset (for the Amiga 3000+ prototype) was completed around Q1 1991.

My Dad was able to purchase a 386DX33 PC clone with ET4000AX in early 1993 which skips the entire AGA. Doom's preview in PC magazines occurred a few months before its December 1993 release.

Amiga 4000/EC030 wasn't cost-competitive in 1993.

The time period between 1992 to the end of 1993 was critical for Commodore's revenue health.

For Australia
June 1992's PC 386DX



VS

June 1993's Amiga 1200


vs

Sep 1993's 486SX25 (near Xmas 1993)


In Australia, the Amiga wasn't price competitive later in 1992 and 1993.


Since Australia is a small market, for the U.S. market.
-----
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-12-23-fi-4940-story.html
Article date: DEC. 23, 1993

A year ago, a San Francisco-area PC clone dealer known for its low prices was advertising a fully equipped 33 Mhz 486 PC for $1,388. Today, that same machine costs about $1,000


A500's October 1987 introductory price is $699 USD. Note that $1000 USD 486 33Mhz based PC in December 1993 is approaching A500's October 1987 introductory price range.

No 3rd party Amiga CPU accelerator will not match Commodore's economics of scale.

A500's $699 USD October 1987 introductory price is about USD $1,600 in 2020 equivalent.
-----------------------
https://archive.org/details/amiga-world?and[]=year%3A%221993%22
Amiga World Magazine (November 1993), page 58 of 100,
A1200 price $379
A3000 5MB, 105HD, price $899
A3000T/030, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1199
A3000T/040, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1599
Cost for 040 card = $400

The cost estimate for a 68040 card, $1599 - $1199, hence the cost for 040 card is about $400
A3000 has obsolete ECS graphics in 1993.

A1200's $379 + 040 card's $400 = $779.

Commodore could have pre-configured "out-of-the-box" A1200 with 68LC040 at 25Mhz SKU for slightly above $779 (i.e. add 4MB fast ram, HDD) which could compete against $1000 486 33Mhz based PC and Apple's Macintosh Quadra 605.

Xmas 1993 sales were very critical for Commodore's survival.

-------------------------

https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9306_June_1993.pdf
Gateway Party List, Page 72 of 314

4SX-33 with 486-SX 33Mhz, 4MB RAM, 170 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1494,

4DX-33 with 486-DX 33Mhz, 8MB RAM, 212 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1895,

Page 128 of 314
Polywell Poly 486-33V with 486SX-33, 4MB of RAM, SVGA 1MB VL-Bus, price: $1250


https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9308_August_1993.pdf
Gateway Party List, Page 62 of 324

4SX-33 with 486-SX 33Mhz, 4MB RAM, 212MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1495,

4DX-33 with 486-DX 33Mhz, 8MB RAM, 212 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1795,

Remember Gateway?

Page 292 of 324
From Comtrade
VESA Local Bus WinMax with 32-Bit VL-Bus Video Accelerator 1MB, 486DX2 66 Mhz, 210 MB HDD, 4MB RAM, Price: $1795



https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9310_October_1993.pdf
October 1993, Page 13 of 354,
ALR Inc, Model 1 has Pentium 60-based PC for $2495.



https://archive.org/details/amiga-world-1993-10/page/n7/mode/2up
Amigaworld, October 1993, Page 66 of 104
Amiga 4000/040 @ 25Mhz for $2299 (WTF? price close to Pentium PC clone)
Amiga 4000/030 @ 25Mhz for $1599


Page 82 of 104
M1230X's 68030 @ 50Mhz has $349
1942 Monitor has $389
A1200 with 85MB HDD has $624
A1200 with 130MB HDD has $724

The Commodore solution is beaten by the Gateway solution.


Target sales period: XMas of 1993 Q4.. 1993 XMas sales period was Commodore's last chance.

Since the PC market is large
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Sales
A list by now-defunct research firm PC Data for January 1993–April 1998 puts the sales for Doom II at 1,815,882 and Doom at 1,361,943.

Amiga 1200 install base did NOT reach 1 million units. LOL




Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:42 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:39 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:38 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:33 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:26 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:14 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 07:13 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hammer 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 14-Mar-2023 8:05:54
#862 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote:
@fishy_fis

He's still rubbing his butt over the fact his PS1 friends laughed as his AGA. He can still hear their mockery echoing in his head.


For the record, I played Doom and its clones on PC386DX33+ET4000 to hold me over until my 1996 Pentium 166 gaming PC purchase.

Pentium 166 (184 MIPS + 83 MFLOPS) PC supports preformat floating point math when compared to mostly integer-only PS1 (33 MIPS CPU + 66 MIPS graphics co-processor).

You either didn't read or didn't factor in David Pleasance's book on 3rd party game developers moving toward Sony's PlayStation after Commodore international's management told them to fuck off.

Stop using drugs.

Last edited by Hammer on 14-Mar-2023 at 08:07 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Karlos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 14-Mar-2023 9:33:44
#863 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Aug-2003
Posts: 4394
From: As-sassin-aaate! As-sassin-aaate! Ooh! We forgot the ammunition!

@Hammer

What does any of that have to do with your inferiority complex when not being able to deal with your PS1 friends mocking your early 2x2 blocky AGA FPS games?

That's right, nothing. You slammed AB3D for it's small screen and low resolution because, to paraphrase tour own words "your PS1 friends laughed at it."

AB3D was an excellent game, despite its low resolution, which was no worse than any of its contemporary titles on the platform at the time it was released. You have no idea how childishly pathetic it is to hear a grown man equate the value of a game on such metrics. By this standard, every 8-bit game was a disaster.

Not only was it more accomplished than it's contemporaries, it was more accomplished than Doom itself in a number of ways. It ran in RGB colour, it had Gouraud shaded zone lighting. It had transparency effects, refraction and room over room. With fast ram it was perfectly playable and with a 28MHz 020 or higher it was smooth.

But hey, let's just keep judging it by a single technical limitation.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
BigD 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 14-Mar-2023 11:35:23
#864 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Karlos

I agree that peer pressure is not a good reason to not enjoy a game! AB3D was better featured, fun and blew contemporary products like Doom on the SNES out of the water! Hell it was muffar chuffin' 2-player over null-modem on an 020 with Fast-Ram! Take that SNES!

The gorgeous engine and level design HAS now been shown in its true glory by the fan remastering 'Project Osiris' on the PC. Even the common Luddite graphics worshipper can now experience the great game with no complaints!

Note: To my knowledge Project Osiris is NOT 2-player! 1-0 Amiga again!

Last edited by BigD on 14-Mar-2023 at 11:38 AM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Karlos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 16-Mar-2023 1:33:52
#865 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Aug-2003
Posts: 4394
From: As-sassin-aaate! As-sassin-aaate! Ooh! We forgot the ammunition!

@BigD

Project Osiris is really good. Amusingly it has a blocky mode and you can use the original weapon animations too. I don't necessarily recommend it though.

The real trick to playing Osiris with the same level of tension as you got from the original is to not allow yourself to make save points. This was one of the thumbscrews of the original game. You died in a level? Back to the start of the level you go.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hammer 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 7:08:59
#866 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote:
@Hammer

What does any of that have to do with your inferiority complex when not being able to deal with your PS1 friends mocking your early 2x2 blocky AGA FPS games?

That's right, nothing. You slammed AB3D for it's small screen and low resolution because, to paraphrase tour own words "your PS1 friends laughed at it."

AB3D was an excellent game, despite its low resolution, which was no worse than any of its contemporary titles on the platform at the time it was released. You have no idea how childishly pathetic it is to hear a grown man equate the value of a game on such metrics. By this standard, every 8-bit game was a disaster.

Not only was it more accomplished than it's contemporaries, it was more accomplished than Doom itself in a number of ways. It ran in RGB colour, it had Gouraud shaded zone lighting. It had transparency effects, refraction and room over room. With fast ram it was perfectly playable and with a 28MHz 020 or higher it was smooth.

But hey, let's just keep judging it by a single technical limitation.

FYI, AB3D is released in 1995 which is inferior to Sony's Late 1994 PS1 gameplay presentation.

Like many Amiga fans, I prefer Dread / Grind's large-screen gameplay which runs smoothly on a stock Amiga 1200 / CD32 / Amiga OCS/ECS with 020 CPU over AB3D's technobabble and small-envelope-screen size gameplay.

AB3D only runs on a minority AGA hardware install base. AB3D alone can't rescue the Amiga platform from being a zombie platform.

You can't face the truth when Sony's Playstation is superior in "bang per buck" with reasonably high-performance hardware i.e. Playstation wins "building computers for the masses, not the classes" and it has industry-leading 1st party games and 3rd party support.

Against AB3D's release in 1995, PC has Descent with 3d objects. 1995 era PC has 100 Mhz Pentium caused downward price pressure on lesser Pentium 90/75/66/60 SKUs while 68060 @ 50 Mhz accelerators and Amiga 4000T/060 were not cost-effective.

The year 1995 is outside this topic's 1992-1993 scope since this will be a hardware price debate and the Amiga 68060 will not win this debate. 1995 was the last year before I sold my Amiga 3000 in 1996.

Last edited by Hammer on 17-Mar-2023 at 09:54 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Karlos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 7:55:34
#867 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Aug-2003
Posts: 4394
From: As-sassin-aaate! As-sassin-aaate! Ooh! We forgot the ammunition!

@Hammer

"Can't face the truth". What are you, twelve?

Was PS1 a better bang for buck gaming machine than the A1200. Sure. I have no issue with that statement. I just don't care, that's all. If you weren't so enormously butthurt over it still after all these decades you might realise that.

Perhaps it escapes your attention, but I didn't get an A1200 just to play low polygon affine textured games of the type that flooded the PS1 market. I used mine productively for the most part.

You compare Dread to AB3D, which shows how little you actually understand. Dread has been written decades later using techniques that were not yet invented in 1995. Also, Dread runs in a very low number of colours which is part of the trade off. AB3D runs in 12-bit RGB. They are not the same.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hypex 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 10:18:34
#868 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@agami

Quote:
In 1991, when I returned to Australia and bought myself a used Amiga 500, as I had left my first one back in Yugoslavia for my brother, most parents of high-schoolers where buying used 286 XT machines with CGA graphics, or if their parents were a bit more generous a proper 286 AT with EGA graphics, in the same price range as the used A500.


What's interesting here is about the same time I met a woman who had a 286 PC. Now, she preferred that to the Amiga and Workbench because Windows had context menus. This is true for Workbench 1.x. AmigaOS did not have context menus, the right mouse was always menu. Now, programs came along and commodities which changed behaviour of right mouse button. But they were like a hack because they were not built into the OS. It's the little things that count. I always remember that and knew what she meant. For some reason the Mac wasn't discussed that I recall which was even worse because it only had one mouse button.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hammer 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 10:36:58
#869 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Karlos
Quote:

Was PS1 a better bang for buck gaming machine than the A1200. Sure. I have no issue with that statement. I just don't care, that's all. If you weren't so enormously butthurt over it still after all these decades you might realise that.

The nature of this topic is a comparison between AGA chipset against similar era competition.

Quote:

Dread has been written decades later using techniques that were not yet invented in 1995

Brazilian developer TecToy releases Duke Nukem 3D for the Mega Drive in 1998 which includes the line skip technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeHPXvbPgDw

This topic is about "How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993" and you introduced a 1995 released AB3D game.

When you introduced an out-of-scope 1995-era AB3D game into this topic, I brought Dread into this topic. Stop being a hypocrite.

Dread's resource conservation techniques are similar to 1998 Duke Nukem's 3D Mega Drive port. Mega Drive is a zombie platform by 1998.

1995-era AB3D R&D effort is on technobabble rendering effects instead of larger gameplay screen size.

AB3D remains a comical small screen size since it couldn't properly scale with increased CPU power. This is like Amiga AGA's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (1995) which can't properly scale with the CPU power increase. PC's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (1995) can properly scale with CPU power.

1995-era gaming PC has Decent which has 3D objects and access to superior hardware at a cost-effective price range.


In 1995, I still have my Amiga 3000/030 @ 25 Mhz and I looked at competing products e.g. Windows 95-based Pentium 100/90/75/66/60 vs Amiga 3000's potential add-ons such as Phase 5's 68060 @ 50Mhz accelerator and Cybervision 64 (based on S3 86C764 Trio64 VL bus). 68040 belongs in the 486 era.

Since Amiga 3000 doesn't have an AGA chipset, I looked at Amiga 4000/EC030.
My Amiga 3000 at this point is pretending as a Macintosh running MS Office Mac edition. Macintosh was moving towards PowerPC. My 386DX-33/ET4000 PC runs 1992 to 1995 era games.

I preferred Dave Haynie's A3000+ AGA drop-in motherboard replacement proposal instead of buying the entire new Amiga 4000/EC030. Commodore didn't establish PC style common form factor across multiple hardware generations.

1995 was my deciding year to either continue investing in the Amiga hardware or completely ditch it. Again, 1995 is outside this topic's 1992-1993 scope.

Last edited by Hammer on 17-Mar-2023 at 11:01 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 17-Mar-2023 at 10:55 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 17-Mar-2023 at 10:43 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Hypex 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 13:28:59
#870 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 6-May-2007
Posts: 11180
From: Greensborough, Australia

@Hammer

Quote:
Wrong, the install base is important. Case in point, official Doom port.


Yeah, the Amiga never got one. The author stated the Amiga was not powerful enough to play Doom. His was response was ignorant of RTG cards, it has access to 68040 cards and bitplanes does not kill it. I'm not sure what he meant by the effect it would have on the majority of the Amiga base. The majority would have welcomed it as happened even if it needed a high end Amiga to give a decent enough experience.

Quote:
Bigbox Amiga 1500/2000/2500/3000/3500/3000T and Amiga 500 with 68030/68040 accelerators are unable to be upgraded to run AGA games.


Well, the PC wasn't so far apart, if you consider a 286 PC can only be taken so far. Can a VGA card even be installed in a 286 and would there be any point with 16 bit limitations?

An A500 and A2000 was similar to a 286 PC. Now the A500 and A600/A1200 with it is designed to be an integrated unit. But an A2000/A3000/A4000 could have been expanded. Video could have been on a card since other sections like SCSI were though it was more important. Instead the closest was a flicker fixer. Apart from RTG cards but it was awkward and like a computer with two graphic chipsets that could not switch the output to a monitor.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Karlos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 17-Mar-2023 14:33:47
#871 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Aug-2003
Posts: 4394
From: As-sassin-aaate! As-sassin-aaate! Ooh! We forgot the ammunition!

@Hammer

With respect (or without if you prefer) you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You are like an accountant (only less stimulating to talk to). You can reel off figures all day long but don't understand the inherent value of anything.

I responded to you for slamming AB3D as a poor game. Your sole reason for slamming it was that it ran in a low resolution with some ridiculously pathetic anecdotes about how your PS friends mocked you for it. Which in itself is worthy of mockery. All Amiga FPS games of that era ran in comparable resolution and all for the same reasons. The underlying fact was that they relied on emulating a chunky display using copper tricks as C2P was not yet a mature proposition.

You do not understand the value of the game or how anyone could enjoy it simply because you didn't enjoy it. You try to justify this based on its display but the fact other people saw past this limitation (pun intended) is completely wasted on you. Your worldview is all that matters and you didn't enjoy it because it had a small viewport, 2*2 and could be slow on an unexpanded machine. Therefore nobody else could possibly play it or enjoy it. Therefore the game was rubbish.

Moronity with an unhealthy dose of narcissism. Even my 3 year old is capable of better objectivity.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Kronos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 8:05:12
#872 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@Hypex

>The author stated the Amiga was not powerful enough to play Doom.
>His was response was ignorant of RTG cards, it has access to 68040
>cards and bitplanes does not kill it.

So 1% of a dying platform could have run it?

Thats like doing a game that only runs on Win10 but requires a RTX4090m and topend CPU.....

>Well, the PC wasn't so far apart, if you consider a 286 PC can only be taken so far.
>Can a VGA card even be installed in a 286 and would there be any point with 16 bit
> limitations?

8Bit VGA cards were pretty common, so yeah a 286 was a no brainer. Also plenty games that ran well on such a combo, many of whom would not have been possible on an A500 and non trivial on a stock A1200.



So back to topic:

In 1992/3 AGA was a descent lowend GFX solution with a design ill fitted for that style of games that was to and no realistic upgrade path doing some going-out-fashion styles of games quite good.

->far to little far to late

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
agami 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 10:02:45
#873 ]
Super Member
Joined: 30-Jun-2008
Posts: 1637
From: Melbourne, Australia

@Hammer

Quote:
The nature of this topic is a comparison between AGA chipset against similar era competition.

No it's not. It's about how good or bad the AGA chipset was in 1992/1993.

Good and bad are subjective value judgements. One can look at other platforms of the same era to make a value judgement,
but it is not the only way to make such a judgement.

As I've commented before, you seem to only be able to make such determinations based on comparative assessments.
It would seem you have developed an inferiority complex somewhere along the way, and it actually blocks you form making up
your own mind about the value of a thing.

The consensus in this thread is that the AGA chipset was on the whole good for a $599 home/games computer, or sub-$1,000 w/ 40MB HDD
in late 1992 and all of 1993. Short lived as its time in the Sun may be, it doesn't make it any less good.

Most have agreed that having the AGA in an A4000 was not a selling feature at the close to $3,000 price, and it was there mostly
for compatibility, since most big-box Amiga users would be using a RTG card.

Doom, for all its gaming cred defining prowess, can not be used part of the conversation. I don't care how many PC magazines
released the demo of the Wolfenstein 3D successor on a cover disc during 1993. The whole game was released to market in
December of 1993, therefore missing the bulk of the year.

Last edited by agami on 18-Mar-2023 at 10:06 AM.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Kronos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 10:35:36
#874 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote:

Most have agreed that having the AGA in an A4000 was not a selling feature at the close to $3,000 price, and it was there mostly
for compatibility, since most big-box Amiga users would be using a RTG card.



RTG cards really only started to appear in 1992/93 with either insane prices, mediocre HW and awful SW support. Even with "pro" Amiga users they weren't common until the ESCOM ore even GateWay ere.

So yeah, for the price point of the A4000, AGA was to little to late with no proper fix available (at the time).

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
kolla 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 12:19:33
#875 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the A4000 was not built to compete against other desktop systems like mac and PC, really. Its main reason for existence was as a developer's system for those making software for A1200 and CD32, and for that it pretty much needed AGA. Secondly, it was made to satify "OEM" customers that explicitly needed the video compatibility that Amiga chipset offered. SCALA, for example, in small TV studios, info channels in hotels, even train/bus stations that used A4000-CR for info screens. I know this simply because I have seen it and partially worked in so called "multimedia production" at the time (1994-1996). These people were not "amiga users" and the A4000 systems were very much used as commodity equipmemt, set up for one task and one task only. But they were doing stuff PCs, SGIs, Suns, Macs etc simply couldn’t unless you threw a heck lot of money at it.

Oh, now in 2023 - given the choice between PC chunky VGA with option of 320x256 8 bit for games, and Amiga AGA graphics that with a forgiving TV can offer for example 1280x720 modes with anything from monochrome to 8bit and HAM8 - albeit slowly, I EASILY pick AGA.

Last edited by kolla on 18-Mar-2023 at 12:28 PM.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Eyoop 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 19:42:39
#876 ]
New Member
Joined: 16-Mar-2023
Posts: 2
From: Unknown

@kolla

Bought my first A1200 in 92. To this very day it’s the best computer I’ve ever owned.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
BigD 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 20:08:12
#877 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Eyoop

There is a certain 'X-factor' that it has! It's definitely more than the sum of its parts!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
dipsomania 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 23:03:51
#878 ]
Member
Joined: 15-Mar-2014
Posts: 23
From: London

We bought an A1200 in 1992 to replace our glorious C64. I remember there was absolutely nothing comparable to it at that time, maybe 386 PCs + VGA gfx card but at the price of A4000s (the latter was much more elegant than any grey PCs anyway). In my country at similar price of the A1200 you might buy just a crap 286 with a ridiculous CGA/EGA gfx card (excluding the monitor), obviously the Commodore machine was another league, no way. Definitely in 1995 AGA chipset became inadequate, everybody agrees, I remember some my friends, who owned Amiga computers, bought 486s or even the first Pentiums with SVGA and it was clear what was going on...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Karlos 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 18-Mar-2023 23:36:11
#879 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Aug-2003
Posts: 4394
From: As-sassin-aaate! As-sassin-aaate! Ooh! We forgot the ammunition!

@Eyoop

On a related thread on EAB I said that no computer I've owned before or since has inspired me more than the A1200. I used it long after most people had abandoned ship to PC, Mac, console whatever.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
agami 
Re: How good or bad was the AGA chipset in 1992/1993.
Posted on 19-Mar-2023 0:40:26
#880 ]
Super Member
Joined: 30-Jun-2008
Posts: 1637
From: Melbourne, Australia

@Karlos

Quote:
Karlos wrote:
@Eyoop

On a related thread on EAB I said that no computer I've owned before or since has inspired me more than the A1200.
I used it long after most people had abandoned ship to PC, Mac, console whatever.

I know what you mean.

I went onto the XT-AT PC imperial forum where someone asked the question of how good or bad was the VGA card
in 1992/1993, and there were a few people stating how much their parents' 386 with VGA inspired them to...
[insert sound of record player stylus scratching away and off the spinning record]

Hang on, there is no such forum, and a business machine with 2-bit sound inspired absolutely no one to do
anything noteworthy.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Goto page ( Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 Next Page )

[ home ][ about us ][ privacy ] [ forums ][ classifieds ] [ links ][ news archive ] [ link to us ][ user account ]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2019 Amigaworld.net.
Amigaworld.net was originally founded by David Doyle