Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!well!farren
From: farren@well.UUCP (Mike Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A new Amiga...
Message-ID: <15588@well.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jan 90 17:11:51 GMT
References: <4144@wehi.dn.mu.oz> <1051@sdrc.UUCP> <10302@microsoft.UUCP>
Lines: 34

tom@microsoft.UUCP (Tom McConnell) writes:

>I've played around with flight sim on a '486, and it _way_ outperforms
>the Amiga's ability to display fast complex graphics.

Well, I'm not awfully surprised, somehow - but then, FS has been optimized
to run on PC systems over the course of almost ten years now, by one of
the best optimizers I've ever seen - Bruce Artwick is a speed genius.
Two things come to mind, though: first, what setup is the '486 using?  Full
screen resolution, full color?  Hercules?  8-bit or 16-bit graphics card?

Second: FS uses some very specific techniques to achieve its speed.  Its
performance is NOT a general-purpose graphics benchmark.  More telling
would be a comparison of the speeds of the '486 and the Amiga doing things
like line draw, rectangle move, rectangle move with masking, area fill,
etc. - things the blitter handles on the Amy.  Not that I'm saying the
'486 wouldn't still win, but I think the Amy might surprise you; it'd 
likely be a lot closer than you might expect.  And this without even
considering the power of the CPU to be doing other stuff while the blitter
does its thing.

>Even a '386 running at 20MZ is faster than an amiga when running flight sim.
>But a '386 at 16mz, well, that's getting more in the ballpark.
>Remove the floating point chip, and it's closer even more!

Hmm.  So what you are saying is that a system which costs (conservatively)
seven to ten times what the Amiga does will definitely outperform it, one
that costs only five times as much might outperform it, and one that costs
three times as much would go neck-to-neck (without multitasking, of course :-).

I guess this is what is known as a left-handed insult :-)

-- 
Mike Farren 				     farren@well.sf.ca.usa