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From: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga bashing
Message-ID: <9106221550.03@rmkhome.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jun 91 04:49:00 GMT
References: <1991Jun20.200326.16487@bmerh409.bnr.ca> <1991Jun21.024820.27900@Sugar.NeoSoft.com> <1991Jun21.073046.8276@ncsu.edu> <1991Jun21.113939.14446@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly)
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
Lines: 59

In article <1991Jun21.113939.14446@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>In article <1991Jun21.073046.8276@ncsu.edu> kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:
>>peter@Sugar.NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>>In article <1991Jun20.200326.16487@bmerh409.bnr.ca> drews@bmerh796.bnr.ca (Drew Stevens) writes:
>>>> Also, a $100 SuperVGA card provides resolutions up to 1024x768 
>>>> (non-interlaced up to 800x600) and a quarter-million colour palette.
>>>
>>>Yes, but the AT bus puts enough wait-states on I/O to the card that it's
>>>barely adequate for animation.
>>
>>Funny, I don't recall him asking about animation :-).  Jest kidding, Pete.
>>
>>Comparing animation on resolutions like those, to animating much smaller
>>resolutions (read: far fewer bytes) on the Amiga, isn't quite fair tho.
>>Drop back to 320x200x8-bit color on a decent VGA card with even a lesser
>>Intel cpu, and it can play back animations just as well as the Amiga can.
>>I've seen it, and so have other Amigans here in town.  However, the Intel
>>wasn't multitasking at the time, either :-).
>
>  Well, animation capabilities go hand in hand with fast screen refresh.
>Let's imagine I have a 1024x768x8 Shell window and I send it to back on
>this VGA card
>....wait....wait....wait... ahhh it finally finished refreshing the screen.
>Common, a $100 VGA card? You can tell this thing doesn't have any co-processors
>on board nor will it have any mechanisms for moving huge chunks of
>graphics, in short the 1024x768 (interlaced?) mode is fairly unusable
>unless you are used to Xwindows.
>  Now that I look at it, HAM-E, DCTV and Colorburst kick VGA's butt as far
>as displaying nice graphics.
>
> 
>>Still, I thought we already covered the number of waitstates in higher
>>(read: decent) AMiga gfx modes?  It's not real impressive either.
>
>  In HAM mode you only have 50% wait states, and we've already seen
>HAM animations with 15-20 fps on a 68000. The point is, 1024x768
>and no coprocessor are just too many pixels to move around. So Super-VGA
>gives you a nice static display, but I bet dragging icons around in it
>and changing windows will be ugly.
>
>>Friends, it's getting about time that you should start opening your eyes.
>>In other words, repeating old chants won't work forever, y'know :).
>>Apologies: this was a kneejerk reaction to a too common kneejerk comment.
>
>  It's also time to realize this VGA card is no miracle, it's a cheap
>slow static display. You get what you pay for.


Of course, you can buy a high end SVGA board that does 1280x1024 with 256
gray scales and mucho colors.  It will have a TI34xxx processor, and 16 megs
of ram, and Z-buffers, etc.  You to can get great animation from your 386 or
486 pc for just $2000-$4000 for the graphics card.  Since you have spent all
this money for the card, then you should get a .25mm dot pitch monitor.  At
about $1000-$2000.

So that's good animation for $3000-$6000 plus the price of the 386 or 486
box.

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	frog!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP